My picture nails were not strong enough to put the dartboard up in the hall. It’ll have to stay in Marty’s room for now. We could have been playing now, I could have given my famous “natural ability”* an airing; instead I’m half-watching Arsenal against Sheffield Wednesday. And all for the want of a masonry nail.


* In Venezuela I played darts with a Canadian man who had set up a bar there. When he heard I was English he couldn’t believe that I had never played before. He proclaimed me “a natural”. For a while I toyed with the idea of training and turning pro. I could have become the David Beckham of darts, transcend its usual audience and bring in a new crowd. The dream’s still there, somewhere, beneath that something sufficiently toad-like that squats in me, its hunkers heavy as hard luck, and cold as snow. If I’m not careful my charming Bob Cratchett could become a loathsome Ebenezer Scrooge. Eternal vigilance is essential. And has anyone read Dickens’s The Chimes? It’s rubbish.