Elements of a memorable Chinese New Year's Eve

I was grumping the other day about how little I enjoy the Chinese New Year celebrations (and would always quit the country at this time of year if I could only afford to); but I have, of course, had a few good times here during this holiday over the years. In particular, my very first Spring Festival Eve ended up being rather fun... in a bizarre and random sort of way.

Here are the things that made it special:

1) Novelty

It was my first one. So, even the aspects of the holiday that aren't all that appealing to me (nearly all of them) at least had curiosity value. It didn't start to seem such a horrendous bore until I'd been here three or four years.

2) Being included in the party

Chinese friends are usually too preoccupied with fulfilling their family obligations (or spurning them, and fleeing the country for an overseas holiday!) to give much of a thought to us foreigners at this time of year. But in my first year here, several people - students, colleagues, new friends - made a point of inviting me to stuff. Such invitations haven't completely dried up, but in subsequent years I've probably tried to dodge them, since most of the traditional holiday activities - temple fairs, family dinners, watching the CCTV 'gala special', er... that's about it - are in fact a bit of an ordeal. But, as I say, in that first year they had novelty value. And I was particularly glad that LG, a musician I'd recently met, arranged a dinner gathering on Spring Festival Eve - almost exclusively for 'foreign friends', who he knew would have nothing else to do that night. The food I recall being fairly horrible, and the wine even worse (a comedy fake Chinese variety that appeared to have been manufactured from erguotou and cochineal); but it was a fun gathering, and I made several interesting new acquaintances there - including DD, who was eventually to become one of my closest friends here (although I didn't see her again for two or three years after this!).

3)  Comparatively few fireworks

At that point there had been a ban on fireworks within the city limits of Beijing for several years, and it remained in place until 2006. It was widely ignored. There were actually quite a lot of fireworks being let off back in those days - but not the monstrous overkill we have to suffer today. Moreover, it was nearly all traditional firecrackers rather than the fancier mortars and rockets and volcanos and so on that we are now deluged with (and which become such a trial because they are often so poorly made, and almost invariably irresponsibly used: rockets tend to explode at a dangerously low height overhead, and often at ground level; fizzling misfires and delayed detonations are alarmingly common). Most of all, I think, it acquired an extra level of exhilaration from the fact that it was an outlaw activity, that kids were having to set them off furtively, while keeping a lookout for the armband-wearing neighbourhood monitors patrolling the hutongs to try to suppress this naughtiness.

4)  A random flirtation

After the dinner, we adjourned to the foreigner bar street of Sanlitun Nanjie (demolished a couple of years later), which was about the only place where anything was open that night. Just as my party were decamping to another bar on the strip, an improbably gorgeous Scandinavian girl came in through the door - apparently lost and alone. What could I do? While not exactly a crash-and-burn, it was not one of my more successful chat-ups either - but we nattered pleasantly for half an hour or so. Romance was evidently never going to be a possibility here, but we are still friends 9 years on.

5)  More randomness

The irresistible distraction of a gorgeous blonde had separated me from the rest of the group - and I couldn't find them again. At this point, I'd hardly ever been out on Nanjie; maybe once or twice before, at most (I couldn't afford to frequent foreigner bars in my first year or two here). So, I didn't know the bar they had said they were hitting up next. And I couldn't find it. Couldn't find them. And after briefly trying a couple of other bars on my own, and being severely unimpressed with them (I think that was one of only two occasions that I ever went in the notorious dive that was Pure Girl), I gave up on the evening and decided to head home. At least I had finally begun to familiarise myself with the Nanjie strip, an area that I would be starting to visit a little more often over the coming year.

6) A game of pool (or several)

However, it was barely 10pm, which did seem a little early to be calling it a day. And there were, of course, no cabs to be had, so I was likely to have to walk the whole 6 miles or so back to my college. I therefore decided to break my journey at the only foreigner bar I had developed any sort of 'regular' habit with at that point - Huxley's 2, a large-ish venue down by the south gate of the Workers' Stadium (it was a promising space, but suffered from a slightly out-of-the-way location and extremely patchy promotion; it lasted barely 6 months - eventually killed off by the SARS outbreak, although I don't think it would have survived much longer anyway). There was a young European guy there - Dutch or Belgian, I think, not sure now - who was supposed to be running a DJ night. But it probably hadn't been effectively advertised: there was no-one there - NO-ONE. The DJ was trying to remain upbeat about the prospects of people starting to show up around midnight - but no-one ever did. I bought him a drink to console him, and thrashed him on the pool table a couple of times. Then I started playing the staff - as I had before a number of times on slow nights (there were many slow nights in that place, so they'd all become quite good; Sammy the head barman was a formidable player, rather too good for me). That passed a very pleasant two or three hours. And then I decided to continue my journey home.

7)  Mellow thoughts

I'd had a wretched Christmas that year, with my mother dying a couple of weeks before, huge strife with my employer, a temporary holiday job in Tibet falling through... I'd been a bit of an emotional basketcase for the preceding three or four weeks. But there are few things as good as a long solitary walk very late at night for clearing the cobwebs out of your head: very restful, meditative, restorative.

8)  The spirit of Christmas Chunjie

When I finally got back to my college, the two teenage security guards in the sentry box at the front gate were looking particularly disconsolate. I imagine they'd tried to watch the traditional CCTV variety gala on their tiny black-and-white TV earlier; but now they were completely at a loose end, while all the rest of the city was revelling - and were probably desperately homesick, since they came from Shaanxi province, far to the west, and this was their first year working in the capital. On a sudden impulse of goodwill, I nipped up the street to a 24-hour convenience store to buy them a few beers and a bag of candy. The young lads almost wept with gratitude. I never again had any problems persuading them to open the gate for me 'after hours'.

Yep, I have very fond memories of that first Chunjie in China. Unfortunately, the law of diminishing returns has been operating particularly ruthlessly since then.

The worst pool tables in the world?

Open air pool tables used to be a common sight in China when I first visited here (yikes - 17 years ago!), but this is a phenomenon that has been rapidly fading out - at least in the major cities - over the last 5 or 10 years.

