I gaze across the remains of my fifty-seventh pint in blank wonder.

The deciding black ball judders in the jaws and comes to rest immediately over the pocket; the white sits eight inches away at maximum. The player’s head drops momentarily down, resting in despair on his forearm, then he stands briskly and walks sadly from the table, shaking his head.

John Twonil picks up his cue, a cue that he’d not expected to need again this evening, steps up to the baize and it is history in the making.

My fifty-eighth pint arrives courtesy of Big A, who sits beside me muttering in astonishment. None of us know how it has come to this. The Village Snooker Club has always been officially the worst in Norfolk – that is not just idle description, but has been confirmed by countless league officials, historical records, and elderly blokes who are able to recall ‘you always used to be crap as well’.

It has become a source of some pride.

And yet, here we are, in the final, at Finals Night. On the last black, which the opposition have well and truly left. I consider sidling across to their player and inviting him to join.

It is, in many ways, incredible.

Granted, many of us are a bit better than we were last year. John Twonil himself, and the Doctor. The Chipper Barman, Short Tony and Big A have always shown excellent potential, and Mick has always been a stellar act when he is not being a Stella act. Admittedly Eddie and myself have yet to convert much of our enthusiasm into many actual frames or, come to think of it, many actual points, and have found ourselves beneath the second ‘continued on a separate sheet of paper’ point on the league rankings. But we have the foundations of being good players, ie a cue and some chalk.

The beer is very good. I will stop drinking it soon.

The beer might be part of the problem. It is a very sociable league, one which involves drinking several pints of beer so as not to appear rude. I can’t remember who it was said that making love after drinking several pints of beer is like ‘playing snooker with a rope’; unfortunately I find that playing snooker after drinking several pints of beer is also like playing snooker with a rope. Before I have the second pint I am just like O’Sullivan or Hendry, but there you go. It is just circumstances.

I do not make love after playing snooker, as I am always too pissed to open the wardrobe and get the rope.

But I am part of it – a key part. And although I was inexplicably not picked for the actual team for this Finals Night, this incredible, inexplicable, inconceivable, incomprehensible success is also my success.

“So,” I slur at John Twonil when the embarrassed silence has all but concluded. “Would it make you feel better if we repeatedly said stuff like ‘don’t worry about it, it was more difficult than it looked’ or would you prefer it if we never mentioned it again, ever?”

“I don’t really care – I’ll still feel crap,” he mutters.

Order is restored. The snooker season closes. Bowls starts on Friday.

“No – you try some.”

There is a billowing eruption of peer pressure. Alan finally cracks, and places the very tip of his little finger in the glob of chili sauce left on the lid of the bottle, before tentatively dabbing it on his tongue.

“AWAWAWWWWAAAAARAWWWW!!!” he screams, clutching his face. Odd looks traverse the bar.

Norfolk is full of well-to-do people here for the horse things. We always try to welcome visitors to the Village Pub nicely, as it is good to make people feel at home. The Well-Spoken Barman is struggling on his own tonight, trying to juggle the efficient pouring of things with tonic water with attempting to get us to try the specialist chili sauce that he has got off the Internet as revenge on a customer who criticised his Bloody Mary recipe.

“Thank you sir – on the bill for room six?” he asks politely.

“You try,” I ask Big A. For an enormous man, he is a big softie – the sort of man who would take his chicken to the vet.

“He won’t do it – this is the man who took his chicken to the vet,” scoffs John Twonil. “Go on – I’ll have a go.”

“Too right I won’t.”

“It’s only like having a really hot vindaloo – only a bit hotter.”

“But I only ever order a korma.”

John Twonil tries the chili sauce. He is too urbane to start screaming and swearing, but gives the impression that he may scream and swear understatedly a bit later on, perhaps via his Blackberry. His eyes buggle nevertheless, like in cartoons.

Two visitors sit with a black labrador in the corner. The man approaches us nervously.

“Excuse me,” he says. “Do you live here? We’re looking to visit the heritage railway that runs in…”

“Haveabitofthisgoongoontryit,” we insist, waving the bottle at him.

“I don’t think…” he begins, but the eyes of his wife and his dog are upon him.

“Fuck, fuck! Shit!” he cries, as I tell him useful information about the heritage railway. Following this, I have a go. It is hot, a heat that starts as a fierce spot on the tongue and, just as you are getting used to that, spreads round to every corner of the mouth and throat, clinging like napalm chewing gum. But I grew up in Essex, so I ask for some more.

“I am not trying it. I’m seriously not trying it,” says Big A.

More visitors. The Well-Spoken Barman is away changing a barrel, and there is a flurry of received pronunciation tuts at the three-minute delay. Mrs John Twonil gives barmaidship a go, filling two pint glasses, a wine glass and several drip trays.

Big A tries the chili sauce.

In addition to an interesting heritage railway, it is well-known that one of the traditional sights of Norfolk in Easter is a man with his face exploding. The visitors regard this with wary interest. He downs his cooking lager in two gulps and looks wildly around for more.

“I always find,” says Eddie, “that smoking a cigarette helps if you’ve eaten something hot.”

Big A shoots through the doors to light a cigarette. He is back two minutes later, features contorted in misery.

