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Past Times - Billiards Halls

An old billiards hall is like a creature left on a beach when the tide has gone: it looks faintly helpless and squirms in its memories. In 1970, I found Cheetham Hill Temperance Billiards Hall in Manchester, a giant of a place in fact and memory, still thriving, shilling (5p) a year membership, and looking like the rear of Nelson's flagship, bow-windowed and slightly splendid. Inside, a drift of smoke, many shadows, 16 tables, 20 or more people. At mid-day, some pies are trapped in a plastic heater while a kettle interminable huffs and puffs on a gas ring. The roof is high-arched, half way between a railway station and a church, 60 years old.

Everyone attracts a nickname: Double :Vision, Lazzie, Big Sam, Wiggie,. Boots, Pipky, Wolfy. "That's the man they call Double VIsIon," says the manager, Francis Logan, pointing. "When he plays he asks for a big start because he says he has double vision. He pots the balls from all directions and opponents think THEY'VE got double vision. He's good, but the real good players could eat him."

Well-meaning gentlemen built halls like this to keep the lads out of the pubs. The run of a ball over green often hooks them for life. A magnificent obsession.

Rendal Wilson, or Pipky, has known this place 45 years now. He sits in repose within cue distance of a table recalling the time he played 36 hours non-stop, no sitting down. He lived on cups of tea and sandwiches.
"When we couldn't stand up any longer, we have had to go home and sleep, and we've come back again about 24 hours later and started again for 24 to 30 hours. You only notice time in thighs or arms. You don't feel sleepy. You begin to drag your feet. Only thing then is a good hot bath. Soak your limbs. Try to take the strain out."

There is no climbing on tables, no spitting and no foul language. You get barred for that. Night-time, you ring the bell and get in if you are a member: 250-300 are. Players come from Liverpool, Leeds, all over the place, and the hunger is money, often good money. Hustlers, good players touring halls pretending to be mugs, get short shrift. They usually find themselves against a player who beats them.
"1 don't encourage people to lounge all day ," says the manager, who is known as Michael, not Francis. "If they stop for a few hours and they don't play I ask them to leave. Prior to starting this 24-hour business, we had a load of bums coming and sitting and not playing. A shilling a year membership was a cheap home. It's a very hazardous business with staff. You might get the odd rough character trying to get in."

"We've had some characters in here," says Pipky. "1 had one from Sheffield. I said, '1 only play for what I can get out of it. I don't like playing for the novelty.'

'Half a crown a game,' he says, 'colours only .' I thought: That suits me - four games is ten bob and all over in ten minutes. I finished £59 in front and I did not know him from Adam and Eve. He wrote a cheque - Barclays Bank, Sheffield. I was on the express train next morning to Sheffield. When the bank opened I was there. Cashed the cheque, no trouble. I was back in the hall here at twenty past one and he was waiting.
"He says, 'Are we having another game?' Same half crown. That went on for a long time and he always paid by cheque. I thought to myself: This fellow must be SH."

" Soft in the head?" said I.

"No, sent from heaven. I thought: It's a shame to keep beating him, so I lost 11 games on the run on purpose. He was tickled pink and I paid him eleven half crowns. It was the only time he won. I went to his house, a very big house, one Sunday in Sheffield and his son was riding about on a horse. 'Come in,' he says, 'and meet the wife. He says, 'I've lost money, tons of it, to fellows in the golf club and we were all bad snooker players, but I've improved, haven't I?
You've no need to worry about the money I've been losing to you because I've had that back over and over again.'
"Next time he comes down he says, 'I'm moving to Stockport so I'll be nearer to you.' I
thought: This is lovely. I'll have him for ever. But when he went to Stockport I never saw him again."

Monday and Friday good nights; Sunday a cracker. The manager closed one day for stock-taking but so many people rang the bell, he opened up again. Snooker never sleeps.
"We had a fellow used to play for 3d a game," says Rendal Wilson, "and if he could win he was the happiest man in town. Married a girl with businesses and played then for big money.

"He won £8,000 on the pools, then another £4,000. I got him one day at the table and won £100. He lost £50 in side bets. The days he wasn't playing snooker, he was going to the dog tracks.
"He finished up losing the money and sweeping up. Yet he was always laughing. To this very day he laughs. Happiest man in the world. An ordinary man would throw himself in the river .
"I remember a chap coming in with a broken lighter. He says to one man, 'If you buy this, Solly, I'll play you for what it's worth. Give us half a quid.' So they played and Solly lost £22, all his money. Solly said, '1 can't go home with no money. Buy the lighter back for ten bob.' The man who'd sold it said, 'It's not worth ten bob. I wouldn't give you a shilling for it.'"

Not long ago, Pipky had played 18 hours non-stop.

"My biggest break was 88 about 25 years ago. There were 16 halls built like this. There were eight billiards halls in Reading and me and my friend went there and there weren't any left. I reckon on about 20 to 30 hours a week (in the hall) on average. It's fascinating once you've learned to play. There are times when you get into trouble with your skill because you give a handicap and sometimes find it too much. You can fall in the cart.
"Not long ago I was asked to play and I refused. I had been off colour for about a fortnight. There are times when the game can send you off colour. You get sick of it. That's the time to rest. That's what I think after 45 years of it..."

From Tacklers' Tales

 

Geoffrey Mather © 2004

10 August, 2007

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