Joe Davis grew up in the Queen's Hotel in Chesterfield, a long-demolished pub his ex-miner father was landlord of, which is where he honed his cue skills on its full size snooker table. The pub according to the photo of it in the piece was owned by the Mansfield Brewery which was taken over and shut down by Marstons with production of its beers being moved to Wolverhampton.
Pubs and games such as billiards, snooker and darts have of course a long association. I'm trying to remember a pub scene in a novel set in 1930's England - by Graham Greene or Patrick Hamilton possibly - in which a character demonstrates how to play endless cannons in billiards.
I thought this to be about the game bar billiards. I found an old bar billiards table still in use in the Kings Head in Norwich last weekend when I was there for the CAMRA AGM.
ReplyDeleteYes, sorry about my pun.
DeleteI've found the literary reference to billiards in a pub too: it's the small boy Ella the barmaid is looking after in Patrick Hamilton's The Plains of Cement.