Snooker

After econometrics class this afternoon the economics team was standing around deciding what to do. It was decided we should go play snooker, an English cousin of billiards, if you don't know what it is.

I've never played snooker, but back when Grace and I were studying in Ireland they played the world championship on television for days on end. It's like eight ball, only on a much, much bigger table with smaller balls and smaller pockets and more balls and different rules. When Mike and I were in Hong Kong there were snooker tables in the basement but we were overwhelmed by the seemingly endless rules to the game when we looked it up online.

So we went to the Cambridge Union and up to the snooker room. The snooker room used to be something else probably. One whole wall was shelves of books, some of them ancient, ancient. The newest ones were from the seventies. They were not arranged lovingly, but stacked and crammed onto the shelves in any way they could. If you looked closely at the titles they were all pulp fiction or outdated science books. It was a like a graveyard for books that have no relevance anymore. Another wall was shelves of even older books, most of them music scores.

Anyway, the only lighting for this room were the two hanging fixtures over the two massive snooker tables - the tables were seriously as big as four pool tables. So, with daylight saving time, it was night by 5:30. So it was really dark, the only light was from the snooker tables and the city outside. And outside the windows happened to be all these ancient building - old colleges, one of the oldest churches in Cambridge and so on.

The clock in the room was stopped at twenty past seven and looked as if it had been stopped that way for a long time. While we were there, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. When we left, we walked by old black and white photographs of people in 1920's outfits eating at the restaurants and bars in the lower floor of the Union. The people were different, but the tables and set up were the same.

Nothing changes in that place, and I was a little creeped out by that.