Yeah, wife on the slopes, had the boys round Friday night. Beer, scotch eggs, Pogues on the stereo, table tennis till two in the morning; it’s the simple things in life, isn’t it? The guest list was seven (plus me), but Mark wasn’t well, cousin George got tied up, not literally, at a Chinese restaurant up West, and the two young Turks, Harry and Ben, had other plans, funnily enough. They’ll learn. And here’s one lesson I learnt from them: if you’re 41 and you ask two guys in their mid-twenties round to play ping-pong on a Friday night, when they say “I’m waiting on some texts”, or “I’ll pop round later”, or “I’ll see if I can make it”, what they really mean is, “Listen, you sad old fool, we’ve got better things to do, OK?”
Never mind, their loss. So it was me, Tim (42), Chris (40) and Nigel (38), all of us of an age to appreciate the aesthetics, the balletics, the aerodynamics, the sheer truth, grace and beauty of the sublime ping and the superlative pong. But first we had to get the darts out of the way. Actually, no, first we had to get the children to bed. Not easy, when they see daddy and his pals swilling Kronenbourg, scoffing cheesy twists and watching in slack-jawed appreciation as Traci Bingham, three-quarters undressed, is evicted from the Big Brother house. “That lady’s got massive boobies, hasn’t she?” said Sam, the echoing grunts of assent showing how precisely the eight-year-old had caught the mood of the living room.
Rachel, six, was more interested in the chart I had drawn up to record the forthcoming hostilities. “Fast Bobby versus The Grinder?” she read out, “Tornado versus Sicko? Why have you all got silly names?” Because, I explained, when we have these competitions we like to give each other nicknames and use them all night. “And is that funny?” she asked. Well, we think it is, I said. “Why?” Er, um, I don’t know, sweetheart, it just is, OK? And by the way, it’s Psycho not Sicko.
At that point Sam tore himself away from the telly and sank a left hook into The Grinder’s groin, just because he could. “Your kids are really nice and polite when they come into the office,” gasped The Grinder, his head between his knees. “Different story at home, isn’t it?” Welcome to the world of the parent, I replied. Rachel then hit Psycho with a cucumber she had turned into a lightsaber.
After I’d bribed and wrestled the little blighters into their bedrooms, it was down to business. Chris, sorry Psycho (his surname is Hitchcock), unveiled his buffet (he’d very kindly assumed responsibility for the catering). This mainly involved ripping open packets of cocktail sausages. I said I’d have got him a nice hostess trolley if I’d had more warning. Very genially, he told me to piss off. Then it was darts in my office. We had the board wedged on a tower of boxes in front of my Kings and Queens of England poster, and an Anglepoise lamp balanced on a stepladder to give proceedings that glamorous televisual glow. Two played while the non-combatants took turns to score in bad Geordie accents with guttural sound effects. “Grindaaaah you requirahhh... urghhh... doooble wooon!” and so forth.
Most of the games went to a double-one finish (for the reader unfamiliar with the ways of the arrow, that means we weren’t any good). Richard II took a bad hit in the eye. Should have been Harold, but there you go. “She’s a fickle mistress, your dartboard,” said Tornado, after registering a big fat zero on one visit to the oche. We all nodded our heads sagely. One game lasted for the whole of the second side of Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. By 11pm Psycho was drunk enough to write Physio instead of his real false name. “What’s Physio?” said Tornado. “A Hitchcock film about some nutter who kills his victims by rubbing their shoulders really hard?” I went to check on the children and get more beer. “Any chance of you bringing some more mini-sausages through, Fast Bobby?” asked Psycho. He won Quote of the Night for that.
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Then it was time for the main event, outside on the deck in sub-zero temperatures, outrageous wind-chill, hats, coats and scarves all round, four muffled-up maniacs smacking it around addictively until the small hours. What brilliant fun. Friendly, too. We play football together, the four of us, and barely a week goes by without some ghastly finger-jabbing falling-out. And yet at the table, loved-up on lager and chorizo, it was all great shot, well done, oh hard luck, mate; the sins of the Astroturf expiated through a paddle and a plastic projectile. But for the mutual onset of hypothermia around 2am, we would have gone on all night. “We’ll have to club together to send Nicola away again,” said Chris. Absolutely, I said. This is the third column I’ve wrung from her absence, and she was only gone three days. Next week, inshallah, it’s off to Qatar.
robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk