I step back from the bar in some alarm. At this point I am unaware of the situation, and all that I see is a balding man with bared teeth. He makes some ‘yes! Yes!’ noises, and orders a pint.

A scoresheet is thrust in my direction. I study it, intrigued.

We have won a snooker match!!! I blink at the figures.

We have won a snooker match!!! The scores are there in black and white, and do not lie. This is a crazy situation. We are possibly the worst snooker club that have ever picked up cues. This is a ludicrous situation.

It is typical. I drop out for one single match, and we only go and win it. Blimey. We’d have absolutely thrashed them had I been playing, surely.

Starting the snooker club this year was just one of those stupid things we did. None of us can remotely play snooker. But Colin had been reassuring, being the sole remaining link to the original Village snooker club that had existed years back.

“We were always crap,” he had promised. “Utterly crap. Renowned for it. In fact I can’t think that we ever won a match. Ever.”

It is a shame when such a long-established 100% record falls. Something has been lost that cannot be regained, like a horse’s virginity. The Chipper Barman disappears off to the back room to photocopy the result for mounting somewhere.

“Who were they?” I puzzle, referring to the opposition. It seems inconceivable that anybody else could be worse than us. Even the hard-nosed sports reporters at the local paper take pity on us, and only print the top eight in the league table.

There are nine teams in the league.

It is an odd way to end the year, and perhaps a good omen for the next. If we can achieve this win, then there’s no reason why the Arabs and Israelis can’t pull their finger out and achieve world peace, along with the climate problem and the whales.