Skittles

Last Tuesday I attended a pub night with my host Rotary Club.  A little ways out from Bristol, we met at a pub that had a skittles alley.  If you're not sure what I'm talking about see definition.  Sounds like it should be a lot like ten pin bowling right?  Well, its not really.  The scale is completely different and though I'm not a great bowler, after trying both I think it really takes much more skill to play skittles.  Just in case you ever find yourself in an English pub getting ready to play, I'll enlighten you to some of the "tricks," literally from the ground up.  Beware the skittles alley.  It's slanted... purposely and not visible to the naked eye.  Arched in the middle making the task of aligning the ball with the pins decidedly more difficult.  Then take the skittles, aka pins, themselves.  They are shorter than bowling pins.  Their shape with the bulging part in the middle make them harder to hit with the wooden ball, which is deceptively heavy and is just the right size to pass directly through the skittles formation without touching a single pin.  Still its a fun game and because it takes considerable skill or great luck to play well, there's little danger of anyone taking the idea of competition too seriously.  

skittle |ˈskitl|noun
1 ( skittles) [treated as sing. ] a game played, chiefly in Britain, with wooden pins, typically nine in number, set up at the end of an alley to be bowled down with a wooden ball or disk.
2 a pin used in the game of skittles.

Just, Margaret