Happy Birthday to me!

It's my birthday today and I'm planning to write, even though I have the option of sitting about eating chocolates. Does this indicate maturity at last? Seems so unlikely, I can't give that idea much credence.

On an wholly unrelated note, aren't online archives marvellous? The LRB has been busy archiving its older issues, and I recently found my own Diary of a Hustler piece there from February 1997 - the snooker article which springboarded my first novel with Sceptre and gained me an agent at Curtis Brown.

Those were the days! What the hell happened?

Poetry in Motion

Possibly the first ever televised century by a woman snooker player: the World Mixed Doubles, 1993, with the legendary Allison Fisher partnering Steve Davis and Stacey Hillyard partnering Stephen Hendry.

Dodgy quality film, but still worth watching.

Allison, of course, was the women's World Snooker Champion seven or eight times, and since emigrating to the US has gone on to make a fortune there, scooping every major prize for pool and dubbed "Duchess of Doom" by the stunned Americans.

Presumably due to the lack of sponsorship for the women's game in the UK, Stacey - feel free to correct me if you know better, as I haven't been in touch with her for years - retired from snooker soon after this and went into business instead, despite having been a World Champion herself and the first officially recorded compiler of a century break (114 in 1985, during a Bournemouth league match) by a woman.