"Right Matt, let's have a quick game of table football," said Steve, heading for the other end of the kitchen. I followed, holding my tea.
My table football skills are now the 'stuff of legend' where I work. The other week, someone looked across at me hopefully and said, "Wanna game of doubles?"
"I'm really not very good," I said, fully aware that in Britain that often means the exact opposite of itself. However, in this particular case, there was no other way of letting my expectant colleague know just how terrible I am at this game. After a while he realised (or perhaps remembered from last time) that there was very little he could say to make me feel better about how slow my reflexes were.
I've written about this before, haven't I? Well, I'm still no better at it. Today I watched the ball zip around, ricocheting and bouncing off my haphazard players. Steve won, firing the ball calmly into my goal while my defenders slammed and my goalkeeper span upside down.
It's the same hopelessness I've always felt around sporty people. I just don't get why it matters so much.
Now the finance guys, they can play table football. They pass the ball around, bounce it off the sides, spin it into the air and punch it through the table like a quantum bullet. Watching them play is like watching Olympic table-tennis - the strategy, the passion, the sheer speed and ferocity of their quick-fire moves and counter-moves is breathtaking. And those guys are wearing ties.
Not so the technical authors. There were no crowds of overawed spectators today, just Tim, who walked by and made a hilarious comment about the reason we pay our tech authors - the implication being of course, that it is almost certainly not for playing table-football.
It's probably just as well.
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