Jonny McCambridge: Alex Higgins, Minecraft and the ploughed field

While there is nothing novel about summer downpours, the habit of following men in waistcoats potting balls on green baize is usually a pre-solstice affair. But this year the World Championships at The Crucible in Sheffield were delayed for several months, another victim of the long claw of coronavirus.

As is my custom, I occasionally ask my son if he would like to sit and watch a couple of frames with me.

As is his custom, he screws up his face, rolls his eyes and says ‘Snooker is so boring daddy’ before running off.

And generally I leave it at that, surmising perhaps that his impatience is a symptom of youth and that a time will come in the future when he’s happy to sit with his silly old dad and watch a few balls being potted, or even a test match in cricket, or a rugby international.

But this year something different occurs to me. When I was the age my boy is now I had already got my first miniature snooker table from Santa and played on it until the cloth was worn out.

When I was the same age my boy is now I was deeply engrossed in the drama of watching Alex Higgins become world champion in 1982.

The conclusion is hard to avoid, my son is not interested in the things which occupy my thoughts. For him, the preferred leisure activities are an array of computer games, which are as much an impenetrable mystery to me as snooker is to him.

And I feel a stab of regret at the realisation. The link which I so cherish refuses to form, the opportunity for shared experience is denied.

I suppose there is a part of me which always looked forward to recounting to him the magnificence of Higgins’ achievement almost four decades ago.

How, facing elimination in the semi final against a baby-faced Jimmy White, the Belfast man completed the greatest and gutsiest clearance in the history of the sport. How he potted a blue ball and then screwed the cue ball back to near the black spot in an act of motion which defied all the known laws of science. How a deeply flawed individual, driven by a scowling intensity, performed a feat of courage and nerve which meant, in that moment, a game which should really mean nothing, seemed to mean everything. How those few moments were to define the man’s life’s work and character. There is no drug more powerful than nostalgia and I long to share what I experienced.

But it is not to be. Instead I remain silent and nod along as my son breathlessly recounts to me his latest achievements in the game Minecraft, telling me over and over of a mysterious world of dragons, zombies and portals. Sometimes he sits beside me as he plays and I watch sport. So close together but moving in different directions.

Then another latent memory stirs from somewhere deep. It is of my own father and his lifelong fascination with machinery. How, when I was a little boy, so much of his time and thoughts were dominated with tractors and diggers. It was an obsession I was never to share or understand.

I remember on New Year’s Day my da would always go to a ploughing match somewhere in rural County Antrim. Occasionally I would accompany him, trailing behind as my little wellies would get stuck in a muddy field. An array of brightly-coloured tractors moved earth up and down in straight lines while serious-faced men in flat caps watched and smoked. And throughout I would think about how alien and stuffy it all seemed.

Sometimes we would travel to agricultural shows and my da would spend what seemed to be an age studying freshly painted machines and speaking to like-minded peers while my brothers and I would whine about wanting to go the playground.

Now I consider that there may have been an inkling of what I am feeling now within my own father. A desire within him for his interests to overlap with mine, so he could pass on what he knew down through the generations. But I remained stubbornly resistant, preferring my own world of imagination, of writing stories, and of snooker, cricket and rugby. I consider how patient my da must have been to listen to that young boy waffling on for hours about sports that he never really cared about.

Which brings me back to where I started, watching snooker while the rain patters the driveway outside. My son is beside me playing Minecraft. This time I try a different question.

‘Hey buddy, what’s going on in your game?’

He eyes me suspiciously at first.

‘I’m trying to build a portal daddy, but I can’t get it to work. Can you help me?’

I’m hesitant, because I know this is not my world. But I take the iPad and begin, for the first time, to study the game where landscapes are created out of square blocks. After a very long time I work out that my son has placed one block in the wrong direction, which prevents the portal from opening. I correct it and he yelps with delight.

‘Thanks daddy! Now can you give me back the iPad?’

He goes back to his game. I go back to my snooker. Our interests may differ, but there is enough commonality to make the whole thing work. We don’t exchange many words in the next hour, but after a while he reaches across and puts his small hand into mine. We stay just like that.

He sees the world in a different way than I do, just like I saw it differently than my own da when I was a boy. Some day my son may develop some interest in sport and I’ll be able to pass on my memories of the legendary feats of Alex Higgins, although I now accept that it’s unlikely. After all I always remained stubbornly resistant to the charms of ploughing matches. But it’s ok, because it’s better that he digs his own furrow in life.