One snooker shot restored my faith in humanity

In a bid to find a sport to love, Marie Le Conte discovers, on cue, what a lovable species we are

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Technically, I shouldn't be allowed to write this column because the whole point is that I’m not meant to know anything about the sport I'm going to watch.

I shouldn't have gone to watch the snooker because I have played pool many times in my life.

However, the “technically” here is load-bearing as I am very bad at pool. No, worse than that. I promise you, you've never met anyone as bad as me. I once got screamed at by a regular in a bar in Brooklyn because she'd suggested a game and it turns out I was so bad she thought I was taking the piss. That bad.

As a result, I like playing my own special version of pool, which involves getting one point for hitting a ball - basically any ball - and several points for getting a ball into a hole. What this means in practice is that I walked into the room in Alexandra Palace, in north London, and felt about as well-informed as a newborn lamb. “Oh, surely I'll pick it up as it goes along,” I thought.