snooker, the art and the act

As I watch the snooker World Championship, half a day behind, on the BBC iPlayer, my mind drifts back to the dozens of long evenings I spent with my brother at Claude Falkiner's Snooker Club in Bournemouth in the late 1970s. The annual World Championship event had just moved to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, an aptly-named, claustrophobically small venue (still to this day the spiritual home of this high-precision sport) and was enthralling television audiences the length and breadth of England, and beyond.

My brother and I, inspired by the hushed TV spectacle, quickly learned the rules, bought (nearly straight) cues and took out membership at a dingy, smoke-filled hall, housing twelve full size tables. The beauty of close-up TV cameras is that we had pretty much mastered the stance, the grip, the bridge, the cue action, and the all-important mannerisms before even leaving our armchairs.

 

In fact, before I struck the cue ball you could be forgiven for assessing in me a good degree of experience. Striding around the table with an air of confidence, I would eye up potential chances and occasionally pause to take a pace or two back, as if I had almost overlooked a distinct opportunity. I picked invisible fluff from the table, checked the scoreboard and ground chalk onto the tip of my cue before settling into a convincing stance and addressing the cue ball.

 

This was the point at which the illusion was shattered. Frequent mis-cues saw the white speared off the table to go skittering across the floor under table after table. I won't dwell on the embarrassment of retrieving the cue ball from a distant corner of the hall.

 

It's clear from my modern perspective that as much as we wanted to achieve some modicum of expertise at snooker, my brother and I, we wanted to emulate the consummate professionals we saw on screen, to play the game with integrity, sportsmanship and above all style. Despite missing four out of every five pots we attempted, we would shake our heads every time in mock confusion, as if surely some external force had caused the miss. Often we would turn with a pained expression to address an invisible but clearly sympathetic crowd, just like the pros did.

 

Our standard improved with practice and we began to learn the potting angles on those gigantic twelve foot tables with the slim pockets, lightning fast cloths and super-responsive cushions. We added top-spin or a 'dab of side', and attempted deep screw shots. Nonetheless we could seldom pot more than two reds and two colours before finishing tucked up on a side rail, hopelessly out of position. But, following the example of our idols, we let our frustration show with only a barely perceptible wince, a purse of the lips; more perplexion than irritation.

 

The exuberant rehearsals of our late teens and early twenties gave way to manhood, and responsibilities; grown-up commitments reduced our snooker sessions to occasional outings. Nonetheless the sport has held my fascination over three decades.
 

 

The mannerisms and the etiquette are still entrenched in the modern game and it's one of the very few sports where players will call their own fouls; so small are the margins for error that referees can't always detect them. Dress code and demeanour are as exemplary as ever. The psychological pressure and the mental stamina required for thirty-five frame, two-day matches, relentless. The whiskey glasses and overflowing ashtrays are long gone; replaced by iced Perrier.

 

The standard of play continues to soar. In the 1970s we saw the very first televised maximum break, 147 points: fifteen reds, fifteen blacks and the six colours in sequence. Now there are several players who have achieved this several times over. In the 1970s few professional players had scored more than fifty breaks in excess of one hundred points in their entire careers. In 2014 the world number one has just achieved one hundred centuries, in the current season alone.

The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty

I have just revisited this classic novel by listening to an audio recording made by the author in the late 1990s. I make no secret of the fact that I admire the 1973 movie and no book review would be complete without at least a passing reference to the film. I was one of the teenagers pretending to ignore the Samaritans as they stood on the cinema steps handing out leaflets. As a naive fifteen year old I was quite affected.

Reading in my mid fifties I can listen to large tracts on my iPod in the dead of night without (undue) alarm. We have to remember that the movie was an adaptation, a distillation of the plot into two hours. Inevitably it concentrated on the shocking. The novel stands comfortably by itself as a clever supernatural detective story which manages to explore faith, medicine and the overlap of psychiatric disorders with physical symptoms.

