First time in a bookies in well over a decade>>>>>>

And a real eye opener to finally see what has been talked about on here. The shop was a Laddies and tiny, probably the smallest I have ever been in thar wasn't an independent. I had an hour to kill so wandered in just to see what had changed over the years.

The first thing that struck me was the FOBT's i had read so much about, they looked over 2.5m in height with three screens, 4 out of the 5 being occupied, one guy shouted to the manager to turn off the one he was playing 4 times in about 20 minutes whilst he disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a wad of notes which he then fed into the same machine.

The screens were constantly showing betting shows from numerous meetings I had never heard of and assumed were virtual meetings but Bendigo turned out to be dogs in I assume Australia, 8 dog races? There was no respite from some form of action but only 2 punters actually betting. The actual horse racing had started but other than the 2 and 4 on the machines there were 2 others sitting at one of the 2 small tables just yapping.

I had £80 on Turenne at Catterick and got mugged on the line, then £180 on Doctors Hill @ 6/4, no bog, i asked the cashier if this could be paid back to my card and he looked at me as if he thought  might be senile and explained it is automatically returned to the card. That answered a question i have seen asked on here about payment.

An interesting hour but not sure I could have stood much longer with seemingly perpetual action of one form or another and continuous commentary making it difficult to concentrate on the RP cards in addition to the noise of the machines. It put some meat on the bone of things I have read on here about betting shops and i can see how reliant they must be on the FOBT's, even though this shop was in the city centre, opposite was a Paddies I did not go in.

I doubt either will be there for long if the gaming tax is raised, based on what I saw on a decent days racing on a Friday in the city centre, the machines were all that was keeping the Laddies open imo.