Naturally, such tables, exposed constantly to the elements, offer a unique set of challenges to the player. 

In areas prone to heavy rain, plastic sheeting may be thrown over them during particularly heavy downpours - but otherwise, covers are a rarity. A damp flannel - of the kind used for every domestic clean-up operation in hole-in-the-wall restaurants and other small businesses here: one flannel to wipe them all - may sometimes be employed to clean some of the dust and dead insects off the baize; but that's about all these tables would ever receive in the way of maintenance. Warped by extremes of heat and cold, dry and damp, faded by exposure to the sun, ingrained with the accumulated grime and grit of months or years spent beside busy main roads, sagging, creaking, slowly but inexorably collapsing.... Well, you don't know local idiosyncrasies until you've tried to play on a roadside table in China!  (I have particularly fond memories of playing on one such table with a gang of young locals - not a word of each other's language between us, only the universal communion of the game - in a small town square on Mulanshan during that first visit of mine in 1994. Having painstakingly worked out the massive drifts and irregular cushion bounce, I managed to pull off a spectacular win against the would-be hotshot of the group, coming back from four or five balls down, and seeing off the black with a flamboyant double into the middle bag. Ah, those were the days!)

So, I get a little nostalgic for these tables. And I haven't spotted one in Beijing for some years now. But the other day, I happened upon four of them together, ranged alongside Shuangqing Lu, a little north of Wudaokou - no doubt once a bustling focal point of the modest local nightlife, but now forlorn and abandoned beside a HUGE building site. As you can see, they are quite literally falling apart: cloth, legs, and pockets bandaged with swathes of duct tape; and they have great ridges of sand and masonry fragments accumulated under the lee of the cushions.

I would have given anything for one quick game, though...

A date with Nemesis

About the only kind of date I can get these days!

I'm off to spend the afternoon with my most formidable regular pool antagonist, New Dad, at his penthouse in the northern 'burbs - where he has his own pool table.  Last time I did this, I came away with only 3 or 4 games out of 15.  Let us hope for better this time.

I feel as though I've cast off the shroud of gloom that's dogged me for the last couple of weeks and was responsible for the utter misery I suffered at the Pool Bar two Mondays ago (I took a bit of a drubbing from JK at The Brick last week, but I was much happier with my game; not an entirely 'serious' competition that time - it's not a great table, and we were both horsing around a bit).  I'm feeling some confidence, some 'hunger' for the game again now.  Then again, I've been sick as a dog for the past few days and suffering from insomnia - so that may not help.  We shall see.

I sense that today may be an important predictor of how the rest of my week, and perhaps the whole of this month, is going to go.

Wish me luck!

When the pool table tells you to END IT ALL

I was thinking of making this one of my Top Fives posts, but.... I fear there might be more than five items on this list.  I'll do my best to keep it within limits.

On Monday night, I suffered one of my most miserable experiences ever on the pool table.  The elusive 'mojo' - the knack, the inspiration, the confidence, the ready access to one's 'best game' - that had so emphatically returned a week ago, once again went AWOL.  Well, it wasn't completely absent - but that somehow made things even worse.

Here, then, is my list of...

Top Five things that can go disastrously wrong during a session of pool

5)  Your opponent patronises you

He keeps on 'throwing' shots, trying to give you a chance.  You are unable to take any advantage of this generosity, and just keep playing worse and worse.  Irritating.

4)  Your opponent is freakishly lucky

Even when he's trying to give you a chance, deliberately missing pots, he fails to leave you set up; instead, he inadvertently snookers you - or at least leaves you with no kind of a pot on - again and again and again and again.  Frustrating.

3)  You are freakishly unlucky

You manage to pocket the cue ball 3 or 4 times in every game, in the most unlikely and unforeseeable ways.  When you finally get a chance to win a game, you are forced to attempt a tight double on the black into the top corner, and it goes in on the treble - which, in strict Chinese rules, doesn't count, but rather is a game forfeit.

2)  You can't get off the table

The Pool Bar is nearly deserted on a rainy Monday night, and even the couple of regulars at the bar don't fancy a game (because you're playing so badly you wouldn't be a worthy opponent for them).  But one guy gives you a game.  And another.  And another and another.  For two hours.  Until the Pool Partner turns up.  And she, of course, wants to play all night.  So.... on an evening when your game just isn't coming together and Fate is treating you unbelievably harshly and you really just want to GO HOME AND CRY, you end up playing continuously for nearly 5 hours, and suffering existential torture for almost every second of it.

1)  The 'inner game' is mostly sound, but there's a 'disconnect' from the actual game, a tiny but unbridgeable gap between what the mind sees and what happens

You are - mostly - 'seeing' the shots, knowing the angles you have to make and how to strike the balls.  In a world of mathematical abstraction, you are playing darn near perfectly.  It's just not working on this table, in these conditions.  The table has got cranky.  Luke has refurbished it at some point fairly recently; well, he's re-covered it, anyway - the cloth is lush, but the cushions have gone very dead.  And the pockets always have been murderously tight.  It's getting a little uneven in places too.  And the drift of the 'nap', in the humid conditions caused by the rain outside, is, on occasions, quite huge (and, in other circumstances, bafflingly absent).  You're unfamiliar with these local quirks, haven't played enough on the table in recent months.  You know you ought to adjust something about your game, but you just can't figure out what.  You feel as though you're hitting the shots right, but they're just missing...... missing almost every time, missing by narrow margins, but missing - dammit! - missing.

And the combination of these various miseries eats away at your confidence like a worm in an apple.

And even meditation doesn't help.  Usually, if my game is just a little 'off', I can settle myself, work out what I'm doing wrong technically, or find a calmer, more focused, more determined mental state.... or just wait patiently for things to start clicking again, avoid getting rattled by a few bad shots or an unlucky run of the balls.