 

Three individuals lose their lives, a fact some might overlook. A detective working on the first death is inexorably drawn to events and rumours surrounding the house the victim last visited. When the only logical suspect is a twelve year old girl he is mystified. In parallel with his gentle but persistent investigations, the lives of the girl's mother and her household staff begin to coincide with medical doctors and Jesuit priests.

 

The doctors remain insistent on a physical root cause even when presented with extraordinary symptoms to indicate otherwise. This stalemate threatens to slow progress but sub plots are explored to fill the void. As a last resort the help of an exorcist is recommended and events move rapidly to a memorable climax.

 

Pacing is masterful, and matter-of-fact descriptions lend paranormal events an eerie plausibility. It's interesting to hear the author's interpretation of his own work and therein lies the audiobook's only failing. Blatty's delivery is deep and gruff for all characters, male, female, young, old. It's often tricky to identify the speaker in dialogue. Nonetheless the book is tidily written, neatly plotted and hard to put down.

 

I understand Blatty has recently committed something of an authorial sin. In 2011, to celebrate the fortieth anniversary, he wrote a new scene, introduced a new character, and generally spruced up the prose throughout the novel. Well, I listened to the original version and there is little wrong with that.

The Long Walk, Richard Bachman

This was the second King novel under the Bachman pseudonym. Although published in 1979 King has since confided that he wrote it in 1966 when just twenty, and long before his more famous early works.

Both the premise and its execution are simple: an annual 'last man standing' walking race down the East coast of America during which King explores the physical and psychological effects of a gruelling challenge to the death. Walkers who slow below 4mph or infringe other rules will be 'ticketed', a euphemism for a more terminal penalty. TV cameras relay the entertainment, and the eventual winner will choose whatever prize he wants.

 

Although an undoubtedly good effort from a young author, it suffers from a limited storyline resulting in endless repetition. Whether intentionally or not, the novel's biggest success lies in its foretelling of the age of reality TV and the strange relationship between contestant and viewer. Spectators lining the route of The Long Walk would today be watching Big Brother.

 

The reader observes interaction between the walkers, their division into groups or loners, and their ability to endure suffering of both body and mind. It's interesting, but not fascinating. When I first read this, thirty years ago, I thought it an allegory for the walk of life but it's really less pretentious than that.

The Gods of Guilt, Michael Connelly

I do enjoy courtroom drama, particularly if it is as accurately observed as the Mickey Haller series by Michael Connelly. Of course to detect accuracy you first have to be familiar with the US judicial system. It is based on the British adversarial method but without the wigs, gowns and general pomp. Procedures are the same, examination, cross, redirect, re-examination, objections etc. Penalties can be a tad harsher though!

Connelly's ease at describing the subtle maneuvering within court scenes brings authenticity. He knows how many looks, facial expressions, nudges and even secret text messages don't catch the judge's attention. Despite what TV would have us believe, witnesses don't make uninterrupted speeches, lawyers can't bring unexpected witnesses or suddenly produced undisclosed evidence. It's his adherence to this realism yet ability to spring surprises which lifts Connelly's dramas well above the ordinary procedural.

The titular Gods of Guilt are the jury and here, while sitting on a murder case, they have to learn how it is connected to an earlier wrongful conviction. Defence Lawyer Haller expertly dismantles and connects both cases while simultaneously repairing his damaged home life, chasing a new girlfriend and trying to recover from a failed run for District Attorney. To be frank, the plot is somewhat weaker than previous outings and if not for the distractions, would have barely carried the book.

 

I love how Peter Giles reads the audiobook. His Mickey Haller is sincere, earnest, hardworking and utterly dependable. I might be in a minority but I disliked McConaughey in the title role of the Lincoln Lawyer. Too self opinionated, too brazen. I wanted to see the humility with which Connelly endows his character. So, I was delighted to hear 'my' Mickey Haller again even if this case wasn't his toughest.

