Destination lucky strike

FIRST we heard the country music tones of Mike Denver over the loudspeakers.

Then we saw the lines of traffic. That’s when we realised we weren’t the only ones who had decided to spend a drizzly Sunday afternoon in June sitting in our cars at Castleisland Mart.

What had compelled us to do such a thing, I hear you ask. We were there for the town’s first ever drive-in bingo, an event organised by the Castleisland Race Committee to raise money for the town’s day-care centre and Build4Life, a local Cystic Fibrosis charity.

I should explain my history when it comes to bingo. My mum and granny used to be regular bingo players when I was a child. They would play in our local hall every Sunday evening and on occasion, I would tag along too. On one such occasion, I won £200. This was a huge sum for 12-year-old me and it was to be the highlight of my bingo-playing childhood.

This was because my winning streak didn’t last for very long. Soon afterwards, I started secondary school, where I was quickly informed that playing bingo wasn’t cool. I stopped going and soon, so too did my mother.

“People started to take it too seriously,” she remembers. “They’d hiss at you to stop talking if you even opened your mouth to chat to the person beside you.”

When we heard about the plans to run the charity event, I immediately thought my mum would make the ideal bingo-playing companion. Together, we might relive the glories of old.

This is what led to us sitting in my car, surrounded by approximately 360 other people sitting in another 160 cars, all of us armed with bingo books and pens and listening intently to Castleisland man Ned Burke calling out numbers. Just in case we can’t hear him on the far-off stage, we have also tuned our car radios into a special frequency and we can hear him from there.

“Legs eleven,” says Ned on our radios. “A duck and a bee, 23,” comes next. Everyone laughs at the familiar bingo lingo.

But there’s tension in the air, too, as people concentrate on the game. There are substantial prizes to be won. If you cross off a line of numbers, you’ll win €50. If you cross off a whole box, you’ll win up to €250. And if you win the jackpot, there’s €1,000 up for grabs.

There is €4,000 to be won in total and judging from the seriousness with which most people are taking the game, it’s clear that everyone hopes they can win some part of it. Even I have my fingers crossed that today will be the day I repeat my former success at bingo. I honk my car horn several times to check that it’s working as that is how I’ll have to let the organisers know when I hit the jackpot.

The man who has generated all of this excitement is Charlie Farrelly of the Castleisland Race Committee. “The Castleisland Races took place last weekend and we always have a sideshow every year and this year, this is it,” he laughs. “I’d seen it once in Meath before and I’ve been trying to organise it here ever since but every year, I was told that I couldn’t. We held our bingo in the community centre instead. When the centre wasn’t available this year, the committee couldn’t say no to me again!”

Charlie is very pleased with the success of his unusual idea and he hopes to make it an annual event. “It’s exceeded our expectations,” he says. “I think we’ll have to do it again.”

Two others who hope the bingo will become a regular event are Maria and Marguerite Brosnan from Cordal. A mother and daughter out for the day like my mother and I, and parked a few cars down from us, they are enjoying the day out.

“We rarely play bingo,” says mum Maria. “We only play it when we go to England on our holidays, which would be once a year or so. But it’s great here today. Marguerite has already won €25. There’s a great sense of excitement and we’d definitely come again.”

By this stage, we’ve played seven out of 10 games and it’s time to play for the jackpot. My mother and I have yet to win anything and we both feel that our luck might finally be about to strike.

My pulse quickens as Ned calls out the numbers. Many of them are converging in one of my boxes. Maybe — just maybe — I might be on a winning streak.

18 — tick. 84 — tick. 39 — tick. It carries on like this until only one number remains. Come on, 22! Win €1,000 for me.

I was waiting for so long it seemed as though I had to win. I thought 22 was bound to be the next number drawn. But before that could happen, Margaret Murphy from the Tralee Road in Castleisland had sounded her car horn and stolen the prize from right under my nose.

Bitterly disappointed, my mother and I play on, hoping to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Unfortunately, our run of no luck continues and we go home empty-handed.

Looking back on it, perhaps it was for the best. Maybe my bingo days belong firmly in the past. Had I won, I might have turned into one of those hard-core bingo players my mother is so frightened of. I might even have stared to speak in bingo lingo.

Perhaps I had a narrow escape. But then again, I might also have won lots of money. The next time a drive-in monster bingo game is held in Castleisland, I may be tempted to go. Such is the lure of the jackpot.