But the very worst of this Monday's experience was that meditation didn't work; it seemed to make things worse.  I looked inside for my pool-playing genius.... and it wasn't there.  And the superstition returned: the conviction that dismal form and dismal luck on the table are predictive of a wider trend in my life, a plunge in fortunes and biorhythms, the onset of a depressive slump.  And this sensation of gathering doom just kept on getting worse: there was no escaping from it.  Everything I tried to improve my game and my attitude, every attempt to become more confident and upbeat..... fizzled, faltered, FAILED.  But I was trapped there, in my little private Hell; I just couldn't get away; I had to keep sucking it up, had to keep enduring every shitty little trick that Fate could throw at me, had to keep on sucking at the game I so love, had to SUFFER wretchedly.... for FIVE LONG HOURS.  Aaaargghh!

A moment on the pool table

I've been bitching for a while - ages - now that 'my game' has deserted me on the pool table, but.... on Sunday night it finally returned, with a vengeance.

It may have helped that I wasn't taking it all that seriously:  I'd just looked in at the Pool Bar hoping for a quick game or two with The Choirboy, but had to beat one of the local sharks to get on the table first (and, later, had to throw one, in order to get off the table again).  It certainly helped that I managed to find a decent cue, for once (about the third or fourth one I tried): rather too light and not quite arrow-straight, but pretty darned true, and with a nice tip to it as well - and it just felt good in the hands.

Whatever it was, I was almost immediately 'in the zone' - relaxed, confident, not having to think at all.  After months of floundering around, not knowing quite where to hit the balls to get them to go in the pockets any more, suddenly I could remember again: every time I got down over a shot, I could immediately see where to hit it.  I didn't sink everything I attempted, but I did make most of them - including a few real stunners.  Striking the ball very sweetly.  Working the position quite well too.  After being such an infrequent player this year, I wasn't reading the table well; I was particularly hopeless at doubles, which are usually my speciality... but it didn't seem to matter.  Soon I was drawing a gallery of approving spectators.  And even that didn't put me off my stride.  I was having such fun.

And then... The Choirboy - somewhat fortuitously - left me completely stitched up, the cue ball in amongst a cluster of his balls near the top cushion while my last ball was way down the other end of the table.  The ball was in a temptingly pottable position, near the mid-line of the bottom left corner pocket, about 8 or 10 inches away: but it was completely obscured by an intervening ball.  Other balls were blocking every conceivable path to it: I couldn't play a natural doubling angle off any of the cushions; I didn't have room to attempt a swerve shot.  I was well-and-truly stuffed.

Except for the jump-shot option.  This is not a type of shot I like.  I have very little experience of playing them, since I grew up playing snooker, in which they are illegal; and, even in pool, where they are allowed, I generally refrain from playing them because of the danger of 'bruising' the cloth.  It would probably be fair to say that this is a shot I know how to play in theory, rather than feeling that I can play it.  But on this night, I felt I could play it.  My mood was so perky, I felt I could make any shot I went for.

It was a tough shot; nearly 'impossible'.  There was a lot of distance between cue ball and object ball.  And the intervening ball was very close to the cue ball, necessitating a steep take-off.

But I felt I could make it.  In fact, I paused, I broke off as I was about to play the shot to quip with The Choirboy that I'd only recently watched The Color Of Money again, a classic film about pool sharking (a Martin Scorsese-directed sequel to the even better The Hustler) in which a young Tom Cruise played a very similar shot - a shot which I'd always wanted the opportunity to replicate.

And then I played the shot.  And my ball disappeared into the pocket.  I almost didn't look back at the balls after chatting to my friend: I didn't need to look at the shot, I just knew where I had to hit it.  And I hit it.  The thought and the action were one.  There are few more blissful experiences in life; perhaps none.

And I didn't just hit it.  I hit it perfectly.  With jump-shots like this, it's very difficult to judge the flight of the cue ball.  And, particularly with a steep take-off, having to raise the cue ball high off the table to get over the intervening ball, there is the likelihood that it will bounce like a Barnes Wallis bomb - perhaps bounce clean over the object ball, or bounce off the table.  It will inevitably bounce at least a little bit; so unless you manage to land it precisely behind the object ball, you won't get a clean contact.  If the cue ball is rising on the bounce, or still descending, when it hits the object ball, you get unpredictable 'squeeze' effects - the object ball won't move off at a 'true' angle.  Even if you do get the cue ball striking the object ball while moving  near-enough horizontally over the table, you still often tend to get an ugly-sounding contact - a 'kick' - with this kind of shot.  You feel you've done well if you hit your ball at all.  If you actually manage to get it moving more or less towards the pocket, any spectators will be moderately impressed.  If the ball rattles violently in the pocket jaws, and then finally deigns to drop over the edge - well, that's a 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 outcome; it ain't pretty, but you feel fairly chuffed with yourself anyway.

This shot wasn't like that.  This shot was perfect.  The cue ball took off cleanly, easily clearing the intervening ball a few inches in front of it; it landed directly behind the object ball, and did not bounce at all (the contact killed its energy); it was a sweet, sweet contact; and the object ball flew straight down the centre of the pocket without touching the sides - like a rat down a drainpipe, as my old dad used to like to say.  Perfect.

That was certainly one of the handful of finest shots I have ever made in 30 or more years of playing this game.  And I think it was probably the flashiest.

Of course, I worry that 'the secret' of my rediscovered form is that it was after midnight, and I'd been drinking for nearly seven hours....

Into the arena....

Luke at the Pool Bar has recently instituted a Monday night pool competition.

I'd felt a bit bad about failing to support the event in its first two weeks (for no other reason than that my metabolism, suddenly deprived of the 50% or so of its daily carbs that it usually gets from beer, slumps into catatonic torpor, and I struggle - for the first few weeks of a spell on the wagon - to find the willpower to haul myself off the sofa); and, since last night was to be the last of my current run of 'sober Mondays', I thought I ought - in a spirit of scientific enquiry - to test out my long-held hypothesis/superstition that I can't hit for shit without a few drinks inside me.

Last night, alas, furnished further evidence in support of the hypothesis.

