The pink wobbles and falls into the pocket’s hungry clutch.

My opponent, who is very good and who plays off scratch, looks agape. Then his shoulders slump, as if he has just been passed a note revealing that his wife is having an affair with eccentric weather forecaster Rob McElwee.

“Look – you’re going to have to write about this now,” says John Twonil. “You can’t put it off any longer.”

I brush him aside temporarily, to modestly run round the table doing high fives with Mick, Big A and the Chipper Barman, and to accept the kind offer of a pint from my defeated opponent, which he wanders off to order before assembling his noose.

But John Twonil is right. I have been avoiding talking about my snooker success as I do not wish to jinx it and make it go away. We are proudly the worst snooker club in Norfolk – probably the whole country – and I am the worst player in it. I have the bare minimum of technique, I regularly miss the object ball completely, and I have to sort of squint to see where I am hitting things because my eyes don’t seem to work properly.

At the end of last season, the rankings for the league were distributed. The very bottom of the table went something like this:

• Twonil, J
• Tony, S
• A, B
• Barman, C
• Continuedonaseparatesheetof, P

It took me ages to work out that I was featured on an attached sheet, as an also-played. It was humiliating for one with my sense of dignity.

Yet here I am, having now won three singles games in a row. Undefeated in the league since December. The man the top players fear.

John Twonil and Mick win their frames also. We have won the match. The opposition tonight are an excellent team, and are known as a good bunch of people. I hope they do not give up snooker because of this. But it will certainly take them a while to recover from the humiliation.

We speed off from the Conservative Club in Mick’s car. “David Camm-eronn!” I shout. “Margaret Thatcher! Francis Pym!!! John Selwyn GUMMER!!! JOHHHN SELL-WYNNN GUMMMMERRRR!!!!!! Your boys took one hell of a beating!!!!”

“Right – I’m off home to fuck the wife,” I add.

“Do you want me to text her, to let her know you’re on your way?” asks Big A.

“Better not,” I reply.

It is my own fault.

“I am so sorry, it is such a shame, I was really looking forwards to it as well,” I say, amongst other platitudes to that effect. “I will bring the Santa suit back next week, as I didn’t get to use it.”

“I am gutted,” I add, looking gutted.

The Playgroup Lady stands, hands-on-hips. It crosses my mind that I perhaps do not look gutted enough. I stretch my face, so that I imagine it looks ‘extremely gutted.’ I resolve to practise gutted faces in the mirror when I get home, so that if this situation should arise again, I will have a natural and plausible gutted face to adopt. It will be second nature, which is how all the best actors work.

“Well…” says the Playgroup Lady.

I am ordered to bring my banjo to the school the following week, to entertain the children.

My face immediately adopts the expression of one who is naturally and plausibly gutted.

“I do not know what to play to them,” I complain to the LTLP, when she has finished laughing, again. “Children now want to play video games and watch television, sniff glue etc. rather than listen to banjo playing.”

I work out ‘Ring a Ring o Roses’ and ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ before launching into a smoking version of ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ (my own version, which is less difficult than the original, and contains gaps where you can work out what notes to play next).

I do not know how I get into these situations. But I wish I would stop it.

Day one:

The meeting has gone reasonably well. Being a nice sort of person, I try to wrap it up with a big old positive.

“And of course if there’s anything I can help you out with – anything at all – then please do feel free to ask,” I conclude.

“Anything at all. Whatsoever,” I add.

A face pokes in through the doorway to the Staff Room. “We have a problem,” says the face to the Headmistress. “We’re going to need somebody to help out.”

Day two:

“You do not appear,” I mutter grimly to the LTLP, “to be being particularly supportive.”

The LTLP rolls around on the floor, laughing helpfully. I stand with hands on hips, attempting to regain control of the situation. But my beard slips slightly, and I have to try to fit it into position once more.

“I don’t see how I can keep this straight whilst I talk,” I complain.

“Try practising the ‘ho ho ho’s again,” she suggests.

“No.”

I stride back to the mirror. There has been no miraculous transformation since I adjusted my beard. I do not look like Father Christmas. I look like me, in a Father Christmas costume.

“I think it might be the hat that’s the problem,” she ventures.

The LTLP is possibly right. Santa Claus has a big red hood that sort of obscures everything about him but his eyes and the beard. This costume does not come with a hood, but with a red hat that I strongly suspect was meant for elves. I pull it down as far as it will go, but my own non-Santa-type hair is still very visible at the sides.

“It won’t matter,” she says, a small pool of wee forming on the floor beneath.

“It will matter,” I insist. “The only reason that they want me to do this is because the children were starting to suspect that the previous Santa was not Santa after all. So they needed somebody new so that they would really believe it was Santa.”

“No pressure then,” she replies.

My beard has now fallen at a forty-five degree angle. I wrestle it back into place, and try a few more variations on the ‘ho ho ho’ theme. There is nothing I want more than for the local kids to have a brilliant Christmas party with loads of presents and Father Christmas, except for that Father Christmas not to be me.

Day three:

The worst blizzards in living memory blanket Norfolk, causing massive disruption to local services. All the schools suffer emergency closures. The children have to stay at home, and miss their long-awaited Christmas party with loads of presents and Father Christmas. Finally, I am involved in a story with a happy ending.

I am officially disappointed about the future.

I know people made a big deal about the year 2000 and all that, but as far as I am concerned, 2010 is much more ‘the future’ than 2000 ever was, and still there are no flying cars, robots that clean your house or domestic appliances that you can have a chat with.

It is depressing. As somebody who spent two years of his childhood genuinely thinking that I would be a starship commander when I grew up, frankly not having LP’s and being able to write ‘and your point is?’ at the bottom of Guardian articles is not the sort of progress that I envisaged.

I will be annoyed if there ARE flying cars, but they just haven’t reached Norfolk yet. It would be typical, and would make the proposed dualling of the A11 a complete white elephant. I have not been out of the county for some weeks now. For all I know, you could all be wearing lycra catsuits and spending your excess leisure time in the orgasmachamber.

The LTLP purses her lips in a ’so you have finally got out of bed’ sort of way. I do consider forcing her into a lycra catsuit and whisking her off to the orgasmachamber, but she wants me to unload the dishwasher.

I unload the dishwasher, which does not comment.

2009 was an all right year for me. I know that it was pretty rubbish for some people. 2010 is shaping up to be interesting (despite lack of proper ‘future’ things (see above)) and I hope to keep you informed about this in the usual way. Firstly there will be details of the new job I got before Christmas, which sort of troughed and peaked, but is exactly the sort of high-powered role my talents have deserved.

Happy New Year everybody, and thanks for sticking around.