The Thursday Murder Club (2025)

 

Fucked Around and Found Out: 76-100

Opponent: Computer Level 9

Date Started: 19th August 2025

Date Finished: 30th August 2025

A totally deserved hammering . . . well, sort of. 

I started to get the itch that my Dartitis might crop up again, so my (new) way of dealing with it is to just switch darts   . . . any darts. It doesn't matter. Anything to get you to stop me overthinking things, and to just feel a set barrel. 

That meant that during the course of this one-sided match, I must have changed my darts at least four or five times. Back and forth, forth and back. Funnily enough, a couple of the sets of darts that I opted for I'd tried to flog ages ago and they turned out to be okay in their own fashion. I even scored some 180s with them both. Will either of them become 'match' darts. It's too soon to say.

Midnight special

First ever 180 with the Designa Elite 95 V2 darts. I've had them for years, tried - and failed - to sell them years ago, and they've been lying around ever since. Picked them up - and others - 'cos I thought I could feel the Dartitis recurring again, and I thought if I just threw different darts it might help counteract that. I was wondering if they could work as my match darts but they might be a bit too thin, and susceptible to variations in flight when throwing them in a bar setting.

171/50

Near perfection . . .

I actually consider this attempted sequence to be the peak/ultimate/most elusive (delete as appropriate) 9-dart combination. I wrote words to that effect 4 and a half years ago on a Darts forum.

Gutted that they missed it. Hopefully this clip goes viral, and someone else will attempt it.

I better mention the players names in the post itself. Videos from YouTube have a tendency to go awol after a couple of years. Step forward Sweden's Anton Östlund and Andreas Harrysson.

Put down your my phone . . .

A nice day out

Messing around with other darts that I haven't used for a while and I hit a 180 with these Harrow Graflites. It's a pleasant surprise but I'm under no illusions that these could be future go-to-darts. Not grippy enough for me.

170/50

Addendum:

I've only hit one 180 with these darts before, and that was back in November 2021.

Owning Up by George P. Pelecanos (Mulholland Books 2024)

 

Afterward, Caruso stood and spoke on behalf of his son. What he said had been carefully written and rehearsed, but it was from the heart. A young male lawyer in the gallery was smiling at Caruso as he spoke, as if something was funny. Caruso’s blood jumped, he wanted to slap the smile off that cunt’s face, but he got through the speech, which was really a plea for mercy.

[From the novella, 'The No-Knock'.]

Always something there to rebound on me . . .

 Posted November 3rd, 9.57 AM.

See what I mean about different darts and false dawns? Two 180s within six minutes. Of course, I was going to start dreaming 'Could these be the ones?' I've lost count of the number of times that I've had this wee dream floating through my brain.

Always fall for it. Always fucks up. Always come crawling back to the blog to moan about it.

169/50

Misfire(scars)

Posted November 3rd, 9.45 AM.

Back in mid-August I took to digging out old darts lying around the apartment to throw at the board. I'm not really sure why. The Fall season was a few weeks away, and I was keeping my hand in with practice here and there. Was I getting a twitch of Dartitis? It's always a twitch away, tbh, and I think one of the contributory factors is that I get too comfortable, too lazy with my set up, my darts, etc, etc. Maybe picking up these old darts was one way of dealing with it? 

If I was picking them up in the hope that old darts could become new darts, I was seriously mistaken. I scored a couple of 180s with these Firescars but it was another false dawn. I thought these might work for me, took them along to a Luck of the Draw at a local bar, and I discovered that the humidity of the bar really messed with my ability to properly hold my darts. My grip went to pot, and I made the mistake of not having a spare set to hand. Lesson learned.

168/50

I like this

Just found  . . . just posted.

I'm glad I got those guffaws in early . . .

A bit grim, innit?

Oh, to have a Paddy McCourt on the bench right now.

I'm not going anywhere near Pie & Bovril right now. I bet we're (deservedly) getting slaughtered on the boards right now.

The Wheel of Misfortune

May as well continue to get my guffaws in before Celtic fuck it up tonight against a team I'd never previously heard of.

Also nicked from Pie & Bovril.

Club Boos v Club Brugge

Tonight, Matthew, I will mostly be stealing from Pie & Bovril.

If you know, you know.

