RANDOM AT LARGE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 21

RANDOM AT LARGE

EYES DOWN, LOOKING!

It is a very long time since we have heard lascivious references to Lucy’s legs, but there is no mistaking the importance of her place in the scheme of things on board ship. What we used to know as housie or tombola, now bingo, in deference to English tradition, provides one of the most popular forms of entertainment in what is really a programme of non-stop variety. The calling of the numbers, for the newcomer to the game, provides a quite fascinating study. Who was the Kelly who gave his one

eye to the game as number one? Was there really a one-eyed Kelly somewhere in nautical history? If not, why pick on the Kelly family to be perpetuated in this strange fashion? The naming of numbers covers a considerable amount of ground Kelly, perhaps, from marine mythology, and with him bits of rhyming slang (friends ashore, number four; snakes alive, number five), imagery (duck on a lake number two, two ducks, etc., 22), a peep at coy adolescence (never been kissed, 16; key of the door, 21), superstition (unlucky for some, 13), bingo

phonetics (clickety-clicks, 66), hints of the nursery (pick up sticks, number six), services’ medicine (doctor’s orders, number nine), and the more easily followed and obvious calls such as half-way (45), one dozen (12), all the threes (33), etc. But how did number 10 become “sailor’s breakfast?” But the derivations of the calling system are not really of much moment to most of the participants. One woman, winning successive games, collected about $lOO. A little more luck like that, and she will have her fare to Britain paid. A new form of “working the boats.”