| Travelling
to foreign countries often leads to the discovery of all
sorts of new and interesting things, the memories of which linger
for years. Ping Pong in an arcade down Las Ramblas, Barcelona,
is not one of these things.
The lure of the bright yellow cabinet with two
screens side by side was enticing enough, but the table tennis
bat connected to the machine by a thin bit of wire was the clincher
which set off the rummage for a 1 Euro coin…
I was quite a player in my teens. I owned a top-of-the-range ‘Butterfly’
bat and knew far too much about the star ratings on the balls
which indicated the spin qualities of each. So, I thought I should
be pretty good at this. Wrong…
It is a custom to bow to arcade
games in Spain.
My first game went something like this;
I SERVE - Machine wins point 0 - 1
I SERVE - Machine wins point 0 - 2
I SERVE - Machine wins point 0 - 3
I SERVE - Machine wins point 0 - 4
I SERVE - Machine wins point 0 - 5
MACHINE SERVES - Machine wins point 0 - 6
MACHINE SERVES - Machine wins point 0 - 7
MACHINE SERVES - Machine wins point 0 - 8
MACHINE SERVES - Machine wins point 0 - 9
MACHINE SERVES - Machine wins point 0 - 10
I SERVE - I Win the point 1 - 10 (comeback time!!)
I SERVE - Machine Wins Point 1 - 11 (GAME OVER)
Flailing the bat about is all well and good,
but once the ball leaves the screen space you have no chance of
getting the trajectory correct. Invariably, I was left guessing
blindly – not a tactic that usually reaps much reward.
I tried it again a couple of nights later, just
to see if perhaps my performance would be different without a
local paella inside me. It was. This time, I didn't win any points.
PUBLIC WARNING - DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE
TAKEN IN BY THIS MACHINE!
”Return THIS, you bastard!”
RODENT CASH RATING -
'uck all
 "Pish
with no chips!"
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Posh Butterfly
table tennis stuff
Many, many things
you really don’t need to know about table tennis
Desmond
Douglas, unsung hero of British sport
Shockwave
table tennis
That ‘Matrix’
table tennis thing. Again.
* Pictures: Jaqui Liveston (Ely's bird
- wish the pictures were of her though. She's lovely!)
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