Dirty Pretty Things, Soton Uni 5 May 2006

Southampton University Students Union gets some pretty good rock bands in the grand scheme of things. Last night I experienced the new phenomenon that is Dirty Pretty Things and I mean lived it, up close and personal. Before the gig a restless crowd of about 300 was jostling and maneuvering for best views of the tiny stage but when the band came on the sudden surge of movement left everyone yards from their carefully elbowed spot…

 

... this is little short of a riot. Dozens swell back and forth carrying unwitting passengers whose feet are off the ground. My mate Steve chooses to edge backwards, I let myself be carried forward on the tidal wave. Within a couple of minutes I am pressed to the stage front with the weight of hot sweaty students pressing hard all around. The music is loud and raucous. Punk rock that ex-Libertine Pete Doherty can only dream of now, while his former band mate Carl Barat swaggers and strides the stage with boyish good looks and black leather charm, singing chidingly, “Bang bang, you're dead, always so easily led.”

 

This is frightening and exhilarating. Youngsters all around are driven to a frenzy of excitement and this ageing rocker is squeezed in with them. Several crowd surfers pass over my head kicking me in the neck and back. Twice I am swamped to the floor by the tide of humanity. Once a girl lands on top of me, her plump white folds pounding the breath out of my lungs. We find our feet but the long laces of my trainers are hopelessly undone. Another surge and I am practically lifted off my feet. The heat is like a powerful furnace. All around people are wilting under the pressure. Pushing and shoving, hanging on to friends for grim death. My tee shirt is stuck to me like a wet rag. I go down again this time with a group of about ten. Hands and arms reach from the stifling blackness and help us upright then the crowds press in again hot and hard.

 

The material is all untried apart from the current single but is so reminiscent of the late lamented Libertines that it is immediately accessible. The handful of original Libertines tracks bring deafening roars and waves of further frenzy from the crowd.

By the time the final number comes I am completely overheating, dehydrated and close to fainting. I have been swept from one side of the stage to the other, been at the front then pushed backwards. The body heat is now unbearable and my eyes sting from my biting, salty sweat. Just as I am about to be overwhelmed a passage opens to my left and I stumble blindly into a brief gap. I lean against the side wall and put my head in my hands. Slowly I regain my breath as sweat streams down my face and neck. My ribs hurt like hell and I know they are bruised, if not cracked.

The band returns for an encore but I am beaten. I continue my slow recovery stage left and I am thinking when people ask in years to come, “Where were you when Dirty Pretty Things played their debut tour?” I’ll say, “I was there mate, soaked and filthy and stinking.” Maybe they will just say, “Dirty who…?"

The cold night air brings sweet relief and I meet Steve outside. “You were at the front?” he quizzes, “that’s bloody rock and roll!”

When you are too old to feel the noise like this you really are too old for life. Oh and the music? Yes, punk rock with style and attitude.

family history and the aerial detective

When you run out of land-based leads... reach for the sky!

Peckham, South London, was home to the single largest contingent of my Victorian ancestors. One hundred and fifty years ago Peckham was a rural village, nestling south of the River Thames, a two hour horse and cart ride from the teeming metropolis of London. It's streets were separated by open fields where market gardeners grew melons, soft fruit and a range of vegetables.

In the mid 1800s a new arm of the Grand Surrey Canal was dug, bringing industry and growth. New housing mushroomed speculatively along the canal bank. I know from the 1881 census that my great, great grandfather Henry lived by the canal with his blended family: his second wife, a new son, two of her children, and just one of his own six. He was a shoemaker by trade.

The rapid pace of development in south London soon saw most open spaces paved over as the capital spilled ever outwards. Swamped by the inexorable tide of Industry and labourers, Henry moved his family north of the river to Holborn and into a newly built complex called Palmerston Buildings, three six-storey blocks housing 72 dwellings.

Behind him, Peckham's once elegant terraces fell gradually into disrepair. By the early twentieth century they were past their prime, blackened by soot, damp from the fog and the canal, and home to the lower classes. This has made me keen to see a photograph of his house, 3 Maria Terrace, Canal Bank, Peckham. In this 1895 map I have ringed it in blue. The mauve ring marks St George's Terrace, a landmark I would soon find useful.



