It is a cardboard box.

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Dusty and slightly squashed, A4 in size, rescued from my parents’ loft.

I open it carefully and slightly apprehensively, as it comes from the past. The smell of old, dusty papers wafts up, released into the fresh Norfolk air for the first time for almost two decades.

Postcards. Newspaper cuttings and cartoons. A photograph of a Canadian diesel-electric locomotive. I leaf through each, transfixed.

A ticket stub: the Richard Thompson Band at the London Palladium. A torn-off scrap of paper featuring the shakily-written address of a girl with whom I’d once briefly been associated, and who was universally known amongst my friends as ‘the Sad Nympho’. A Reliant bonnet badge. An old train ticket to London Liverpool Street. An invitation to a Finnish Independence Day party in Blean, Kent.

And what I’d been looking for.

Lots and lots of stuff about Steerpike.

To be continued.

Orange lights strobe the kitchen.

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They startle me, despite the bright sunshine. I gaze out of the window in surprise.

A van stops sharply, then reverses at some speed past the front of the Cottage, but not so fast that I can’t make out the words ‘Emergency Response Vehicle’ painted on the door. The roof-mounted lights flash purposefully as it pulls to a halt outside the hedge.

A man jumps out, pulls a wet brush from the van, and wipes the ’30mph’ sign that stands there. He then leaps back into the cab and speeds off into the distance.

It has been a strange week.

The LTLP has been working abroad a lot. I have been all on my own except for the Toddler, who I’ve had to take to childrens’ parties, then I’ve had to go to airports, then I had to go to a pigfarm and followed it up with dining on a BK ‘Texican’ burger, then the whole mexican pig thing broke, then I had to do some family type stuff, then the Toddler got her head stuck in the chicken coop, then a pigeon did a big shit on my clean washing, then the LTLP came home with lots of Polish vodka and I can’t really remember the rest.

I think I need to get a grip on things a bit more. The nice weather will help, although it has attracted about a grillion large black flying things that splatter on your windscreen and get into your mouth as you ride your bicycle. I have cleaned some manky things off the barbecue and perhaps I will recommission it in the days to come.

It is a Bank Holiday weekend in Norfolk, which essentially means that we get Monday off, although I am going to another childrens’ party and will probably be oinking uncontrollably by then. But I feel I need to enjoy life a bit more and be a bit more racy and dynamic. The bowls season starting will help. But I am introspective, at present. I found a box of old Things in the attic at my parent’s house, and I may write about these Things next week when I have considered them a bit more.

I now need to wrap a present.

Oh. The sun has gone in, and it has started to spit with rain.

Enjoy your weekends.

A gasp erupts from the crowd.

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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.

“You try some!”

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“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.