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80-mile round trip just to play bingo
THE NUMBER’S up for the builders battling to win the tender to redevelop the town centre – they have failed to include a bingo hall. And that means that one party of pensioners, who currently have to embark on a marathon 80-mile round trip to enjoy a game of housey-housey, are on their case.
“We are not happy,” said Barbara Pearson, 70 – “three score and ten” – who won a £649 jackpot only earlier this year. “We thought they would include somewhere for us”. The bingo-mates used to frequent The Picturedrome former cinema on Chestergate along with hundreds of other fans until its closure six years ago.
But since then there have been no plans to replace it. Barbara, a former care home worker, of Cumberland Street, Macclesfield said: “We would all love to see a new hall and just presumed there would be one in the new plans. “When the old one was going it was packed – but now we have nowhere good to play in town. “A petition went around a couple of years ago – but that came to nothing.”
The ladies now have to get lifts via noble husbands all the way to Didsbury to play at the multiplex there. It is an 80-mile round trip including diversions to pick up people. There are no free buses to get there and public transport takes too long.
Mum-of-two Barbara is disappointed by the local facilities on offer and yearns for a huge arena for Maxonians to take their chances for big cash prizes. She said: “There are places to go locally such as the Liberal Club and Broken Cross but the prizes aren’t really worth going along for. At the Liberal Club there is a £2 voucher for a line and at Broken Cross it’s £3 a line and £7 a house.
“If you win more than twice in one night they look at you like you’ve got two heads.” The difference in potential prize money is immense when compared to the multiplex bingo hall at Didsbury. “Depending on the day there is a £100 or £1,000 house and when there is a national link up there is an estimated jackpot of £10,000.
“There are a lot of young ones who go as bingo has become quite fashionable at the moment,” said Barbara. Clive Perrin, a spokesman from one of the developers, HBG, said: “It is a possibility. It is something we would look at again inthe fulness of time.
THE NUMBER’S up for the builders battling to win the tender to redevelop the town centre – they have failed to include a bingo hall.
Source: Go Bingo News
August 14 2005
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