Well, actually, no. Last night I was very relaxed, feeling reasonably confident, seeing the balls well. I was just woefully out of practice. I haven't played much at the Pool Bar this year (well, haven't played much anywhere - but only the Pool Bar really counts), and when I have, my confidence has generally been dented by severely disappointing performances. A lot of the problem has been a wrenched shoulder muscle (that I picked up playing Wii tennis with my nieces last summer!) which caused me persistent discomfort for getting on for a year, and was inhibiting my cueing action. I think - touch wood - I finally seem to be over that. Now - I just need to put in a lot of hours on the table to try to get my form back to what it was a couple of years or so ago.

I'm not sure that I'm ever going to make much of an impact, though, in this sort of company. And I don't want to be regularly reminded that there are least 15 players better than me in this city!! The Pool Bar has always attracted some very fine Chinese players, and this competition is starting to draw even more out of the woodwork (the two best players last night I'd never seen in there before). It seems we're already reaching the point where the 16 spaces in the draw fill up fairly quickly, and we may have to start signing up well in advance to be sure of getting a spot.

Next Monday - well, no, maybe not next Monday, or the Monday after that; but one Monday very soon - I'm going to see if I fare any better with a reasonable number of beers on board to take the edge off my nerves.

HBH 180

Two wins, two losses.
Bare records hide the beauty:
Glimmers of greatness.

Boy, I was really on my game in the Pool Bar last night. For about fifteen minutes, anyway. Savour it while it lasts....

HBH 167

Knowing what will be,
Seeing future as present -
Perfect state of calm.

Really 'in the zone' on the pool table for a while last night. The mojo - she is back (at least, intermittently).

Pool Party

Not quite the weather at the moment for that type of thing, you might think.

Indeed not. And I've never been a big fan of the poolside, anyway. When it comes to the arts of natation, I seem to have an overdeveloped aptitude for moving through water downwards, but the other directions quite defeat me.



No, of course, with me it would be the other kind of pool - the game of ball and cue.

New Dad, my long-time Pool Bar nemesis (we haven't played in the PB for a while; but lately his record against me in neighbourhood pool halls has been getting more and more humiliatingly dominant; time was when I could always take one game in three from him, but that's slipping to one game in five... or one game in seven or eight; last time we'd played, actually, I think I only managed one win in about twelve - my mojo is at the bottom of the sea), has recently purchased a family home out in one of the far northern 'burbs...... and he has set up his own pool room on the top floor. Lucky, lucky bastard! (Well, that's it: we're all doomed now. With the ability to practice daily, he's going to become unstoppable.)

This Saturday he was kind enough to invite a bunch of his pool-playing mates around for an extended afternoon/evening of laddish self-indulgence: beer, fast food, teasing each other about our sex lives (or lack thereof), and pool, pool, pool.

Enormous fun! I hope he'll invite us again soon. But, man, I really need to work on my game in the meantime - I'm not giving anyone much of a challenge at the moment.

New Resolutions

It has been my habit in the past couple of years to post my New Year's resolutions on here. Well, last year I just repeated the ones from 2008 - and, to be honest, I've done indifferently well in keeping to any of them. So, rather than recycle them yet again, I thought I'd better come up with an entirely new - and more earnest, more achievable - set of goals for this year.



1) I am going to finish unpacking and get my apartment straightened out by this weekend.
[It's 5 weeks, no, god, nearly 6 weeks now since I moved in, and.... well, I haven't really moved in. Half my stuff is still in boxes and the place is a complete tip. This can't go on. Well, it all too easily could go on, perhaps indefinitely; especially since I am contemplating a move again in 4 or 5 months. But I must not let it go on. I must not let myself become that much of a bachelor slob. Oh no.]

2) I am going to have a party at the beginning of next month.
[A housewarming party is always de rigueur, I feel, even if it is two months after the event. This may provide the necessary extra incentive I need to get moving on Resolution No. 1. And I haven't had a party in nearly three years.]

3) I am finally going to stop moping about Madame X.
[Well, she's leaving. That should make it easier. Eventually.]

4) I am going to visit Bangladesh.
[Well, if my 'open invitation' still stands, that is. I have no particular interest in the country itself, but it is relatively inexpensive to get to. And it is - for the next few months, at least - where last year's great crush-ette, The Bombshell, resides.]


5) I am going to get a paid writing gig by the middle of this year.
[Um, I've no idea how or where yet. I really need to work on the details of this one a little more. I've been offered things in the past with the local expat listings mags, but turned them down because the fees were negligible. I might have to re-think that: I suppose they do at least help you to start building a marketable portfolio. It's very difficult to pitch yourself to worthwhile publications on the basis of a few English teaching magazines and a blog.]


6) I am going to break myself of my 'pool divination' superstition.
[Wow - a double resolution here: I am going to sort out my love life while retaining or recapturing my pool-playing mojo!! It has never happened before in my entire lifetime, but I have to believe that it is possible.]

7) I am going to invest in a bar or restaurant.
[I don't have much in the way of savings to invest, but I figure I ought to be trying to put that money to work somehow. I've been looking for an opportunity for six years now - but have never found a partner I could completely trust, or a prospect that was anything other than a moneypit. But this year I'm going to look a bit harder. Oh yes, 2010 will the the year.]

8) I am going to complete the Great Wall Marathon this May.
[This is a nice, clearcut goal - but it's something of a tall order, given how out of shape I am, and that I haven't run much in the last three months, and that I've been plagued by injuries and ill health for the last two or three years, and that we're having one of the coldest winters here in years and it doesn't look like it's going to be possible to go running outside for quite some time yet... But I like a challenge!]



And the original 10 resolutions from the last two years are all very worthwhile (and achievable!) aims too, so I will revisit them and try to pull off the clean sweep this year (my endlessly deferred ambition to start holding occasional dinner parties at my place is the one that I'm keenest to make a reality before springtime).

Wish me luck!

Elements of a fairly good Christmas Day

1) A BIG meal
Not quite as good as this year's Thanksgiving repast (very niggardly with some of the vegetables; and disappointing puds - and no stuffing: what happened to the stuffing??), but a very generous helping of turkey - producing an appropriate holiday bloat.

