Pool The Other One

Saturday was the Region Seven Tour. This is a series of eightball pool tournaments open to amateur players in London, Surrey, Berkshire, Sussex, Kent and Hampshire and I’ve played on it for the last four years with a modest degree of success. One of the main drawbacks to me doing better at these events (apart from the fact that there are a lot of very good players on the Tour and I’m sometimes quite rubbish) is my liking for a bit of a drink.

Because much as I like to compete and play well I also view these events as a chance to let loose and that’s pretty much what I did on Saturday when I got dumped out in the second round and decided to play nineball and support my pals for the rest of the day. This resulted in an early Sunday morning return from the wilds of Chatham Pool Club in Kent via the East End of London thanks to a lift with a friendly Guyanan.

The missus discovered me on the sofa the next morning covered in a makeshift duvet of cushions and, after an hour tending the garden and kicking the hell out of my punchbag and the hangover out of my head, I pretty much stayed there for the rest of the day. The one benefit of this, though, was that I got to watch a lot of the Glastonbury Festival.

At one time I would quite happily have gone camping at these events and enjoyed the vibe and bravely ignored the lack of home comforts like the need to poo in carrier bags if you’re too far from the loos. But now attending one of these events would just scare me. Too many young people and too much time away from my own bed.

A friend of the family once tried to recommend camping to my good lady wife and she said it wasn’t for her. But reading between the lines what she was really saying was:

‘If you think for a moment that I am sleeping under canvas on an inflatable mattress in the wilds of nowheresville with a bunch of outdoor types and nut-munching hippies for neighbours then I’m afraid you’ve got another thing coming. It has to be four star, it has to have room service and it has to have a wide selection of basic amenities like pleasant restaurants, a theatre, a cinema and a swimming pool. In fact if it has none of those things then you can stick your tent pegs right up your...’

And these days I am inclined to agree. I’ll quite happily get the Glastonbury Festival experience from the telly these days. Or if not I’ll just get the boy to charge me £120, spray me in mud, not give me access to the toilets and sell me bowls of noodles for £10 a time while he puts Basement Jaxx on the CD player and waves the case around from the other end of the room so I can’t see the band.