“Shopping”— at Snooker!
Cleveland Standard, Saturday 09 June 1934
If you listen to the conversations of modern “Eve” on buses, in shops, in the streets, and here, there, and everywhere, you will hear her comments on clothes and men—and men and clothes.
Yet, it is possible that in Redcar you will soon hear her speak in terms of billiards.
You may hear her discuss “in-off-reds,” “all round the table cannons,” “long jennies,” and “masse shots” with the same authoritative conviction with which she discusses the latest fashion in hats. She will replace her accomplished American “talkie” accent with the jargon of the billiard table, and at a dance you may hear her describe to her friends how she compiled a century break from a double balk, or how, during a game of snooker with her boy friend she “shopped” the three last reds on the table, pulled back for and “shopped” black with each red, and finished the game by “shopping” all the colours in succession!
And all this because “King’s” Billiard Hall, Redcar, has been thrown open to women. Year after year we have seen women doing their best to line themselves up as the equals of men in every phase of life. We have seen them playing men’s games, wearing men’s clothes, and smoking men’s cigarettes. Now they have penetrated into another of man’s strongholds . . . with an open invitation to play billiards.
Will “check” and “running side” be household words to Miss Redcar in 1935? A “Standard” representative was told by the manager of “King’s” Billiard Hall that, although the fact had not been made public until recently, the hall had been open to women for the playing of billiards and snooker for a few years. It seems, however, that the fair sex of Redcar are indifferent to this game of “sticks and coloured balls.” Possibly they see no fun in trying to guide balls, which obviously do not want to go where one wants them to go—into pockets, with the narrow end of a stick.
Or maybe her patience is overtaxed when, instead of her cue-ball coming into intimate contact with the red and thence with her opponent’s ball or retiring into some near-by pocket, her cue digs deep and destructively into the cloth of the table and spot-white indicates that he prefers to play leap-frog with Miss Plain-White rather than “kiss” her and bound off “home”!
That seemed to be the point of view of a Redcar girl who had searched into the mysteries of billiards and snooker and lost heart when the balls insisted on leaping off the table rather than suffer the punishment of her cue! “I could have done better with the butt-end of the cue!” she told me, and added that she thought the pockets should be made larger or that there should be at least twenty more for the balls to go in. What a paradise that would be for the habitual “fluker”!
Still, it will be good to see the fair sex of Redcar wielding the billiard cue. Of course play can be mixed and there should be some interesting developments when Jack faces Jill over the billiards table . . . and Jill wins!
The manager of “King’s” Billiard Hall told me that this summer he hoped to have quite a number of women players. He thought that billiards and snooker offered a novel profession to the modern girl. A proficient girl billiards player, that is one who could regularly make breaks of 50 and over, could make a living earning from £3 a week upwards by touring billiard halls, under contract, all over the country and playing exhibition and match games.
He would give every encouragement to any Redcar women who showed any enthusiasm for the game, and Mrs. King, wife of the proprietor, herself a good billiards and snooker player, would coach them.
Now Redcar, can we produce a woman billiards prodigy from our ranks?