84-100 should actually read as 84/468 (17%)

Opponent: Computer Level 9

Date Started: 24th July 2025

Date Finished: 19th August 2025

If I don't start practicing my doubles, I am going to get battered again and again.

Half-asleep

One of those first thing in the morning, half-asleep, waiting for the kettle to boil 180s. It was so dark outside - and in the apartment - that the flash in the phone had to kick in. Always nice to get a 180 so early in the day, always annoying to know that it's a false dawn and you'll be hitting 26s and 41s for the rest of the day.

167/50

Also interesting to note that this 180 was with the Target Carreras. I honestly don't know what darts to use right now. My throw - or more the case, my holding of the dart - is really off at the moment.

Zapruder at the darts

Back on Target  . . . or, rather, back on the Targets. Sorry. I'm babbling at this point.

A 180 that was so awkward in its completion that I had to take the picture from Canada.

166/50

Just be thankful for what you've got . . .

A 180 that came via a cricket game on the Russ Bray App. I know it sounds totally ungrateful but I always feel a '180' during a cricket game is a lesser 180. I deserve a kick in the bollocks for that mindset. 

165/50

A 180 with my old One80s.

Posted November 3rd, 10.14 AM.

See other dart related posts from August. Me trying to stave off Dartitis - or boredom . . . both work . . . by picking up old darts. I'd totally forgotten I'd scored a 180 with these One80 Rebel set. Totally forgotten I'd even picked them up in August. I bought these off Amazon back in 2020 for about $24. They were unnamed, probably surplus stock they wanted to get rid of but they are definitely One80 Rebels. Found them on a Darts website. Now selling for $90 . . . ninety fucking dollars! The days of cheap darts are long gone. I better suck it up and get used to my Designa Dark Thunders (which are now double price I bought them for back in 2020/21).

I'm sure this isn't my first 180 with these darts but I'd have to do a deep dive into the archives of the blog to locate the other ones.

164/50

Daily Sketches: A Cartoon History of British Twentieth Century Politics by Martin Walker (Paladin Books 1978)

 

Bernard Partridge

Punch, January 29, 1908.

Partridge was. the heir to Tenniel in Punch’s pages, and by this time Punch’s cartoons carried all the authority of a statement from His Majesty’s Government (or at least so one German Ambassador told Berlin). There is an elegant ambiguity about this cartoon — the attacked capitalist is not sympathetically drawn, but neither is that sly grin on Keir Hardie’s face. It is not clear which side Partridge is taking. But the dog’s ferocity, and its French jacobin hat (a cartoon symbol of subversive foreign ideologies since French revolutionary days) show that Partridge was worried. The Leitmotif of potential class war is clearly present. There is an interesting echo of a famous nineteenth-century Punch cartoon, featuring similar dogs, and titled ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’. Partridge would have been familiar with it.

A Dartist reflects . . .

I'm completely out of sorts with the darts at the moment. Some kind of funk has popped up where I'm not really enjoying throwing right now. I think it might be the weather, the season. I've noticed that in recent years I seem to dip when it comes to the darts in the summer months. The dartitis is thankfully on hiatus right now but it's always in the back of my mind, and part of me thinks it comes in waves  . . . and a big wave is possibly on the horizon.

Anyway, that's enough moaning for now. This is my 163rd 180 of 2025. The 180s have fallen off in the last couple of months, so it'll be interesting to see if there'll be an upswing in form when Fall (that's Autumn to my British reader) comes around again.

163/50

The Guard (2011)

 

185 - 180 = 5

And, yes, dear reader, I did lose the leg. 

Was it worth it? Of course. There will be other legs.

162/50

T20-T13-D16 = 131

Okay, it's not my highest checkout but it is pretty cool all the same.

A dry spell broken

It's been about three weeks since my last 180. Admittedly, I've not been playing as much but that is the biggest gap between 180s for the longest time. I'm not sure what's happened. My form definitely dips in the summer months. I've noticed that in years past but I thought it might be different this year.

Anyway, think of the positives. This was another 180 in a Brooklyn Bar. A new - for me - Brooklyn Bar. I need to try and tot up how many bars that is now where I've hit a 180. Maybe 7 or 8? Is this the darting equivalent of John Cheever's The Swimmer or am I just being a pretentious prick? Obviously PP. Always PP.

161/50

It was during a warm up for a Luck of the Draw event . . . once proper play started, I was all out of luck.