2) An unexpected piece of 'good luck'
I won a ticket (quite a high-value ticket) to an acrobatics show in a Lucky Draw at the restaurant. I'm not that enthused about the show (and it's a bummer that it's only one ticket - I don't fancy going on my own!), but just being lucky gave a needed lift to my sagging spirits.

3) A friendly welcome (and a cat)
This was the coldest Christmas Day I have known here, and my companions and I were desperate to find somewhere to shelter from the lacerating winds. Unfortunately, most of our regular haunts - like Amilal and the Pool Bar - aren't open during the day. We tried our luck at Treehouse - and Sophie, the owner, was kind enough to invite us in, even though they weren't really 'open'. Fondling her gorgeous cat for half an hour gave a further lift to the spirits (the emotional satisfaction made it worth enduring the slight allergy problems I suffered subsequently - I have, alas, become acutely sensitive to cat hairs over the last 10 years). Unfortunately, Treehouse is not well-heated, and it was absolutely bloody freezing in there yesterday afternoon (and also deafening, since someone was working with a masonry drill on the front of the house directly opposite); thus, regretfully, we soon moved on again.

4) An early start at 12 Square Metres
My 'second home' has just started opening in the afternoons again, so around 5pm we took refuge there. An hour or two later, they started rolling out their Christmas evening buffet. I was still feeling utterly stuffed from lunch, but.... the garlicky chicken legs smelled just too wonderful to resist.

5) And so to the Pool Bar...
Our favourite little bar was soon getting a bit too packed, so around 9.30 the Chairman and I decided to try and get in a game of pool at the Pool Bar. Our timing was good: the bar was fairly empty when we arrived, so we were able to get on the table almost at once; however, the place started filling up almost immediately after that - with the dreaded 'Rock Star' making an appearance (the guy who's so much better than everyone else that he plays one-handed most of the time, to give you a chance), as well as The Chairman's brother, Terrible Tes, and a couple of young Brits who proved to have very strong games. Ah, where did the next 4 hours go?? Always good times in the Pool Bar! (And, oh my god, Luke has recently bought a new table: well, it looks like he kept the old base, the legs, but it's a complete new top - slate, baize, rails, pockets, everything. And damn, it's playing well. It's rather discombobulating, in fact, to play for once on a dead straight table - no quirky drifts into certain pockets, no tricky variations in the speed of the cloth, no irregular bounces off the cushions. It takes some getting used to, but.... ah, pool heaven. And I think I'm getting my mojo back...)



The day didn't start out so well, but it just got better and better. Bars, I realise, have become not just my home but my family.

HBH 151

The comfort of friends, Music and beer stop the clock. Four in the morning.     Another great night at the Pool Bar.  In fact, a whole succession of them.  I don't know what I'd do without that place.   And the mojo - well, it isn't exactly back, but it feels as though it may be within reach again.  I played some pretty good stuff here and there last night.

Excuses

Or.... The elements of a really miserable session of pool     1)  Lousy weather The third straight day of sunless murk, thoroughly depressing.  And clammily humid as well: my shirt was soaked through by the time I'd walked the three miles to the pool hall.   2)  Insufficient sleep After a couple of days of restorative lie-ins which had finally started to top up my sleep-health account again, I ended up staying up way too late on Friday night (and being unable to sleep in the next morning because of building work going on in one of the apartments downstairs).   3)  A touch of loose bowel Not that I was troubled by a need for bathroom breaks while playing, but it was probably rendering me a tad physically frail, just a little shaky.   4)  Shaggy hair I am well overdue for a trim, and my fringe is starting to hang in front of my eyes - that's always a bit distracting when lining up a shot.  This is one of my oldest excuses for a dip in pool form.... but it is quite true, honestly.   5)  Aches & pains The 'arthritic' pains I've been suffering in my left elbow and right shoulder (the result, I suppose, of carrying heavy bags around with me on holiday in July and August) are finally easing, after 6 or 7 weeks.  But they're still a slight - and very unwelcome - distraction.   6)  Depression Health problems, poor sleeping, the foul, gloomy weather, ongoing vexations with employers, and the mounting lunacy of oppressive 'security' measures prior to next week's 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China have all been dragging my spirits down into the mire over the past week.  Usually I find that my pool form is a sensitive predictor of an approaching crash in my mood.  When I'm already glum - and this is somewhere beyond, beneath glum - I really should stay way from the game: I just don't have the emotional resilience to bounce back from setbacks.   7)  No air-conditioning Or none that was very effective, anyway.  And it took several minutes of wrangling with the fuwuyuan to get him to turn it on at all.  With the level of humidity yesterday, the pool hall was stifling.   8)  An unfamilar table, with exceptionally niggardly pockets Actually, I had played on that table a few times before; but not recently enough for it to seem at all familiar.  And the cut of the pockets - of the middle pockets, especially - was quite savage.  Ordinarily, I am a big middle bag potter - fine cuts and doubles into the middle are one of the big strengths of my game.  I scarcely made a single shot of this kind all afternoon yesterday - although I did miss narrowly, grazing one or the other or both pocket jaws time and time again.  I would judge that the jaws of the middle pockets were at least a quarter of an inch more prominent than usual - and that's a lot.  This was really not the kind of table I needed to be playing on when I'm out of practice and short of confidence.  It's pretty remarkable, really, that given this almost complete inability to make a shot in the middle bags, I managed to win any games at all.   9)  A less than ideal cue I shouldn't complain too much, really.  It had an OK tip, and a nice solid feel to it.  But it wasn't quite perfectly straight, and it didn't have much weight to it.  Again, not a confidence-builder!   10)  A new and 'tufty' surface Our table appeared to have been fairly recently re-covered, and so the baize was thick and a little fluffy.  This kind of surface more readily absorbs moisture in the air, emphasising - in increasingly unpredictable ways - the tendency of the balls to drift off a 'true' line.  (The balls will tend to curve very slightly towards or away from the sides of the table, depending on whether they are rolling with or against 'the nap', the natural grain of the cloth surface.  This effect tends to be exaggerated with new cloth, and/or with very damp air, such as we suffered yesterday.  And it becomes far more inconsistent or random where the cloth has not been brushed regularly, or has not been been brushed in a uniform direction - which, alas, we almost always have to suffer in China.)   11)  The most appalling run of 'bad luck' Really.  Now, I try not to believe in 'luck'; I do try to convince myself that there is a reason - an ultimately controllable reason - for everything that happens on a pool table, and that a bad 'run of the balls' is down to me at the end of the day, perhaps some kind of unconscious self-sabotage.  But even my opponent had to laugh in sympathy at some of the wretchedly unlikely bad breaks I got yesterday.  [From one of my break-off shots, a ball split from the pack heading directly for the centre of the left middle pocket; but it was travelling just a little too fast to drop over the lip, hit the far jaw, bounced across the lip of the pocket, hit the near jaw, and bounced across the lip again, bounced off the far jaw a second time and came to rest in the middle of the pocket, hanging so precarious over the edge that it seemed certain to drop after just another second or two of hesitation; another ball had bounced around all the cushions and was approaching this middle pocket ball from behind, on a perfect line to hit it and nudge it into the pocket; this contact occurred exactly as anticipated, except that the dratted ball again wobbled to and fro along the lip of the pocket, ricocheting off both jaws without dropping in.  I cried.  Whether with laughter or self-pity, it is hard to say.]   12)  A too good opponent I was playing New Dad, my pool nemesis.  I would like to think that, at my best, I have the beating of him.  In fact, in the Pool Bar, I have managed a pretty good record against him - maybe even slightly better than 50-50.  But in this pool hall, the stats are running badly against me.  In a typical two or two-and-a-half hour session, I think I usually win 4 or 5 of the games, and manage another 4 or 5 in which I run him very close (and possibly should win, but don't!); and the other 7 or 8 (or 9 or 10 or...) he just thwoops me.  Yep, I'm struggling to make one game in three against him lately, and that's just pitiful.  Yesterday, I think I may have been even worse than that, perhaps not taking more than one in four.  Throwing away the last game of the session when I was well in front seemed an almost inevitable final insult in the afternoon's catalogue of woes, a bitterly apposite salting of the wounds.       No, in the circumstances I probably should have called an early halt to that dismal humiliation.  Indeed, I perhaps should have ducked out of the rendezvous altogether.   But you know, sometimes, as our American friends have it, you've just got to suck it up.  My feeling about my pool form is so low at the moment that I can see myself quite easily running away from the game for a period of months.  Perhaps even forever.   I can't let that happen.  I've got to keep plugging away.  I've got to learn to deal with the frustration and disappointment.  I've got to rediscover the mojo, however long and painful the search may be.

