For those involved in any cue sports, John Parris is well-known. For those not involved in cue sports, John Parris is the world's leading cue maker and he makes snooker cues for Ronnie O'Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, John Higgins and a host of other top players. And me.
For a cue geek like me, visiting John's shop remains a bit of a treat. It's quite a small shop with racks of cues lining the walls, and it has a workshop out the back at the side of the shop. It's an unassuming oasis of absolute craftsmanship in a quiet London suburb. I can spend a decent amount of time in there just looking at the cues he has for sale and admiring how excellent they are.
My cue re-tipped and my ferrule checked out, I returned home and was having a polish of my cue in my office. I also have a few collectible cues, so I was having a bit of a cue polish and sort-out in general. I'm always worried that my tip will fly off is the cue has been re-tipped, so I was working out which other cue to take to my match the following night just in case this happened. Just to put this madness into perspective, a re-tipped cue losing its tip has happened once in my life. But the memory and the fear remains.
The Missus entered my office, looked at what I was doing, asked me if I was a 'cue wank', then left.
She was right. I probably was.
No comments:
Post a Comment