Snooker, a dog, a game, and a song
Snooker, a dog, a game, and a song
Plus black and white vs color
Mawmaw Shreve, me, Snooker, my sister, Mawmaw Margie. This was my whole world every summer for the first seventeen years of my life. I used to think that the cinderblock stoop was really high and that jumping from it to the grass was the bravest thing I could ever do. I’ve had to be even braver since then. LISTEN NOW · 4:29 |
Press the play button to hear a new song by me! And if you press the heart, that will make my heart happy because I’ll know you stopped by. It’s nice to have a visit, as Mawmaw always said.
| How to Pronounce “Snooker” Depends on Whether Snooker is a Dog or a Sport |
When I first moved to England eight years ago, I didn’t know much about snooker. I knew it was vaguely similar to pool and that Dad was fabled to have been playing it when my sister was born. He’d been playing pinball when I was born. I can’t say that Mom found any of that funny. But we sisters always did. So much so that when we got our first dog, we decided to name her “Snooker.” The thing is that we didn’t know how British people pronounced “snooker,” so we pronounced our beloved dachshund’s name to rhyme with “took-her” rather than “fluke-her.”
The Englishman knows a lot about snooker and I spent my first week of British life on the sofa watching one of the biggest snooker tournaments of the year, the Masters. As I inevitably do on airplanes, I’d caught a terrible bug coming over from L.A.. So, my fantasies of seeing the wintery sights of London and riding in double decker busses gave way to a diet of Jacob’s Cream Crackers and ginger ale while learning snooker jargon from under a blanket.
That January in 2017, I became a dedicated follower of snooker. My favorite player is the Welshman Mark Williams. I worry about Ronnie O’Sullivan’s quixotic moods. And I love how Sean Murphy always looks like a little boy making terrific faces. Sometimes, I can’t bear to actually watch the frame because of the tension at the table. I keep my knitting and sewing by me, so that I can look away for a little while. But from snooker players, I’ve learned about grace under pressure, the ebb and flow of concentration, the mental game, how last year’s number one can become this year’s number none, and that you’re not washed up until you throw in the towel. I can also match the colored balls to the points and figure out whether Mark Williams is going to break my heart again or get over the line (Mark was just knocked out of the British Open, but then I get to watch Sean Murphy makes his great faces since he’s in the final today).
And that’s where I come to this song. Colored balls on a table.
A Colour Game in Black and White Becomes a Song
Once, I was talking with some English neighbors about my interest in snooker and they spoke about how they remembered snooker being aired on television when TV was in black and white. So, the commentator had to say, “For those of you in black and white, the red’s behind the blue.” I loved the rhythm of these words and just the wonder of how people had to make that extra step of imagining the colors when watching snooker in black and white.
Many of us songwriters say that you never know when a song will be picked up by your particular antenna. I felt my antenna beeping and transmitting when my neighbors spoke about snooker – a game which entirely revolves around colored balls – being broadcast in black and white. No one at the TV station said, “Hey, why would we broadcast this? It won’t make any sense.” They just said, “We’ll tell people which color is where and they can imagine it all in their heads.” As a person who spends a lot of time in her imagination, I love that.
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At the time I was thinking about snooker in black and white, I was writing songs with my friend Alfred Hickling who is a York-based musician and part of the longtime family band King Courgette. Alfred and I wrote several albums together over lockdown (remember the lockdowns?), but this song came to us after those songs had been recorded and “pressed” into albums. So, it’s one of those orphaned songs waiting to be collected into a future project.
Recording a song about snooker
The song you’re hearing is a one off take recorded at the kitchen table of my huckleberry friend Fiona Jane Marshall. Her husband Mike Smith is playing the guitar. Fiona is singing backup. We’re laughing and they’d only heard me play the song once when we recorded this. So, just imagine we’ve all had one of Fiona’s delicious vegan lunches, a cup of tea, and now we’ve brought out our guitars and started singing. This is a very informal recording and one of the fun things about this newsletter is that I can share imperfect and spontaneous things with you!
The lyrics. The lamp post is literally one on a corner in Forest Hill that I apologized to in the rain on the way to Fiona’s house. I’m not shy of speaking to lamp posts. The kitchen “veldt” comes from one of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories about domestic life by the same name (worth reading again in the age of AI). The lemon juice writing was something that completely fascinated me when I was a kid. Paper airplanes also fascinated me. And I once borrowed a yellow and blue dress from my sister which must be one of my favorite dresses of all time. But the song is, of course, about snooker and the unspoken communication between couples – the leap of imagination you make to spell the whole story of your days together.
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I love to think of a yellow dress being a candle that lights us up the stair. I hope when we get to the top, there will be a starry sky and the ceaseless sound of the waves against the shore.
With kindness from your friend,
Jeni
Do Not Adjust Your Set © Jeni Hankins and Alfred John Hickling, 2021 You bumped into a lamp post, said, "Oh, pardon me. I meant to catch my bus and you I didn’t see." "No matter," said the lamp post, "I couldn’t step aside for I’m the street-bound lighthouse. I guide you through the night." “For those of you in black and white the red’s behind the blue, the pink has tried to kiss the green, but yellow holds the clue. For though we have no colors yet, we’ll live to see the day. Please do not adjust your set. It’s meant to be this way.” I made a paper airplane to tell you how I felt – my words at super sonic speed crossed the kitchen veldt. If you had some lemon juice, my words would manifest: though I often wore the blue it was yellow I loved best. In the flicker of the evening – the static thick as snow – we huddled by the lamp post and felt the dark approach. In the jungle of the living room, the signal blinks “off air” – your yellow dress a candle to light us up the stair.
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Thank you for reading, always.
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Kindly, Jeni
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