HBH 147

The table, the bar and the players are the same, but the game is gone.     That dashed elusive mojo!   I thought, for No. 147, you know, it should be something on a pool (snooker, billiards) theme.  I played my first few games back at the good old Pool Bar on Monday, but felt like a stranger in a familiar land.  Most disheartening.

Sympathy with Tom

First night back in the UK, and I found myself once again with old college buddy Ned playing pool in the Pimlico pub where we last bade each other farewell two years ago.

It's a half-size table, and has teeny, teeny balls, but it's a good cloth and a pretty flat surface. And it attracts a coterie of regulars who are all pretty handy (though I didn't recognise anyone from my previous visit).

Ned was not on his usual devastating form, alas (he had a nasty mishap last week and needs to wear a brace on his left wrist for a while). I fretted that I was out of practice, and that my peformance was likely to be impaired by my feeling a bit jet-laggy (having only set foot back on English soil some 6 hours earlier, after catching the redeye out of DC the night before). I wasn't particularly keen to play at all, in fact; was content just to chat with my friend and catch up on the last two years' news.

But Ned insisted on us both trying our hands, and he chalked our names on the blackboard.

The man to beat on this night was a geezer called Bernie, a wizened ancient with a cloth cap and an unkempt gray moustache. Not a man to be underestimated (he had his own cue too - always a warning sign!). He saw off all the younger regulars. I got the impression that his occasional passages of ropey play - well, not ropey, really, but less than perfect - might have been deliberate subterfuge: he didn't like getting ahead early in the game, liked to toy with his opponents a bit. In fact, he usually came from a long way behind to win. Just about every single time. His ability to close out a game under pressure was extremely impressive.

So, I wasn't fancying my chances much when my turn finally came and I was faced with having to overcome the formidable Bernie to 'play on' the table and get the chance to have a game with Ned.

But.... in that first game, somehow I really got into a groove. Despite my lack of familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of the table and the dimensions of the balls, I was playing very, very well - the best I've managed in several months, I would say.

Until the close-out.

I was ahead. I had Bernie in trouble. (Really - I probably gave him his toughest game of the night, and I think he was just slightly rattled about it.) And I had two clear chances to win. Not by any means easy chances. And I didn't fluff them embarrassingly. I couldn't really say that I bottled them. But - by the standards of my play earlier - I could have, should have buried them.... and I didn't. You can't afford to let Bernie off the hook twice. Rats! These things rankle. Thoughts of what might have been follow you around, nagging, tormenting.

Just like poor old Tom Watson on Sunday - so near and yet so far.

Local Rules

Someone over at BeijingBoyce was asking for a definitive account of the local pool rules a little while ago. I attempted to post an answer, but..... well Boyce claims he's been having problems with his comment moderation (although this is just a recent glitch, and I don't think he's posted anything I've left for him this year; so I must assume he's still in a grump with me for likening him to Da Shan during the Olympics - silly man!).

Anyway, I thought I would attempt to address this topic here.

First off, it's pretty silly to suppose that there is any canonical set of rules for any given place. There are huge variations from country to country and city to city, and even within the same city; every venue, almost every single player has an individual concept of what the rules should be.

