Aikido Expressed : 2 vs 30.

Crown and Anchor, Activating Aikido.

Quite some time ago, like over decades ago, my best mate Tim and I decided to have some fun out in Adelaide as we was both on holidays from working full time, had plenty of ready cash and an itch to have some party hard fun times.

We arrived at the Cranker on Grenfell st around about 11 am and had both parked our cars previously in Light Square, thence walked to the Cranker. At that time Tim and I were both playing competitive A grade 8 ball in our local competitions, and also actively practiced 8 ball roughly three times a week, and frankly we were quite fucking good at 8 ball singly, because that’s how comp is played singles. But together, as a doubles team, we were in fact just about unbeatable, like so skill filled as a team that even those players who played “above” us in the superleague singles if they run up against Tim and I in our synergistic state, like we was so enthused together even those guys/girls who singly could beat us, well as a team, nope just never happened! Like truly never happened!

So we are calm happy and sober as we start our domination of the days 8 ball fun and games! Our first victim was the Head Chef of the Cranker who had already done all his lunch time preparation and had time to spare before the lunch time crowd arrived. And Chef offered to play us for drinks, the terminology is “corners drinks”, meaning that each player/team would put up two drinks as their stake and the challenging player/team would also pay the $2 per game just to open proceedings.

This chef being in with the Cranker had nothing to loose, because he was freely offered the $2 by his mate the bar tender as stake, and we also discovered that when Chef lost, the bar tender would in fact just give us the drinks and Chef didn’t even have to pay a cent. So win win win all round Timmy and I thought/felt.

Chef had his fun prior to his lunch time shift, and had Given Tim and I 3 double bourbon and cokes each for his lost matches… and Tim and I watched the lunch timers come in, eat, drink, do their thing and Chef vanished and some of the lunch timers wanted to play us. Ok lunch timers we said, we are playing corners, the house rules are challenge table, and the rules of this table and our matches is called “World Open Rules” and we happily invested time in explaining the particulars of those rules to whomever asked. In fact occasionally we would see an opponent about to make an error of judgement and one of us would speak up and say, hey mate if you’re going to do what it looks like your going to try to do, you’ll probably break this rule that you don’t know about and it’ll cost you a foul shot. So we anticipated our opponents needs and accepted they was not Comp players and we levelled them all up, nice and friendly like and just totally dominated that table for about 8 hours straight! Not once did we loose.

And everyone paid for their drinks they agreed to stake and all was Grand and Fabulous. We were in the Focused Spirit of Peak Performance, in 8 ball! Truly a wonderful feeling, to practice diligently and then to reap the rewards of that practice.

Somewhere along the line we decided we’d had enough of thrashing people at the cranker and that we would seek out a better pool hall and see what happened. Exciting hey?

We headed over to a pool hall next to the Austral on Rundle Street, walked up the stairs and into a proper pool hall, that actually didn’t have many busy tables, maybe 25% of all tables being played on, but that’s still quite a lot of tables playing, relative to the crown and anchor which only had two tables.

We of course bought our first drinks, paid for a table got all the gear together and sent out feelings to other people playing that we was interested in some table action. A couple of nice girls that were truly woeful players kept Tim and me interested as they lost their games and we chatted a bit and said, no need to buy us drinks we just have some fun and teach you a bit if you like. That was cool for a while, everyone happy etc.

A group of 4 “wogs” came over and expressed interest in a corners game and we gladly accepted and thrashed them so easily they seemed a bit upset. They paid for their drinks they’d agreed to stake and Tim and I said, hey you guys are cool come back when you want another, thanks for the drinks. Two of the guys came back a short time later, maybe 30 min and they had been “practicing” on their own table and we’d kept an eye on them across the room, whilst reengaging with the original two girls. One of the two seemed hard set and said, “how about we play for $10 corners?” which was essentially a doubling of the stakes.

Hey cool, that’s a great idea Tim and I said, for they hadn’t even seen our best game yet and we’d already easily defeated them, so it was going to be an easy $10 each we felt/thought… and yep it truly was! Just as easily as the first time we won the game and was friendly and open.

Well that hard set guy said, “we aint paying you are fucking hustlers ripping people off!” and the other guy come over to me and said “my mate is really annoyed you better watch out, and I agree with him and I’m not going to give you the $10!”

The hard set guy and Tim amped each other right on up with verbal argument.

My “opponent” said, “look I’ll buy you a drink, but I aint paying that $10.” as we walked over to the bar, because I was going to buy myself a drink and just felt like movement was the thing to do. I said to this chap who followed me over to the bar speaking AT me… “Nah mate, the agreement was $10 corners and if you only want to buy me a drink, then you’ve broken our agreement and I don’t even want a drink from you. You’ll have to live with that.”

The dude showed me he was considering that, but turned and walked away.

Meanwhile Tim and the other guy are still arguing and ramping each other right on up… until that gentleman literally took his pool cue and swung it rapidly at Tim’s head from about 1.5 metres away. For me I saw that happen perfectly, yeh, I was watching their confrontation entirely and saw that Tim was “just” talking to this guy and that one second everything was just verbal, and the next second, Tim has raised his hand to block the incoming pool cue and as casually as can be had disarmed the other without even touching the other. Like the dude swung at Tim with that cue, Tim blocked it with just his right arm/hand, pulled the cue stick away and was now holding the cue – in our standard resting position! It was so fast it appeared slow! Like a blink that took 5 minutes. Totally weird and utterly amazing.

