Brother Mick...

With my impending but now delayed semi-retirement from playing competitive pool, I was toying with the idea of framing my county shirt as a little trophy-cum-reminder to make me smile in my dotage. This reminded me that somewhere at my mum's house in Yorkshire I also had a very old county shirt from my days playing for the Humberside County Pool Team in the mid-1980s.

I'd kept this shirt in pristine condition for many years until older brother Mick ending up using it to do some painting in, then ended up wearing it to a house party at my cousin's house. The house party was going great guns until pissed brother got pushed into a plate-glass window elbow-first. So it was goodbye blood-covered county shirt as older brother was driven to casualty to get his arm sorted.

This was a very serious injury and it took a few major operations to piece his arm back together and get it fully working again. Thankfully the surgeons did an excellent job. However they did have to lose some of his elbow skin as it was lacerated thanks to the plate-glass window and they had to graft some skin from his buttocks to replace what was missing.

I was thinking about this and I suddenly realised that, quite literally, my older brother does not know his arse from his elbow. Fact. It may explain a lot...