It’s a new season for Norwich bar billiards and time for the first league match for the Artichoke Hearts. Now I appear to be captain (which is either a mark of trust or a sign that standards have slipped, I’m fairly sure I know which it is), this meant that I had the honour of being involved with the draw for the evening. As I don’t get out much, this was all very exciting. The team we were playing was the Serengeti, who I used to play for, which added to the potential drama and I was inevitably going to be on my best behaviour.
And there’s the draw, six singles matches and three doubles. As the Serengeti had seven players, I randomly drew one to not play a singles game and that by chance was my friend Emma, but she was very calm about the matter. We only had five players and poor Terri found herself playing two singles games in a row and it was Luke that was drawn to play two doubles matches.
I thought I’d better have a beer to calm my nerves, this is the Best Laid Plans from Salopian Brewery, a fruity, fluffy and light beer.
It’s all happening now. Emma took charge in the role of being the official scribe which involved writing all the results up on the board, and she generally did this quite well. I think Emma sort of agreed that I was on my best behaviour throughout.
After four games, it was 2-2 and so this all felt quite stressful, so I went to get another beer. This is the Foamy Dome from Three Blind Mice Brewery, which had some orange punching through in terms of the flavour. There was then food and I managed to forget to photograph it, a slightly sub-optimal arrangement. Landlord Oscar marched across the room at this point and everyone was stunned into silence, we think he was trying to pick up some tactics for his team games.
Matters didn’t become less stressful for me, as we found ourselves 4-2 down with the three doubles matches still to play. Luke and Vaughan won their match, then Terri and I won in a very close game against Emma and Roy. That meant it was 4-4 with one game left and not only was it tense, it went down to the final ball. There’s Luke taking his shot and, to cut a long story short, it was all enough and we found ourselves 5-4 up. I pretended that it was all just a game and it didn’t matter, but I was already planning my next beer as I needed a celebration.
And here’s my reward for our team’s performance, a pint of Creme Bearlee and I must have been very stressed as I’ve realised that I didn’t put this on Untappd. And poor Vaughan and PJ in their first league game, I’m pleased that they seemed to enjoy it enough to come back again and not be put off.
The final result, 5-4 to the Artichoke Hearts. Anyway, the Serengeti are a fine team, the games were very close and they were unlucky not to come out ahead. But, that’s enough praise, we all had a lovely time and at least I know we won’t end the season on zero points. And I had an excuse to pop to the Weaver’s and the King’s Head afterwards to settle my nerves. The main thing is though there’s lots of great people involved, it’s a fun thing to do and if anyone is interested in coming along to watch, please do! The next match is at home to the Black Stars next week and they are known to be pretty formidable. I’m wondering if we could have a strategy of overdosing them on bar snacks, that might be our best plan here.