Pro Pool Player

16th February 2007

Managed to drag myself out of bed on time for work for probably the first time this week, funnily enough on one of the least important days of the week too. No need for the whole shirt and tie job as today was staff development day at college, meaning there were no students so was a day to chill out - although we are officially supposed to go on training courses. We had one scheduled for 2-4pm so that was enough for me.

I had planned to get some more coursework done today but never got any started. I was easily distracted at the start of the day playing paper basketball before heading down to the diner for a morning of pool. I started off well beating James twice before then surprisingly losing to Stu ;). Stu then surprisingly beat James ;) before I got my revenge on him by almost clearing up on the break. I then beat Paul from the AV team and went on to win about 3 or 4 more games before letting Stu and James play each other.

We chilled in the early afternoon on YouTube checking out comedy skits - I managed to find a Harry Enfield sketch I had been searching for over the past year or more!

We were all eagerly looking forward to this afternoon's football. Stuart is playing again and this time James was gonna join in too. Note, it is James' last day at college today as he is an agency temp covering for Robert, who has been ill for 15 or so months but has recently returned.

Me and Stu and the rest of our department headed up to our training course on 'Managing Challenging Behaviour'. A waste of time if you ask me, I'm perfectly capable of doing it. Basically, you start by getting any lippy student in a headlock and proceed to beat them to a bloody pulp :)

The course was thankfully cut short at about 3:20 by a power cut. The tutor tried to continue with paper based handouts before we were told the college was being closed altogether and we could all leave. This was great as far as the course was concerned but sucked ass cos we were all proper looking forward to the staff football. I had practiced all week the different tricks I was gonna dazzle everyone with this week and even more dissapointingly I wouldn't get a chance to kick lumps out of James on his last day as he brought with him a filthy Man United shirt.

We duely headed for the nearest pub after leaving college although this too was without power so we ventured a little further to the Talbot. We got a drink apeice and was gonna shoot some more pool when some guys from college started playing on the dartboard which is foolishly positioned at the base of the pool table meaning we would all get in each others way.

We found a spot to sit down and chilled for a while. This included the distraction of James so Stu could steal his phone and send random 'I love you ' type text messages to a girl who had been paying James some attention in recent weeks - although James denies he likes her, he knows he wants her ;)

We finally got on the pool table where I beat Emma - not my Emma, but a colleague from HR who had joined us. I beat her twice before then almost beating her a third time but sank the white as well as the black :(. Some old guys then challenged us to doubles and I was well up for beating on the elderly! Like they serve any other purpose! They were both pretty damn good players and you could tell they played regularly. In fact one of them was a regular in the pubs pool team.

I thought I would have to play damn well as I would be carrying Emma at first as she's not a great player but gave it a really good go. We won as partners twice which was impressive considering the standards of the old guys. James then took Emma's place and we then played about anohter 5 more doubles matches, winning 3 and losing 2 - both because we potted the black and white at the same time so we almost won 7-0! I had to say I had the night of my life and it was noticed as I was asked to consider joining the pubs pool team. How cool's that!? I'm actually considering it as it'll be something else to do one evening per week and won't be too expensive. Plus I used to play for a local pub team and really enjoyed it but I left when we moved to the next village where I developed lazybastarditis. I had always considered rejoining the team, especially since I passed my driving test but the pub had changed and I knew many of the players in the pool team were n00bs so couldn't be arsed playing with them.

I'll give it some thought next week, maybe even nip in to speak to the landlord about it and consider joining. The pubs also across from Stu's house so he could come have a drink with me if I join. I know I do wanna join now lol. Just gotta see if it will be too much of a hassle or if it does actually fit into my already pretty hectic schedule, what with football and work et all.

After whipping the old guys asses we reverted back to singles where I foolishly lost to James having potted the first 6 balls! My game started to go downhill a bit then, maybe cos I wasn;t as determined to win so was just going for daft quick shots but it was all good fun nevertheless. James left us to go to work so mr and Stu chatted for a bit until we realised we were well under-dressed as all of the 'after workers' had now been replaced by the 'its Friday night, so gonna get wrecked-ers'.

I headed off home, knackered and starving, calling into the chippy for a kebab on the way. Was a good day all round except for the lack of footy. Hated that :(. Now looking forward to the weekend of footy with my lads. Tomorrow away at Shirebrook. Rival match! They are like 9 positions and about 18 points in front of us having only played a game more than us but weirdly enough they've only scored 2 more goals than us. Looks like we'll be in for a close game and I'm confident we can knick something, they ain' that great. Then on Sunday, the championship decider! Come on Ripley!!