Snooker with friends and a Hustler, Isaan Thailand.

The last few days have been uninteresting. I have been tired of late from nights watching football and The Masters golf tournament. I have been staying up till 6am since Wednesday. I will be happy after this morning, it is now 1.34am and when The Masters has finished for another year.

Tonight my friends and I ventured to a snooker hall. I hadn’t been here for a long time and the football on tonight wasn’t interesting to us.

This was my partner for the first game, my mate Keith. He was a bit of a dark horse as he said he couldn’t play and I had never seen him play before.

My other Aussie mate, Barry or Bazza was a worry. He was in opposition against me and he had told us stories of years ago when he was a hustler. He had travelled about Australia with a mate hustling in pubs making a few dollars. So he was a big worry as I too had never seen him play before.

And Big John was accompanying Bazza, John was a snake in the grass as he too had never played snooker with me before.

So the stage was set for some fun. The tables were full size. When you actually play on one it is pretty daunting as from end to end is a long way. Bazza looked the goods early, as in the way he studied the shots, each shot was meticulously thought through. At times there were some accusations of slow play.

I have never been a great snooker player. I was lucky as we had a pool table when I was growing up and did get to play a lot but this didn’t help my game. Our table was just the normal pub size but I remember hours of fun playing pool games.

Early on the scoring was very lopsided. It wasn’t the pool shark setting the pace though as his eye was out apparently. John offered to knock it in for him but he politely declined.

The game was a good tussle as everyone was trying to get used to the huge table and also get some feeling back in holding a pool cue. Of course the game went to the good guys. Here we are celebrating the first victory of the night.

The final score was a blowout as you can see. I do admit that there were more than a few lucky shots in this score but nether the less we took the chances.

Bazza and John decided to take us on again, two more times and again my partner and I won. The scores were a lot closer the next two games with only a few points separating us.

The last game I teamed up with Bazza, it was Aussies against the Poms. The game was a ripper and it came down the final ball, the black. I am very happy to say that the Aussies won a hard fought game that contained plenty of slander and lots of ribbings.

As for Bazza hustling his way around Australia, he was either very good 30 odd years ago and has forgotten how to play or the people he hustled were bloody terrible players. Maybe I am being a little harsh as Bazza hasn’t picked up a cue for many moons and maybe with a little time, 4 or 5 years he will get rid of all the rust and then maybe we can hustle our way around Thailand.

Brunty