“My eyes! I’ve got it in my eye!”

He stomps round the bar in the pits of his distress. Heritage Railway Man is still coughing. Big A disappears off once more, this time for the toilets, the emergency cooking lager having worked its way through.

A well-dressed party enter, destined for the restaurant. They look at us, askance. I give them a nice smile, and have a bit more chili sauce, as I grew up in Essex.

Big A reappears at the door, staggering, crying, casting an enormous shadow across the room.

“THE END OF MY COCK’S ON FIRE!!!” he bellows through tears of distress.

“Table for four, sir?” asks the Well-Spoken Barman.

The Village Shop has been going from strength to strength since my extensive multi-channel leafleting campaign.

I am pleased to see it doing so well. They have a good combination of standard things that people need and finer things that might make them a small profit. I always nose around the displays whilst my pint of milk is being rung up on the sophisticated electronic till.

Something stops me in my tracks.

“What,” I ask, very slowly and carefully, “is this?”

The Village Shop lady looks up from her transaction.

“It’s mustard!”

I stare at her, and then stare at the three jars in front of me, given a prominent position above the pork chops. “It is German mustard. In the pot the shape of a beer glass. German mustard.” I wave my hands helplessly around the shop. “People do not come in here to buy German mustard. Not even the tourists.”

She purses her lips. “Well Granville brought it in from the cash and carry this morning – he was very proud of finding it.”

“It is German mustard, in a pot the shape of a beer glass. How many of these do you expect to sell?!?”

“All of them!”

I shake my head in exasperation and read the label carefully.

“It’s from Aldi!” I boggle at her. “You are trying to sell, on your premium display, three items of German mustard, in pots the shape of beer glasses, from Aldi. You cannot sell stuff from Aldi in here. It is the Lidl Lidl.”

“It’s not from Aldi is it? Where does it say that?”

“I tell you what,” I offer generously. “I will give you half price for this now. That way it will save you time when the sell-by date expires and you have to mark it down to half price.”

She turns this down, offended. I don’t know. I try to help people with the benefit of my extensive retailing knowledge but they just won’t be told.

The next morning I go to the Village Shop once more, to buy bread and a newspaper. I glance over to the display. Only two pots remain.

And a shriek of pain.

The old half of the Cottage plunges into darkness; the sharp sound of glass scattering is followed by the crunch of feet treading it into the floor. Through the corridor, drifting into my startled nostrils, wisps the unmistakable aroma of burning hair.

“Short Tony is on the Wii,” I sigh to myself.

I am not saying that the Wii Fit has been a white elephant, but as something that has fulfilled its promise it does approach the status of a Millenium Dome that’s been filled from top to bottom with an assortment of Hummers, flavoured Kit-Kats, the BBC 3-D flying weathermap and fifteen boxes of DAB Digital radios, all painted white and fitted with a large trunk. There comes a point when abuse about your weight has ground you down so much that you are just afraid to step on to the thing, and so the balance board is gathering dust in the corner.

Quite heavy dust, I would imagine, should I use it again.

“I’ve had a bit of an accident,” informs Short Tony, limping ruefully into the kitchen, his head slightly smoking.

However, I have to say that the game where you have to hold the control things and dance along to the Jackson 5 is endlessly entertaining. As I have mentioned before, I was a bit disappointed to find that modern video games didn’t all consist of running people over in fast cars and murdering prostitutes, as it says in the papers, but – for me – dancing along to the Jackson 5 is a pretty close second, even if it doesn’t match the games of the classic era. If they could have a game where you danced along to the Jackson 5 whilst climbing things and avoiding barrels being rolled at you by a big gorilla then frankly that would be gold dust. But there is no imagination amongst developers today.

“I’d better get a dustpan and brush,” I tell him, as he puts out his head.

I clear up most of the glass after resetting the fusebox. Short Tony apologises about the light fittings. The LTLP returns home. There are some awkward explanations.

There is an undercurrent of conflict. The Toddler does not want to eat her Big Soup.

“I cooked that for you especially,” I warn her. “You said that you wanted some soup, so I went to the cupboard, and I got out a tin of soup, and I showed you the tin, which has a picture of soup on it and the word ‘SOUP’, which I spelled out letter by letter, and I put it into a saucepan, and I cooked it.”

“I went to all that effort,” I continue. “So you are going to eat it.”

The Toddler dons her strop expression, sitting motionless with a face like a slapped arse. I am not prepared to compromise, especially as her contribution is just “don’t want my soup.” If she had bothered to be a bit more articulate with something like “daddy, this soup is essentially shit and a truly worthless nutritional exercise,” then I would be more sympathetic. But no.

I do not back down. She does not back down.

“I’m sorry,” I state finally. “You have to eat your soup. There are children starving in Africa.”

I have used the children starving in Africa line!!! This is a first for me. I immediately worry that I am being culturally imperialist, and perpetuating negative stereotypes which will stick with her for the rest of her life. I wander over to the laptop and put on ‘Drive’ by The Cars to emphasise the soup point.

The Toddler picks at her soup. “I tell you what,” I say. “If you eat your soup, I’ll change the music to that song from Disneyland about dreaming it.”

She eats her soup. I put on the song from Disneyland about dreaming it. I die inside.