that sinking feeling

There is trouble. Right here in River City. 

That’s what actor Robert Preston once sang about an evil canker in a country town.

He was singing about the evils of a pool room. Those smoke-filled dens of iniquity that have filled some people’s lives for decades. Tales of misguided youth.

When I was growing up as a teenager in New Zealand my parents would not let us visit the local pool hall. Heaven forbid! Dens of iniquity. I was intrigued by such debauchery but was never allowed to venture inside. I figured Robert Preston, and trouble in River City, was probably right.

Flash forward a few decades. When I was going through my forced exile in Mount Macedon (my “Grizzly Adams’ period) I started playing pool at  the Mountain Inn.  And I learned a few things. Show me a great pool player and I’ll show you somebody who has been unemployed for some time.

Being out of work can get your eye in when you are near a pool table. It is dissolute. It can be a real waste of time. But it can it be fun when you  are on a roll.

I am not a great pool or snooker player but I get that adrenalin rush when the balls start dropping. Your cue ball kisses them, bruises them, caresses them, sinks them. A ball drops from an impossible angle. And only a pool player knows what I am talking about.

Recently at a pub in South Yarra I was playing a hot shot pool player. You know the type. He doesn’t roll a ball into a pocket. He slam dunks them! They don’t even touch the sides. Right in the pocket.

I think I had about seven balls left on the table. He had two. Plus the black. Then something happened. I could do nothing wrong.

A novice, I sank five balls in five consecutive shots. It was like swimming underwater in slow motion.  They dropped and they dropped and they dropped. Long shots. Short shots. Acute angles. And then a confident reverse, off the cush, to sink the black.

It don’t get much better than that.

And it got me thinking. Pool, billiards, snooker, are great pub games.  Women can play it as often as men. Often better. And there is an unspoken etiquette. With total strangers.

You put your coin on the felt rim of the table to claim your turn. And the winners get to  “hold the table” against all comers.

There is a generosity of “good shot” when somebody does something dramatic. If you stuff up, like having an errant cue touch a ball illegally, you put your own hand up and admit the error. When you incur a two-shot penalty you immediately own up. Not like football.

It really is a sport of honour. And that is quaint these days.

I actually have had the honour of playing snooker with the late, great, Eddie Charlton, on TV, on the Midday Show on the Nine Network. He set me up with an impossible ball line-up.

He lined the balls up in a huge, lazy, S configuration and told me what to do. If I hit the first ball with the cue ball, and hit it low, there would be a domino effect. Yeah, sure.

On national television we tried it. Ball hit ball, hit ball, hit ball. I still don’t know how it happened but the last ball dropped into the back pocket.

Eddie was amazing. He was so good at his sport that, I am told, they changed the rules, to thwart him. He was the King. The best billiards player in history.

Just imagine it? You are so good that they have to change the rules to try to beat you. And still they didn’t. The man was a cue genius.

What is it about pool? Is it the pub bravado? The braggadocio?  It is user friendly. When you sink a ball from an impossible shot you get an adrenalin rush.  When you come back from a desperate, non-winnable position to take out a game you feel great. And, it is a sport in which you don’t work up a sweat.

I think what makes it work is that you can play it at home  -- if you can afford a pool table – or play it at the local pub. Where most people do.

And, at the pub, every one is equal. A plumber can beat a millionaire every day.

That is why pool is such a great game. Put your coin on the felt and you are next. Millionaire or muggins it does not matter a tinker’s cuss. Just grab the blue chalk and “season” your cue and get on with it. Make a hero or a fool out of yourself.

A confession: It is great to write this after sinking five balls out of five shots. If I had gone in off the black it might have been different. Pool players know what I mean. They are a special breed.

Addendum: Charlton was probably the best snooker player ever. Another Aussie, Walter Lindrum, was the best billiards player.

July 31, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005