Mr.Vincent Dickson of Surrey writes:-
"I am, and always have been very interested in Billiards, but as there is little or no coverage on T.V. the game seems to have been forgotten by the majority of our population."
Mr. Dickson is a member of the Southern Deaf Sports Association and, amongst other things, runs an annual Billiards Tournament for the deaf.
"In the Deaf Community Billiards seems to be a forgotten sport - even this year's British Deaf Sports Council event has only attracted 6 clubs from the whole of Great Britain a disappointment which may lead to the cancellation of the event."
Let us hope not Mr. Dickson. This year's event resulted in a win by Oldham over Reading by 1,731 - 1,344. The teams comprised three players playing games of 200 up on a round robin basis. The standard appears to be about that of the average local league and the highest break was a 66 by R. Tideswell of Oldham. Mr. Dickson concludes:- " I should like to enquire if you have any knowledge of a video which shows how Billiards is played, and the possibility of adding sub-titles for the Deaf Community to try and encourage the sport once again."
I don't know of any such video. Can anyone help?
Earnest Sanders of Hampshire writes:-
"Can you help? I have a very large collection of Billiard books. I wanted information regarding the position of the Skittles in Skittles Pool and all the books just say -place the skittles in their correct positions! What are the correct positions?"
I am not too sure but have vague memories of seeing some of the older members of my club, years ago, playing a game with pool balls and skittles on the table which I think they placed on the centre spots i.e. Brown, Blue, Pink, and Black spots. I could well be mistaken, I had then recently discovered Billiards and I didn't take very much notice of this game. Anybody know for sure the correct answer to this one?
Roxton Chapman of Peterborough has a simple message:-
"More pictures. More colours. Printed on a more regular basis."
I suppose that the last point at least means that Roxton enjoyed the magazine and would like more. The fact of the matter is Roxton that I have a full-time job and putting out a Quarterly involves more than a few late nights. If the time ever came when the state of the game warranted it then B.Q.R. might, I suppose, become a bimonthly, time will tell. The point about more pictures is valid and has been taken. As regards Colour this is out of the question from the point of view of costs. On the subject of presentation, the magazine has been 'bound' in the way it has as I considered the plastic spine binders to make a neater job than stapling at the edges. The method of centre-stapling, used in so many magazines, means publishing on A3 sized paper and this again is too expensive for a magazine of limited circulation. It could be done this way on A5 paper or on A4 printed sideways, but it seemed that the conventional sized page of A4 was the most suitable and hence the method of binding. This would, of course, be quite seriously reconsidered if the B.Q.R. circulation ever justified the extra costs.