Chopsticks vs full-sized snooker: a no-score draw

As any young male who has experienced both will know, those anguished opening stabs at mastering the use of chopsticks are very much like one’s first attempt at full-sized snooker: only when actually poised over the table does the peculiar impossibility of the task become apparent.

In either spotlit setting — the smoke-soured malice of the snooker hall; the imposing pedantry of the restaurant — a series of heady initial grapples yield a deceptively comforting return: given a full plate, or a full set of balls, something’s going to go in the right hole.

All too soon, however, the challenge has taken on the nature of a slippery fish: very much out of one’s hands at all times.

Even a lucky virgin’s slice of some blind, first-time prowess only accelerates the poor miscreant into the deep, uncharted waters which inevitably await. Forty painful minutes later, just as that last, lonely red has been hacked off four cushions to no avail for the eighth time, your half-full slush of uncooperative noodle ends has metamorphosised into a face-reddening social blackspot.

Aloof and scornful, the unconquerable vastness of the green baize goads you. The impenetrable matrix of half-submerged vegetables winks mockingly back.

By now, much like your chances of success, your protective sheen of self-deprecatory jokes has whittled away: beginner’s slack has been replaced by taut silence. The smirks of the snooker hall regulars mirror the grins of exultant waiters. They know it and you know it: you’re a shitbrick schoolboy; a shrinkwrapped pretender.

But you cannot concede defeat. You have to press on…