Cash-ino

Every visit up North means, sooner or later, a visit to The Spanish City, or as Oscar calls it, "the Cash-ino." (I grew up around the pool tables of The Spanish City...it's changed a lot, for starters, hardly any pool tables).

Basically I pay out about £10, it's converted into 2p pieces, Oscar pours them into various machines and every now and then tickets come out. These are then converted into a voucher. The voucher can be traded for prizes. With me so far?

Check this exchange rate out. My £10 converted to 244 points. Enough for 3 boxes of Fun Snaps and a few lollipops. You can win an iPad for 20,000 points. Go do the math.

Just to rub salt in, the machine that consumes my money has a soundtrack that goes, "yum, yum, yum."

But you know what, I wouldn't miss it for the world and as long as Oscar wants to go I will take him because he genuinely loves it.

Ps I did have some nice ones of Oscar facing me, but the "oh Dad, you've got your camera out again and I have to do stupid poses" is looking a bit hackneyed now.

Photobore Bit : Ooof, working in an amusement arcade is a nightmare light wise. White balance has kind of gone out of the window here. I used my SB 600 on TTL as I was getting huge overexposure on manual. Dropped the aperture down and cranked up the ISO. Still a wonderful and fun learning curve.