I give credit to recent opening The Stumble Inn, which is the only place I know which actually posts a comprehensive set of house rules (though in English only, so it can cause some moments of awkwardness with Chinese opponents). Luga's Villa seems to have just posted some rules too, but again in English only, and rather incomplete. Everywhere else, you just have to suss out what the 'regulars' are doing, and/or conduct a friendly negotiation with your opponent before you start.

The rules I like to play are classic, 'old school' UK rules (more specifically, they're probably south Midlands rules, circa late '70s or early '80s). I'd like to call them 'Temple rules', if anyone would get the reference (and there was no danger of people supposing that it was a Freemasons reference!). My buddy The Chairman, when we play each other, likes to lobby for a slight variation which he terms 'Birmingham rules'.

1) Two shots after a foul. (The alternate penalty of taking the cueball in hand and placing it anywhere you wish is a relative novelty in the British game, and is, I imagine, designed to make the games go faster. I suspect that it may also act as something of a leveller, since ball-in-hand is often a bigger advantage to the less skilled player, while better players usually press home more of an advantage from two shots.)

2) The first of the two shots is also a 'free table': i.e., you can play any ball and count it as one of your own. (Problems arising around this rule - Can you also play the black first? I say YES. Does potting a ball other than your own count as a legitimate pot allowing you to continue your break, or is it merely not a foul? I say YES, it's a legitimate pot and you can continue.) Although I don't particularly like this rule, I have learned to accept it.

3) If snookered after a foul, you may reposition the cue ball (behind the line, or in a notional 'D' - proper pool tables should have a 'D' marked on them, but you hardly ever see that anywhere these days) and still have the two shots - and a 'free table', as above. You should have the choice of being able to play one of your own balls if you want to, and still have the full benefit of your opponent's foul penalty.

4) The two shots 'carry': i.e., they allow you to take two consecutive turns at the table. Some people say that you are merely given two opportunities to pot a ball, but that if you pot a ball on your first shot you can only play a single break. That severely limits the impact of the penalty, and I can't see any persuasive logic behind making such a distinction. 'Two shots' should mean 'two breaks'. Simple enough.

5) Lucky pots count (although it is polite to explain your intended shot if you're going to try anything the least bit exotic or unexpected).

6) The black ball can only be legitimately potted in a nominated pocket (but there's no need to 'stick' to the first nominated pocket; you can choose a different pocket every time you take a shot). I don't particularly like this rule, but it's one of the 'Birmingham variations' that the Chairman has foisted upon me.

7) You only get one shot on black - not two - after a foul. Now, I think this is an utterly silly rule. It effectively means there is no penalty at all for your fouls once your opponent is on the black ball. However, it does make it a bit more difficult to close the game out, which is sometimes to my advantage when playing New Dad or The Chairman and battling back from behind.

8) The only 'game foul' is potting the black out of sequence, or knocking the black off the table. Going in-off the black with the cueball results in 'two shots' with the cueball replaced in the 'D' (or behind the line). [Some folks allow respotting the black if it's potted out of sequence or knocked off the table, and I am in sympathy with this approach; it sucks to have a game cut short by an unlucky accident. However, I don't think this has ever been a very common rules variation in any of the countries where I've played, and I've certainly never seen it here in China. On the other hand, many people - Americans, especially - insist that any foul on the black is a game foul.]

9) You can play the cueball backwards when respotting (in the 'D' etc.). It is very, very common to find people who insist that you can't - but there is no compelling logic for that: it is the silliest and most annoying of all pool rule aberrations.

Yes, I think that's all.

Ah, but now...... the common 'Chinese' rules we have to put up with when playing the local pool sharks.

a) No 'slop', as our American friends say. All pots must be called in advance, and lucky shots don't count (they're not treated as fouls, but your break comes to an end).

b) Ball in hand after a foul (but only one shot - well, ball in hand and two shots would be a bit crazy!).

c) It is not a foul to pot one of your opponent's balls (but you do have to hit one of your own balls first). I HATE this rule. [You also occasionally come across Chinese players who claim that the black ball belongs to both players, and it is thus not a foul to hit the black ball first. I think they're just trying it on....]

d) It is a foul if you do not drive at least one ball to a cushion with every shot (sometimes you even encounter a really hardcore version that holds you must drive a ball to a cusion after first contact; it's not enough to play the cueball off a cushion on to one of your balls). I hate, HATE, HATE this rule: it makes it almost impossible to play many kinds of safety shot or to attempt long slow pots.

e) You cannot lay claim to spots or stripes until the first pot after the break. If you make a pot from the break, you can take a further shot - with a free table (i.e., any pots you make from the break don't actually count). Bizarre.

So, there you have it. Chinese rules are pretty fucked up, and take quite some getting used to. I always prefer to play by my old-style UK rules, if I can (which is pretty much what they have at the Stumble, god bless 'em). However, they are not the worst I've ever encountered: there are a lot of places in Sydney where there are no fouls, and deliberate foul play (especially potting of your opponent's balls) is an integral part of the tactics; I found it impossible to get my head around that.

Even after 6 years of playing pool here (and 2 years of playing regularly in the Pool Bar) I'm still learning new wrinkles in the local rules from Chinese opponents. I sometimes suspect they're making them up as they go along. I like to joke that these are perhaps 'Tianjin rules'; it's quite common where I come from to gently mock obscure, unlikely, or unheard of new rules by suggesting that they must originate from a neighbouring town or city (much as the inhabitants of The Simpsons' home of Springfield disparage everything about nearby Shelbyville). The Chairman is similarly disdainful of 'Coventry rules'.

Why we play pool

I bought myself a copy of The Hustler up in Harbin a year ago, but I only just got around to watching it again.

I suppose "Fast Eddie" Felson might rank as one of my 'Unsuitable Role Models'.

Here's his great - inspirational - speech about how he feels when he's playing the game.

