MonoMonday Challenge #44 .....Distant .....

 .......... the '' distant '' past.

I'm sure there will be quite a lot of these photos-of-photos entries for this week's challenge - and lots of great memories connected to them.

With the big TV focus (in the UK) this past week on darts I thought this was doubly appropriate (and congratulations to Scottie Mitchell on becoming the World Champion - very well deserved - he played magnificently to get to the final).

This photo is from 1978 .... at The Raglan Hall Hotel, North London ... the lead up to the Guinness Golden Darts Tournament which featured international players from around the world.

This is me with Nicky Virachkul - he was born in Thailand but took American citizenship and represented the USA at international level for a number of years. As his guest I was able to participate in the tours that were laid on for the dart players and had access to the behind-the-scenes areas during the tournament.  I still have the beautiful engraved glass tankard that was presented to him which he, in turn, gave to me.

We met the previous year at a competition where we teamed up to play in the mixed doubles (we got to the last four) and I had the honour and privilege of becoming one of his close friends - we played in a few more competitions together whenever he was in the UK.   He was always smiling and was one of the nicest guys you could wish to meet - he used to wear a tie decorated with smilies and became known as The Happy Thai!!!
He returned to Thailand, from California, when he was diagnosed with cancer and very sadly died  in 1999 at the age of 50.

Thanks Skeena for hosting the challenge again this week.

Thanks also to everyone who commented and starred my big sky yesterday
 :-))



~ Anni ~


Smile of the Day

I fancied a game of darts with my friend.
He said:  '' Nearest the bull goes first ''
He went:  '' baaaaa ''
I went:   '' moooo ''
He said:  '' You're closest! ''

:-))