MIKE EDWARDS
LAST weekend we visited Ceredigion again.
This time, there was no funeral, wedding, or gathering of the clan.
This time, it was a weekend away for me, the missus, and Mitzi the Mutt.
The weather decided to open with sarcasm. After months of seemingly incessant rainfall, the sun shone, fluffy white clouds were high in the blue sky, and a pleasant breeze took the edge off the sun’s heat.
True, there were puddles at the side of the road, and the verges looked soaked, but you might almost have confused the weather with the onset of Spring.
Booking a static caravan always carries risks.
Some owners like to label their pied- a- terre with names like “ShangriLa” and “Utopia”. You have to wonder what the miserable place in some people’s lives is like if a tin hut on bricks wedged among identical tin huts on bricks is paradise on earth.
Others like to fill them with “endearing” personal touches so that their interiors resemble an explosion in a particularly tacky seaside gift shop. Then there are the solar lights, the little windmills that light up at night and wheel away, producing those prostate- provoking trickles of water that give the wee small hours their name, and plastic plants festooned with little lights that flash all the colour of an epilepsyinducing rainbow.
Our weekend base was mercifully free of knick- knackery and tiresome illumination.
Once I’d unloaded the car and taken an eager Mitzi for a relieving walk, I returned to our weekend billet.
My darling had made a mug of
Glengettie and opened a packet of chocolate biccies. It was bliss.
And then she turned on the television.
There was snooker. My wife is quite the snooker fan. I cannot imagine why she finds the spectacle of poorlyshaven men wearing tootight trousers bending over a table to play with balls fascinating. Nevertheless, she does.
I asked if Ray Reardon was still playing, and she looked at me with barely concealed contempt and rolled her eyes. Apparently, it was someone called Kyren Wilson.
What happened to snooker players with sensible names, like Doug, Ray, Cliff, Terry, or Fred?
You know where you are with a Doug, don’t you?
Doug is a name that speaks of twenty Kensitas, a pint of Worthington E and a Workingmen’s Club in Tredegar.
Kyren - it rhymes with “siren” - sounds like a contestant on Britain’s Got the Love Island Celebrity Voice Get Me Out of Here on Ice.
Kyren the Siren was the favourite to win the tournament. He had all the right attributes. Kyren had the dead-eyed expression and ghastly pallor of someone who’d spent a long time in darkened rooms relentlessly practising his craft and honing his skill. A bit like Dracula, but without the million- dollar smile.
The re ’ s determination. There’s grim- faced determination. There’s the overpowering will to win. But if going around with a face like a slapped arse is an essential part of one’s career, I’ll stick to the undoubted joy and adrenaline rush of accountancy.