A Triumphant Loser

Wednesday 27th April 2010, 2am, Ratu Kini Resort - Mana Island

Since the beginning of our travels together, Ella and I have been teaching and learning a multitude of different drinking games to and from other travellers. For the uninitiated I will explain the premise of a drinking game. Usually involving a deck of cards, or a list of improvised rules, a party trick or a series of bets and dares, a drinking game involves a group of people sat around a table playing competitively in one forum or another to get each other drunk as quickly as possible. It's like sport, but fun, and bad for your liver.

In these games, drinking a large swig of the alcoholic beverage in front of you is always considered punishment, or forfeit, for losing at the chosen game. My favourites to play are ones that rely on dynamic vocabulary, quick wit or good short term memory - I never get drunk when the stakes depend on these variables. Card games, number problems, coordination, fast reaction time, physical challenges however, in games of this ilk it's pretty certain that I'll end up trollied. There is one particular drinking game that I detest, my ineptitude for it meaning that I will always be the first in the group to be slurring my words and slipping my elbow off the edge of the table. An empty glass is placed in the middle of the competitors, each takes it in turns to hold a coin flat between thumb and forefinger and then bounce this coin on it's flat surface off of the table, and hopefully, into the glass.

Ella is phenomenally fantastic at this game; hence why we seem to play it quite a lot. She just has an unnerving knack for it, she can do it time and time again, I've seen her get coins in Pringle boxes before - that's practically Olympian. I, well, I'm shit at it aren't I. Every time I bounce the coin and it flies off the table, or hits someone in the eye, or refuses to bounce at all and just falls flat on the surface like a dead weight, I have to take another gulp of my chosen tipple, and so inevitably my aptitude for this sporting event becomes more and more impeded by inebriation.

A wonderful thing happened tonight. On this Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning, this last night that Ella and I will spend together, I, Grace 'Not Very Good At Things' Gillman, for the first time in 5 months of playing this damn game, got the coin in the glass. It was a very special moment. Our other players had all been briefed about my coin game failings, and along with Ella and I were all vocal in their moral support, willing me to concentrate and achieve this feat which has for so long eluded me. After seeing off two rum and cokes and a glass of white wine that tasted like mouldy vinegar, I finally bounced that coin where it was meant to go, and the celebration at the table was raucous.

We all leapt in the air and cheered, clapped, high-fived and hugged each other like I'd just won the last lap of a team relay at the Commonwealth Games. Everyone was delighted for me that I'd managed to mark the occasion of mine and Ella's "Last Supper" by finally conquering this stupid game. After the jubilation died down other people chose to sacrifice their turns for me, because they said they wanted to see the same look of shock and joy on my face once more. If only there had been a camera in attendance, I probably looked like I'd just won the lottery. But I couldn't replicate it, it was obviously a one-off achievement. No matter, my instant return to Coin Game sloppiness did not darken that moment for me, hearing that 10 cents piece clink in the glass was made all the more sweeter by 5 months of losing. Being good at everything, effortlessly, all the time, well that's no fun, you'd come to expect so much of yourself! Being truly terrible at things, and overcoming them through camaraderie and perseverance, hearing the crowd cheer the underdog, now that's what triumph feels like.