"I just had to show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when it's great, when it's really great. You know, like anything can be great. Anything can be great. I don't care; bricklaying can be great, if a guy knows... if he knows what he's doing and why, and if he can make it come off. When I'm goin', I mean, when I'm really goin', I feel like a... like a jockey must feel. He's sitting on his horse, he's got all that speed and that power underneath him, he's coming into the stretch, the pressure's on him, and he knows... just feels... when to let it go and how much. 'Cause he's got everything working for him: timing, touch. It's a great feeling, boy, it's a real great feeling - when you're right and you know you're right. It's like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. The pool cue's part of me, you know; it's... the pool cue, it's got nerves in it. It's a piece of wood; it's got nerves in it! Feel the roll of those balls. You don't have to look, you just know. You can make shots that nobody's ever made before."

And, of course, immediately after that, his kooky girlfriend Sarah, suitably impressed, comments, "You're not a loser, Eddie. You're a winner. Most men never get to feel that way about anything."

It's a great, great film. And, while not being anything like the player that "Fast Eddie" was (nor half the player that Paul Newman was, either), I do know that feeling.

The Three Pint Rule

My recent sufferings at the Pool Bar - unable to 'find' my game without the mild alcohol-befuddlement with which I usually approach the table - have reminded me of one of my key early theories of playing the game: The 'Three Pint' Rule.

I first proclaimed this theory way back in my undergraduate days, during the golden era of my favourite-ever bar, The Temple in East Oxford. It wasn't much of a 'theory', really, in that it did not aspire to any general applicability. It was merely an observation on myself: I tended to play my best pool during or shortly after my third pint of the evening.

I speculated that perhaps this was an ideal amount of alcohol to have on board in order to lubricate the joints, focus the mind, and conjure the fickle goddess of the pool table. It's enough to settle any nerves, relax any stiffness, and start booting into touch the cares and distractions of the working day; but not enough to impair vision or balance.

In fact, though, I suspect it really had rather less to do with the drink per se than with playing oneself in. In those days, I'd typically have a raging thirst on me by the time we got to the first drink of the evening (not least because The Temple didn't open until 7pm..... and not a very prompt 7pm either): Pint No. 1 would usually disappear in under 15 minutes, sometimes in barely 10; Pint No. 2 would go in under 20, and Pint No. 3 in not very much more. After that, I'd settle into a less frenetic rhythm of about 1 pint every 25 minutes; and in the later stages of the evening, when I started to feel 'the bloat', that might slow down to 1 every 30 minutes or so.

So, I'd typically be starting my 'magical' third pint within 30 or 40 minutes of arrival, and finishing just before the hour mark. Since my pals and I would usually start playing pool straight away, I might have got two or three games under my belt already in that time. It was enough to find my rhythm and composure, to judge the speed of the cloth, to get used to any daily quirks of the table (that table in The Temple was a remarkably consistent one; but any table has quirks - variations in the drift of the nap, the bounce of the cushion rails, the characteristics of the 'rattle' in the pocket jaws - that change from week to week and day to day with subtle shifts in the temperature, humidity, etc.). Enough time, too - assuming I was playing reasonably well, and winning - to build up some confidence.

And then, of course, it was between 7.30 and 8.00 that the first of the formidable regulars would start to show up, and it might be on my third or fourth pint that I would face my first real test of the evening in trying to defeat one of them. I think that challenge tended to raise my game, gave me the extra focus that I've always tended to lack when just playing against friends.

So, yes, probably it didn't have that much to do with the alcohol at all. But it became a kind of superstition with me. In many other bars over the last 20 years I've found that my game just doesn't quite click when I start playing sober; that I need to be feeling the first sharp buzz of alcohol before things come together.

And maybe there is something about getting that buzz on.... After the first hour of drinking, I tend to slow down to a rate of consumption where I can - more or less - metabolise my alcohol as fast as I'm drinking it. In that first hour, though, I almost always significantly exceed that tolerance (and the liver probably takes a little while to kick in and get up to speed in disposing of the toxins I'm chucking at it)..... and so I quickly start to get just very mildly, rather pleasantly drunk. Thereafter, if I'm careful about my drinking and keep my wits about me, I can maintain myself in that mellow zone for quite a few hours, without succumbing to too much of the degeneration in mental function or physical coordination which drunkenness proper brings with it. And it is this (crucially alcohol-assisted) happily relaxed and carefree mood in which I invariably seem to play my best pool.

These days I think I probably need to adapt the 'rule' to take account of my slightly declining alcohol tolerance, and of the fact that I am very seldom drinking pints any more. As a broad guideline, though, it still holds good: I know that I need to shove a few drinks down my throat in quick succession before I can show my best stuff with the cue.

Froog on abstinence

Last night, one of my drinking buddies was taunting me by SMS about my current foolhardy attempt to refrain from alcohol for a month.

"How is sobriety treating you?" he quizzed me.

"Like a nagging bitch girlfriend," I replied, ruefully.

Actually, it hasn't been all that bad. Once I'd re-set my daily habits, purged myself of various rather-too-deeply-ingrained impulses (a beer or two with every meal out, a whisky whenever my throat's playing up a bit, a large brandy & coke every time I watch a DVD, etc.), I quickly settled into a new, alcohol-free routine, and have been scarcely bothered by cravings or regrets at all (I wish I could say the same about all my ex-girlfriends!). It might have been - would have been - otherwise if there were any special party events I'd had to pass up as a result of this stern self-commandment.... but it's been an utterly dead month on the party front.

There are three main drawbacks I've found with this new teetotal regime:

1) Without the anaesthesia of alcohol, my sensitive throat finds it very difficult - nearly impossible - to tolerate the heavily smoky atmosphere of most Beijing bars.

2) My pool game has deserted me: I just don't know how to play sober!

3) Music, and bar life in general, are not quite such fun without the familiar accompaniment - I should say, enhancement - of alcohol. I feel inappropriately, uncomfortably hyper-alert, easily bored, and often self-conscious about what to do with my under-occupied hands. Time has a tendency to elongate rather wearyingly. As I observed last night, "Who knew there were so many minutes in a week?!"

Last night at the Pool Bar....

"I just lost (twice!) to a girl who can barely play. I think I made the classic Chairman mistake of allowing myself to be distracted by the sexy boots."

Ah, well - so long as we can learn from our mistakes!