Actually Finishing

Out of the three, however, this is probably the one that hits closer to home. It’s the one that connects me most with my wife.

We don’t have a lot of shared interests; or rather we do, but we have different tastes. We both read, but fairly different books at different speeds. We both love music, only hers makes me think of bratty teenagers on the bus, and mine makes her think of weirdos or headbangers.

But then along came snooker.

She’d been vaguely interested in it around about the time of the snooker World Championships, having friends at work who were really into it. Myself, I watched it a lot as a kid, but couldn’t really afford to get into playing it too much (especially as I wasn’t great at it), so when she suggested watching the finals I was only too happy to oblige.

And she was hooked, but actually playing it was intimidating to her. The size of the table, the precision needed to play red-colour-red, no handy referee to keep score, it all got a bit too much. Pool though? Much smaller table, still have to be precise but it’s by and large more forgiving, and much less to think about as a beginner.

It turned out the local pub did free pool on Tuesdays, so we started going on our lunch break, and once she started getting the hang of it we started going to our local pool hall. That was when I noticed the snooker tables tucked away upstairs in a more private room and started paying for that separately.

Neither of us are great, but it’s an activity we can add to the short list of Things We Enjoy Together. Plus, independently, playing snooker has become a bit of a sanctuary of its own for me. A place where I can chill for a few hours and focus on what’s in front of me, rather than everything else around me.

It would just be nice to be better at it; to not spend two or three hours inconsistently making good and terrible shots. We’re getting there, but inconsistently, and that’s why it takes up slot number 3.