As his father lights up the table, Tom Hodgkinson wonders whether something deeper is going on when we play the silver ball  

Some of you may have seen my brother Will’s piece about the joys of pinball in the current issue of the Idler. He discovered that while the game has largely disappeared from the end of the pier and from Parisian bars, it lives on among aficionados and is even enjoying something of a mini-renaissance.

Pinball has a special place for Will and me as my Dad bought one in the seventies. It was an old World Fair machine which we played non-stop. Our fun-loving neighbours also had a pinball. We remember on more than one occasion going out for a Chinese meal on a Sunday at the end of which my dad would say, “Let’s bomb down to Brighton,” whereupon we would get in the Morgan and motor down to the South coast.

When my dad discovered God in the late eighties, the pinball playing stopped. He now had a new interest, which was getting up at four in the morning, meditating and pondering the imponderables.

That is, it stopped until last weekend, when my brother arranged an afternoon of pinball in a cafe in Chiswick called Chief Coffee. This is a great coffee shop whose owner is a pinball champion and has installed ten machines in his basement for the use of punters. Classics such as Medieval Madness, Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park are all there. They are insanely complicated and feature multiple ramps and buzzers and bells. A pound a go.

My brother was the best and at first my Dad was a bit hopeless. When the ball disappeared between the flippers Will taunted him, saying, “Where are your spiritual powers now, yogi-boy?” which my Dad loved.

However his old powers gradually returned and Dad beat both my brother and me on one occasion, scoring something like 18 million points (he is 82 by the way) on Ghostbusters. Seems that 40 years after his last game he can still play a mean pinball.

Maybe going into the zone on the pinball machine has something in common with glimpsing nirvana through meditation.

Chief Coffee: thanks, we’ll be back.

And do let me know whether you’re a pinball fan.

Live well,
Tom

PS I’m now taking a short break from this newsletter and will be back in April.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Please add your thoughts in the box below.

Sir: If you’re ever down Hastings way come along and have a go on [3D flying simulator game] Prop Cycle, which I bought from the local arcade.
Craig

Sir: Oh yes…pinball. There was a caff.. ‘Bill’s Cafe’… just down the road from Brockley County, my school, which was on Hilly Fields, Lewisham in deepest Sarf East Lunnon. Bill’s Caff was just close enough for us to run down the road during break times to play the magnificent ‘Magic City’ pinball machine.  The aim of this prince of pinball games was to ‘Light the Magic City’.  If you were skilled enough to achieve this mighty feat, all the bells and lights would go off on the machine all at once and you’d get a free game. This was a spectacular event. The main topic of conversation at school was who had managed to ‘light the Magic City’ this week.
On the way home after school we would stop by for another game, and in return for our loyal custom, Bill would kindly sell us a few fags from a packet of Number 6 and give us a book of matches.
These days, Bill supplying schoolboys with fags and matches after school might be considered controversial, but to my mind, this is easily countered by the fact that most of Bill’s youthful customers were also stalwarts of the school rugby team, which was incredibly successful.  One glorious season our record was played 29, won 28 with one draw, which was later converted into a win following a re-match.  It is quite obvious that extensive, dedicated practice, highly developed eye and hand coordination and powerful wrist action required to ‘light the Magic City’ resulted in very safe hands and hardly any knock-ons or forward passes.  Moreover, the twice daily sprint to get back to the top of the eponymous Hilly Fields to avoid getting busted with a detention for being late for French, meant that our backs were the strongest and quickest in the south of England, with thighs like tugboats, strengthened by hill-climbing resistance training combined with a diet of fags and sausage sandwiches .
Following England’s dismal performance in the 6 Nations to date, I have written to Mr Borthwick with my advice on how to improve his training methods, but to date I have received no acknowledgement, let alone gratitude. Nonetheless, I wish him and his team well in their efforts, although, quite honestly, I think they’ll get stuffed on Saturday.
I remain, Sir, your loyal servant.
Bob Harris (not the Bob Harris on the radio. Man, do I get fed up with that)

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How to Live Like a Stoic

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