Recently I have been playing a lot of pool. I love the camaraderie, the banishment of worry, even the sound the balls make when they collide: I’m a clack addict.
Tracing back my addictions I wondered what was the first. Air, I realised, followed by milk – and like a fool I mixed them.
A couple of years ago I gave up smoking, and took up telling people I’d given up smoking, as an alternative addiction. Because you get buzz out of it: if you tell a friend you’ve given up they say well done, sometimes they’ll even pat you on the arm.
It feels good. But like a fag it wears off after about five minutes and you’ve got to find another friend. Pretty soon you’re running out of friends, then it’s just aquaintances – “I’ve given up smoking” “Who are you?” and all that.
It turned out I hadn’t given up smoking at all, I’d just taken up telling people I had. I was giving up between puffs.
I still smoke, but I cut down and stopped for two weeks with the aid of a simple device – the harmonica. Because you can’t have a habit vacuum – you need something to do with the hand and the mouth and the harmonica fills that gap. Suck in, blow out, instead of getting cancer get a note. Lovely.
The thing I have discovered is that harmonica players are actually less welcome than smokers in most restaurants. In Scotland it’s now illegal to smoke in bars. Not only that but they won’t let you take a drink into the tobacconists. Where’s it going to end – no javelin at the opera?
I’m not very good at pool – until the third game, for money. Not really. I’ve only played for money once: I was in a late night bar in Adelaide and, tired of talking, suggested to the bloke I was tired of talking to, a game of pool; he agreed, the table seemed abandoned so I put the coins in the slot and set up the balls.
It then transpired that it was winner stays on and the person I had to play was a half-Maori gang leader, and the surly bunch surrounding the table were his gang. I’m not a fighter – or a lover, my wife informs me – and I would have been unnerved if I’d been sober, but I wasn’t.
Unasked one of the gang shoved a bottle of beer in my hand; I already had one in the other hand so there was no need, and I was a little peeved – I may be an alcoholic but that doesn’t mean I wish to appear one. Then the leader slapped a fifty dollar note on the table.
“We play for money” he informed me. “Let’s double it” I said, trying to fit in. “Two hundred dollars!” exclaimed one of the bar staff as he walked past and spied the pile of notes. “Grab it and run” I advised him, but he didn’t and the game began.
I knew from the second shot I’d win; the gang leader spent all his energies trying to psychologically intimidate me and impress the onlookers – violent shots, dropping the cue so I’d have to pick it up, tossing the chalk; he wasn’t concentrating on the game and his psychological intimidation didn’t work on me because I had immunised myself with booze. It was easy.
When I won the leader handed me the money as if some great battle had come to an end. So I gave him his half back. He gave it to me again, more forcefully. I returned it. This carried on repeatedly as we moved to the exit – the bar was closing now – and finally he gave up trying to force me to take his money.
Going down the stairs the bloke I’d come in with said “Why didn’t you take the money mate?” but I couldn’t explain. I think I wanted to teach him a lesson. When I’d unchained my bike I looked up and there was the gang, not looking happy. I hopped on and wobbled off into the sunrise.
When we returned from Oz we stayed above the Rose & Crown for two weeks while searching for a home. The great thing about London if you’re looking for somewhere to live is that you’ve always got a choice: You can live in an over-priced hovel with no view, or you can sling your hook. We took option A, and I went looking for my local.
When I first moved to Stoke Newington fifteen years before, I moved in in the dark; the next day I was delighted to find my flat was midway between two pubs. Which to choose? Why not both? The first was shabby and worn and I loved it, the other was just run down and I was put off going there by a fragment of conversation I overheard in the beer garden: “…yeah but the best fun I ever had was when I killed this bloke with a breeze block…”. Nevertheless I did go there on mondays when my favoured pub had its quiz night. And that’s where I started playing pool. Once I played a man there with terrible shakes; I assumed I’d win easily- but he won because even though his shot was inaccurate, his strategy was superb: his game had compensated for his deficiency.
It’s good to have a plan, it’s good to have a back up. More than twenty-seven back ups and you’re over doing it. You improve by playing better players than you; conversely they get worse, so presumably it all evens up in the end. A good game is a conversation – “chess with balls” Rocky calls it, but that’s not quite right: in chess you always get another go, in pool it’s possible to clear the table without your opponent even getting a shot.
I’ve only done that once, on mescalin (somewhere between acid and mushrooms), I couldn’t put a foot wrong. The next game I couldn’t put a foot right. The cue had become a snake.
I love my new local. Often as I approach it the theme song from Cheers runs through my head with slight alterations: There’s a pub where you’d like to go where everybody knows your name – not your real name, that’s asking for trouble – and they’re always glad you came – not always: depends what happened the night before – you want to go where everybody knows your name – actually the more you mention it the less I like the idea – sounds a bit like court…
There I play pool with the old men and the semi-professionals – semi-professional in the sense that they don’t make a living from the game, but they don’t do much else either. I lose a lot, or as JJ puts it, come second. JJ is one of the regulars, 80 if he’s a day, and even though sometimes you have to remind him which colour he’s on, he’ll still beat you. He does a victory dance around the table stamping his feet like an excited three year old. He has a shot named after him – the JJ; it’s something miraculous that seems to be a fluke.
Winner stays on reminds me of Sisyphus, who cheated death and was punished by the Gods with eternal life – like stealing a watch and getting crushed by a grandfather clock. He was forced to push a rock up a hill only to watch it roll down over and over again for ever and ever. Which is a bit like pool: the price of victory is eternal battle. Well, not eternal – the pub shuts at eleven.
I would play snooker but I haven’t got a telescope. So pool it is. It’s not about winning and losing, but chatting and boozing. And the clack.
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