The numbers game

Indu and I went to Elena's yoga class which was held at the Croatia Deakin Soccer Club.

Walking into the huge function hall and seeing the hundreds of padded vinyl seats, laminate topped round tables and the stage took me back to my days at university, when I worked at the Hellenic Club.

We had the the yoga class on mats laid out on the dance floor.

I remembered the weddings and the dances at the Hellenic when up to 500 guests would be crammed in for a Greek wedding. At the end of the dinner, fuelled with whisky and Retsina wine, the guests would dance in a circle, their arms around each other's shoulders, feet moving forward, then a step back, a kick to the right, then left, bodies swaying side to to side, doing the moves of Zorba the Greek dance and the man leading would wave a handkerchief in the air.

We finished yoga and sat down for a chat right near the poker machines, called the pokies in Australia. Gambling is a huge problem in this country.

At the Hellenic Club we had our regular 'one armed bandits' as the pokies patrons were referred to. They would be positioned on a stool in front of their machine of choice, feeding coins into the slots and play for hours, their kids hovering around playing their own games. In those days each move on the machine, would require pulling a handle down, hence the term one armed bandits. Nowadays money spent on the machine goes down the drain a lot faster as all it takes for each spin of the cards or numbers is the press of a button.