Despite surviving well into the twentieth century and some even to this day, Peckham's elderly housing stock did not attract the attention of late nineteenth century photographers, so I have been unable to find roadside images of Maria Terrace. Victorian Philanthropists toured the area and their reports make grim reading, so I can imagine how the area must have looked but that's not the same as actually seeing.

On a whim I searched the site Britain From Above, a large online archive of high resolution aerial photographs taken in the 1930s. There are half a dozen plates covering the suburb Peckham from various angles, at a height of perhaps a thousand feet. Having studied ancient and modern maps of the area for two decades, I am very familiar with the road layout. In a view looking eastward, I soon spotted the right-angle canal-turn where the Grand Surrey Canal feeds into its Peckham branch. Following an inferred gap between rows of buildings I reached a crossing which carried horse-drawn traffic over the canal and which I knew was right beside Maria Terrace.

Detail in the image was extremely distant and the houses mere dots but I was sure of the neighbourhood. For pre WW2 the resolution in these images is astonishing and I was able to zoom right in and positively identify a short terrace of 13 dwellings that had to be Maria Terrace (blue arrow). This is a tiny corner of the image at full zoom.

In the left middle distance is St George's Terrace (mauve arrow) which stands nearer to us on the East bank and a little back from the canal. That there is a canal and parcels of land between the two terraces indicates the considerable distance from which this photograph was shot and the foreshortening of perspective. Note the five windows and one door to each house in the row. Now look at the same St George's Terrace in 2012 from Google Street View.

The door and window openings are unmistakeable; this, considered with numerous street maps I have from the mid 1800s, is more proof that the distant row in the background of the aerial photo is Maria Terrace. Knowing that Henry rented no. 3 (for seven shillings a week [35p]), I can now point to an image of his house, admittedly rather a small image, but probably the only one in existence! In the mid 1980s when I first started researching my ancestors, I found the following census page which lists Henry and his family, including five year old Ambrose, Henry's only child by his second marriage, and from whom a veritable tribe of modern day Bartons are descended.

the pawnbroker's balls

... three golden ones, hanging above a shop, was always the traditional indication that pawnbrokers were carrying on business inside. Fast forward to the 21st century and places like Cash Converters rely more on neon signs.

In the mid and late Victorian era a branch of my ancestors, in-laws of my maternal great grandfather, were pawnbrokers in Whitechapel, Westminster and Marylebone, central London. In 1861 a certain Robert Chilvers was plying his trade on a stretch of Commercial Road, Whitechapel known as King's Place.

When identifying a distant ancestor in early census returns I always set myself the task of locating their house (often doubling as their place of work too); a task made harder in big cities with road name changes, renumbering, demolition and redevelopment. Rural areas bring their own problems: little or no numbering, that being unnecessary at a time when villages were small and if you needed someone, you knew where they lived.

King's Place was the historic local name for a terrace of shop-fronted dwellings. Nowadays the same area is all known as Commercial Road and the numbering runs above four hundred. How to trace 15 King's Place? The 1861 census provided a clue. The King's Arms public house appeared to be at the start of the row. Googling the pub revealed that modern Town Planners have luckily preserved that Victorian building although it is now the offices of a foreign bank.

Now we're homing in. Using Google Street View I counted fifteen doors along Commercial Road; not so easy when premises have merged and door and window openings have been moved. 15 King's Place appeared to be an Asian run cheap clothing shop. No signs or placards on it, or on adjacent buildings proclaimed its history. Or did they..?

 

High on the wall was an ornate but seemingly redundant bracket. I edged into the opening of a side road and viewed the bracket sideways on and zoomed right in, just as all good sleuths should.

 

I knew what I was looking at, the bracket from which the pawnbroker's balls had once dangled! Sharp eyes will pick out two of the three small hooks, the third is end-on at the bottom. The balls are long gone but the bracket remains and speaks across a century and a half. I can now attach a screen capture saved as a jpeg to the data in my files and feel my ancestors are a little closer.

I have also had a piece of incredible success using Britain From the Air, a web site hosting thousands of high resolution aerial photographs, taken in the 1930s mostly of urban and industrial areas. More on that next time!