Kissing the Pink

Weekday family evenings are very different now.

We still prepare our dinner,  eat together, catch up on each other's day and watch a little bit of television but there is an undercurrent in the polite proceedings that suggests that an intense competitiveness is minutes away from erupting.

None of us want to make the first move.

It is a waiting game.

Then someone makes a tentative suggestion that we should push the sofa to the side of the room and manhandle the newly purchased  snooker table into a central position from its resting position behind the door from the living room to the hallway.

On a late summer break in a holiday cottage in Cornwall the games room was a regular haunt for the family, particularly if the morning was wet or dull but with the promise of better weather later on. We thought about using the folding ping-pong table but the prospect of strenous activity whilst on vacation, other than leisure walking, cycling and running away from the breakers on the beach was too much to contemplate.

The snooker table was an ideal proposition, a bit like golf, involving short periods of effort and concentration but technical enough to be exciting.

I was brought up watching the Pot Black snooker programme on the BBC, or at least was allowed to stay up late, after 10pm, when sleeping over at my grandparents bungalow. Although I can, when recalling the broadcasts see the full range of colours of the balls and the bright green baize of the table that was of course impossible as the 1970' was in the good old black and white TV era. There was some skill in the descriptive powers of the commentators in holding the attention of a viewing audience not otherwise able to differentiate any contrast in colours whatsoever.

One of my school friends of my teenage years had his own snooker table of which I was very envious although I laugh about that now because it was about 2 feet by 1 foot with cues the size of leaded pencils and balls about the same as those in a sixpenny worth of aniseed balls.

We did play for hours on that mini table even though there was no real challenge involved.

Snooker did dominate UK television for much of the 1980's and 1990's with some notable characters although known more for personality traits such as being totally boring, unable to read or regularly succumbing to the self destructive demons of drink and drugs.

There were snooker halls in most High Streets or back streets off but most parents would actively discourage their offspring from going anywhere near such establishments because of their perceived association with criminals, gangsters and the aforementioned duo of demons.

Pool was a compromise being more widely available in the back room of pubs, in the public areas at such venues as bowling alleys or as I found, in my late teens and early twenties in the student union. Claiming a game involved placing your stack of coins on the table edge and awaiting your turn. In a crowded and noisy environment, under the critical gaze of strangers it was difficult to concentrate or reach any level of consistency.

In later adult life there is little scope to take time out from work, family and life commitments to indulge in such activities and without any practice the fundamental aspects of the game are rapidly lost.

On confronting the holiday cottage snooker table we were initially at a loss about what to do.

Coastal Cornwall, or at least where we were, has a poor internet signal and so there was no resorting to Google to find out the setting out of the balls and their values when potted.

Each of us had an idea and could not agree on the order of colours or their location in relation to each other.

A compromise was cobbled together. Scoring produced a similar range of opinions. We all knew that the black ball was worth seven points and tried to work back through pink, blue, green, brown and yellow or whatever was the right progression after potting a red.

Our eventual system was based on one point per red and two and more up to seven for the colours.

A foul shot was minus one regardless of the colour and a missed turn.

All four of us would play in one game with me often as not being responsible and ultimately liable for keeping the scorecard.

Over the week of a very competitive running tournament, where the temporary absence of those in our party meant that a sneaky practice was under way, the best of us managed a top score of 27 and with an average bouncing about in the low single figures.

I found from in my very mediocre performances that just one successful shot, usually freakishly in, off and not as intended was enough to feel happy and fulfilled.

The first few days back home were strangely empty even though we were otherwise busy at work or study.

It was then that purely by chance my wife came across a snooker table in the furniture section of a local charity shop. It was second or more hand, a bit worn in places, incomplete in a full set of balls and with only one slightly warped cue. At £27 it was deemed a bargain especially as the Argos Catalogue had it brand new for £99.99. I picked it up later to be wedged into the back of the family estate car.

Folding out the legs and referring to a spirit level we could start to play again. We felt complete, a bit like finding a beloved pet after it had wandered off seemingly lost.

As I write, my wife and son are battling it out in a sort of stand-off around the snooker table. The overall standard of play across the family has improved a little and our average scores have crept up into the upper single figures.

We do have worries that a wayward shot may shatter the glass display cabinet or indent the decorative finish on the walls but that should reduce with more practice sessions.

It has become a regular activity on an evening or at the weekend and frankly, we cannot imagine what it would be like without the snooker table.