It all came to a head on Saturday at 12:00 at the VR rooms in Norwich…. Oscar and I had both won two games, my first at the White Lion and then my second at the King’s Head. This surprised and delighted me since I’ve hardly played in four months, although, to be fair, I’m not sure I’m any better after playing more anyway as I play solely with muscle memory and pure delusion.
It was my first time in the VR rooms, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Here’s the table, which is on free play, but you just buy drinks from the bar instead. I very much liked the table, it was slower off the back than I expected which meant I fell short on a few shots, but it was a bit wider than the King’s Head table which I liked. The pegs are very delicate indeed though, they blow over easily.
I don’t think that Oscar will mind me saying, but he turned up looking dead to the world as if from some zombie movie and I was secretly very pleased about that as I hoped he’d fall over or similar to distract himself from the game. However, at heart, I know that Oscar is a master at performing even when feeling terrible, so I wasn’t very confident.
We had some VR action behind us, but in the excitement of our game, I mostly forgot about them as I was locked into my own tragedy. As an aside, we had no scorer, so we had to do the adding up ourselves which was challenging as Oscar kept scoring large breaks. The first two games were relatively close, but Oscar won them both, so that was the end of that for my amazing run in the competition. I also lost the third frame, but by more, but I had rather lost the killer instinct by then….. And, let’s face it, Oscar is a very good player.
Anyway, that’s that now, I’ll just have to watch the other games to see who wins in this fine competition. And, maybe I might even get to reach the hallowed quarter finals next year. But I might need to practice more and also hope that I don’t meet Oscar in the 2027 competition.
For anyone concerned about his well-being, I’m pleased to note that Oscar was in good shape again in the pub in the evening, but I ignored his comments about victory because it’s not about the winning, it’s about the taking part. Unless I win, then I upload videos and blog posts all over the place. And, I confess, if I’d won, half of Norwich wouldn’t be able to open a social media app without seeing a slow-motion montage of my genius.
And, also, lovely people at the VR rooms, I hope to be able to play some games there in the future, a really nice set-up.