… for a friend’s birthday, I was going to repeat something I’d treated him to before; microphile air hockey. In a huge, contained ice rink (the temperature stabiliser clearly faulty; there were puddles of water on the floor) participants knocked huge pucks around the rink, attempting to pass it into the goal. Looking at the leader board, I could see that a group of youngsters in their early teens were the current victors. Deciding to take them on, I was told quickly that although my friend appreciated the fun of a group activity, he didn’t really enjoy it last time and he certainly wasn’t going to this time. In that case, it was me against three.
The youngest boy was quite clearly the brother of a man that works in the pub around the corner. Same hair, same girlish face, similar dress sense - a shrunken, pubescent version of the friendly boy that pours our drinks, yet this youngster was formidable with his hockey stick. His companions were equally as terrifying; a fourteen year old girl with pink tights, a neon yellow skirt and matching top. Blond hair curly and bouncy, her grin only served to terrify me as she expertly zigzagged between the poles shooting through the ice - poles designed to disorientate and bounce the puck in unexpected directions, namely right into my face. Defeated, I slunk away from the rink, ignoring the sarcastic jeers from the teenagers, comforting myself with the thought that they’ll soon remember how stupid they look.
Going to the counter to collect my booby-prize, it turns out that due to aggregate scoring I had in fact won the top prize that day; an outing to a train station (swords provided free) with two television actors I admire. Huge fans of their programs, in conversation I was embarrassed to find that I had somehow missed out seven series worth of their work - to the point that they had even come dressed as characters I did not recognise. The smaller of the two looked distinctly deflated and instead decided to take up the blunt swords for entertainment, offering to have a good, old fashioned sword fight to pass the time, teetering on the edge of the station platform as trains rushed past.
Again, I ruined the fun - only seconds into sparring did I knock his fingers and cause them to swell unnaturally, blue and black, visibly engorged with pus. Exclaiming that he needed to ‘grizzle’ them right away, they hurriedly left the area, leaving me with the mess and the notion that even though the youngsters may have lost, they weren’t really missing out on anything at all.