So Tim now leans forward to about 1.4 metres away, holding that cue and offers the cue stick back to the violent dude and Tim says this… “Here’s your cue back, do you want to try that again.” I fucking smiled in amazement at Tims restraint and comment and started walking over to their position.

The dude grabbed the cue and threw it across the room towards his own other mates who scattered as it flew nearby them and this guy just went absolutely apeshit! Swearing, shouting, pointing, this and that and Tim and I are next to each other now and we are easy going, but ready to take on four strangers, in this 8 ball hall and risk our very lives just by not running away!

The bar tender who I bought the latest drink off, shouts out “Cut that crap out and get out of here you fucking idiot!” And the four guys cluster up and walk out very loudly.

Some few seconds after they are gone the same bartender says, “Yeh I saw that was going to happen, you’ve done well avoiding that fight, but I’d like you to leave just so no one else gets angry with you.”

Laugh out bloody loud! So we scull down our drinks, say to the bartender “no worries mate, thanks for being cool, we are out of here.” and we head back to the crown and anchor, wait our turn and begin redominating our table we’d decided we wanted to “own” and play challenge corners on. For about another maybe 3-4 hours, maybe just 1, I am unsure, but we kept playing for drinks and kept winning and everyone else was happy and cool.

Then after I’ve been to the toilet Tim comes up to be absolutely charged as, and says “Those 4 wogs are back here, just said sorry, bought me a drink and asked me if we want to play again.”

I noted that Tim didn’t actually have a drink in his hand, which told me Tim had already drunk that drink. My alarm bells started going off and I said, “no fucking way Tim, something is up, lets just stick to our table here at the cranker, the goings all good here right now.” Something like that.

Tim was even more amped up, but keen to play and literally walked out with those four guys, whilst I followed Him saying, “this aint right something bad gonna happen, lets stay at the cranker.” Tim just kept walking with those guys, about 2 metres behind them and like seemed to not even hear what I was saying, he was fixated on just following these guys. We walked down frome road, and got to the Italian restaurant on the corner of rundle st and frome road and 3 of those guys stood next to tim and one of them went inside. I poked my head into the restaurant and noted there wasn’t even a pool table there.

“I said, hey guys there’s no pool table here, Tim lets leave and head back to the cranker.”

About 5 seconds later maybe, a swarm of “wogs” bursts out of the massive 4 double doors and there is so many of them it’s like a mosh pit just started and appeared right there in front of us. Truly a wave of males just oozed out and surrounded us. Most of them went over to Tim’s “group” and about 3-5 came over to me. They stood at about the 30 cm distance from me and literally just stood there looking me in the eye and showing resolution that they were ready to get physical. I stood there and calmly kept looking at what was happening to Tim. I did not once meet any of their eyes, instead kept looking over or past them, or over my own shoulders, my head turning left and right assessing threats. One of the guys near me said, “He’s alright. Let him be.” And those 3-5 guys left me alone, turned their backs on me and added themselves to Tims “group”. I was relieved somewhat, and was only a step behind those guys as the entire group of, I suppose, 30 italian looking males, intimidated Tim into leaving the lights of the restaurant entrance and over into the alley way that was dark, smelly and isolated.

And my good mate Tim didn’t even really recognise what was happening, because he was in argumentative mode and thinking he could out argue these guys verbally.

I was amongst their crowd and no body was looking at me at all, everyone was watching Tim. One man walked up to Tim and squarely punched him in the jaw, and tim went down like a sack of shit. His blue arnet sun glasses flew off his head, dropped near to his slumped body, and even as tim was falling I was already gently pushing my way through the crowd to reach Tim. I helped Tim “bounce” back up and grabbed his sunnies all in the same motion, put my hands on Tim and just started pushing him out of the alley way, back onto the foot path of frome road, and kept physically pushing/directing him to head south along frome road… and all the while Tim was shouting and swearing at these gentlemen, so loud it hurt my ears, because I had to be so close to him just to apply pressure to get him to keep backing away south along frome road.

“Fucking wogs, I’ll kill the lot of you”, etc, truly Tim was now utterly livid and seemed to not even notice I was pushing him to safety away from these 30 guys who I believe/feel truly would have been happy beating him to death in that alley way. Tim was both falling over backwards with each gentle push I gave him, that my pushes were causing him to fall away from his balance, taking steps backwards to recover his balance and that was causing him to reverse walk away from the scene. Like truly I reckon if I hadn’t actually been pushing Tim in this manner, pushing him backwards off balance, then he would in fact have been walking back towards that scene. Tim even somewhat resisted my gentle pushes, but he was both so angry and so weak that my gentlest of pushes was overpowering his direction. Was really weird, and easily recallable.

We survived and Tim still does not recall being hit at all.

copyright 2021 David Jarvis.

Peace to All.

My wife and I have under taken cyber security probes of the software that controls the donation process, seems quite safe, for even knowing of the transaction via email and receiving the money, I could not geolocate my own wife’s donation_place via a banking system. Seems pretty decent.