Although I was then a reasonable pool player, back then in the early eighties, any table bigger than the standard six by three had me struggling. Although I enjoyed watching the sport occasionally on TV from the comfort of the armchair, if I was ever challenged to the great sea of green baize, in reality I was an embarrassment to myself and to anyone who partnered me.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing the game; it was just that I wasn’t very good at it. The standard size of a snooker or billiard table is four times the size of its miniature counterpart, pool. Therefore, with these vast distances involved, 4 times the likelihood of error.

I would sometimes meet my dear friend and brother-in-law, Mick, at his local club and if the snooker table upstairs was free, we’d take on his two mates, Pete and Dud (alas not of the Cook and Moore fame, I hasten to add) for a game of doubles.

Such was the case one particular sunny lunchtime, back in eighty two, if my memory serves me well.

Originally, we hadn’t planned to play snooker at all; it was following a very late night of partying and was more a case of the cure of the “hair of the dog” for us than anything else. Added to this, I was developing a nasty head-cold as my streaming nose would have testified!

It was thus as we were half way through our first pint of Guinness that Pete and Dud wandered up to our table and threw down the gauntlet for a game. I wasn’t in the mood but after a bit of arm-twisting, I found myself reluctantly climbing the wooden stairs to the snooker room. Mick and I versus Pete and Dud.

Having not been present at the previous night’s frolicking, our opponents were at a definite advantage as was clearly in evidence on the scoreboard within the first fifteen minutes of play. We were trailing by something like 2 points to 32 and playing abysmally, especially me.

Now, a brief mention of the rules of snooker for the uninitiated: There are 22 balls in total; 15 red worth 1 point each and six colored: black (worth 6 points), pink (5 points), blue (4 points), green (3 points), brown (2 points) and yellow (2 points). Oh, and a white cue ball.

The object is to “pot” a red followed by a colored ball which, unlike the reds, are replaced on the table, followed by another red and so on. Once all of the reds have been potted you then have to permanently pot the colored balls in order of value, finishing, of course, with the black. Is that clear? Good.

A clear lead of thirty odd points would be difficult to overcome even by professional standards. On this level Mick and I were facing a sure and inevitable defeat, not that I cared. With only two points scored by a pathetic and probably accidental sinking of two reds, Mick and I were hopelessly behind our two friends’ thirty point lead.

It was time for another round of drinks so Mick and Dud elected to go downstairs to the bar.

It was during this absence that something rather strange and very inexplicable occurred…

To be continued.