ABBEY LANE · MOULDING · CANTEEN · 12.20
Squidger's the fat one, thirty-five mil, under your hand. Winks are the twenty-twos on the baize. You press the squidger down on the edge of a wink and drag back, and when you let go the wink goes. It does not go because you pushed it. Nothing pushes it. You bend it.
Here's the whole of it and then I'll stop. The squidger's rim comes down on the wink's edge and pins that edge to the felt. The far side of the disc bows up off the mat. When the rim slips the bow lets go and the wink leaves along the line of the bow. So the angle is set by one thing only — how far in from the rim you pressed. Not by how hard. Not by the drag.
On the lip, within a millimetre — seventy to eighty degrees. Straight up, comes down about a hand's width away. That's your shot when there's a pile between you and where you want to be, and it is no good for anything else. In a third of the way — call it seven mil — eighteen, twenty degrees, and it runs four times as far and you can aim it to a couple of degrees. Past the middle and it won't bow at all. It'll just shuffle sideways under the squidger and that's a nothing shot, and it still costs you one off the count.
The drag is energy. That's all it is. Long drag, more stored, further it goes at the angle you already chose. You can loft the same height with any power you like. Learn that and you've learned the game.
Felt is not a table. A wink that comes down flat sinks its rim into the nap and it is finished within a centimetre — all that energy goes straight into the pile of the cloth. A wink that comes down on its edge keeps its spin, and the nap steers it, and it will run. Off the near end it goes and it stays off. Out of play, no bringing it back, and Terry has done it twice this dinner hour.
The nap on this one's brushed round in an arc in front of the pot, from the last four matches, and it wants brushing the other way before Thursday. Runs anticlockwise if you land on edge inside about sixteen inches of the pot. Aim off for it or don't land on edge.
Now. Potting doesn't win matches. Squopping does. Land your wink so any part of it covers any part of one of his — three millimetres will do it — and that wink is frozen, because only the top disc of a pile may be played. He can't touch it. He can't play round it. It is out of the match until somebody lifts off it.
So the first half of a match is you getting your colour on top of everybody's, and the last two minutes is you potting. That's why I've got four of Terry's under and he's got one of mine and he's four in the pot and losing.
Piles are real stacks and they have an order. Play the top disc off a two-high and the one underneath is exposed and free and it's somebody's next shot. Which is why breaking a squop beats making one, every time, and why if you pot an easy one when there's a two-high sat there I shall say something. And if the pile's deep and you can't get on it, you blast the whole thing — boondock — the lot of them across the mat, your position gone, his position gone, and everybody starts again. It's not a nice shot. It's the only answer.
These came off our own eight-cavity tool this morning and the yellows are wrong. Spec thickness is 1.6. They're coming off at 2.0. That cavity's running hot and short of clamp and I'm not getting it changed before Friday, so I've marked them and we're playing them.
It is not cosmetic. Point four proud does three things. It sits taller in every pile, so a pile with a yellow in it stands out of the felt and a squidger's leading edge gets under it easy — that's a gift to whoever's shooting at you. It's a bigger target side-on. And its centre of mass is up here instead of down there, so when it goes over the rim of the pot it tips on the rim and comes back out. Watch it. Pot a red, pot a yellow, and count. You'll get it out of the numbers before you get it out of me.
The pot's got a wall and the wall is real. Come in flat and fast and you'll hit the inside of the rim and jump back out onto the baize. Come in steep and slow and it drops. A wink resting against the outside of the wall can't be played the ordinary way at all — you have to crawl it up the outside, a millimetre at a time, and that's three shots gone.
And the nurdle: a shot played to travel almost nothing, that finishes half a millimetre off the base of the pot. Nobody can squop that. To cover it they'd have to land in the pot themselves. Best shot on the mat and it looks like you've missed.
Winifred Pargeter, shot weights, second floor. Playing left-handed because the right one's got a thumb on it from Tuesday. Terry Ollerenshaw, toolroom, plays with the whole arm and wonders why they go off the end.
Hooter at one. There's another match tomorrow.
TWENTY PAST TWELVE · ABBEY LANE · WET
Green baize over two stacked pallets, weighted at the corners with shot-weight slugs. Don't lean on the near end, it rocks.
Press the squidger down on the edge of a wink, drag back, let go. How far in from the rim you press sets the angle — on the lip it pops near vertical, a third of the way in it skids flat and far. The drag only sets how hard.
Only the top disc of a pile can be played. Six minutes, twenty-four shots.