A derelict bingo hall. Were they ever actually nice?

A derelict bingo hall. Were they ever actually nice?

Humans have a terrible tendency to see their history through rose-tinted glasses. Think for a second – do you know anyone over the age of 60 who doesn’t say that things were better in their day? Have you ever considered, dear reader, whether the generation before them also said things were better in their day? Normally such statements are qualified with an excuse of some kind, i.e. “children died in infantry because of a lack of health service,” someone born before the creation of the NHS in 1948 might say. And, they’d inevitably follow such a statement with a qualification similar to: “However, there were no nastiness in society; everyone got along, and you could leave your front door unlocked without needing to be worried about thieves.” I am sure you have heard it all before.

Well, I hear you cry – what is the purpose of the previous paragraph? Hold your horses’ readers, I am getting there! My point is, in a slightly long-winded manner, that this is how I feel about bingo halls. Let’s be honest, they were pretty shitty. Give yourself a moment to get over the shock and horror of the previous sentence and think about it. They were smoking-filled, cramped, sweaty dungeons. Don’t get me wrong, I loved going with my mother and grandmother, who I love dearly. But, that said, I didn’t actually like the halls themselves. As a young girl in Yorkshire, I can think of plenty of places that I would have rather been at the time. Yet I went because it gave me a chance to spend time with them. I wouldn’t, however, take my young daughter to one of those halls today if they still existed in the same form.

Some people say it was the smoking ban that killed these clubs. However I say: those clubs simply were not very nice to begin with, and, to say otherwise is to view them through rose-tinted glasses. I much prefer to play from the comfort of my own home, with a warm cuppa, my slippers on, and my cat on my lap.

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