Games: Games people play

Mary Killen (won't give her age), writer, journalist, social commentator.

I'm no good at games. In fact, my co-ordination is so bad that walking along the pavement I'll often collide with other pedestrians. Maybe I've got some condition. But to carry on, table-tennis is the only game I'm any good at, and I quite like the noise of whatever the ball's made of smacking into the table.

My sister and I used to play in our garage in the north of Ireland, and I suppose I developed my skills. Perhaps it's like riding a bicycle - you never forget how to do it.

I have played with Craig Brown at his house in Suffolk, and because he's a giant baby, the whole place is a pleasuredrome. There are things to do in every room: children's football and also a ping-pong table.

Anyway, I hadn't played for some time, and when Craig said: "Do you want a game?" I said, "I'm hopeless, because I'd forgotten that I was ever any good at it. At actual tennis I can't even return one ball.

So Craig flicked a ball down the middle, and I found myself flicking it back. I was able to lean over and hit the ball so that it just toppled down again, and sprang out of Craig's reach in a tricky way - as if I was possessed by a table-tennis ghost or something like that.

To my absolute amazement, the score was 21-4. Normally I present myself as not competitive, but I was absolutely ecstatic and this horrible new character came over me, which crowed and shouted "Ha!!!"

But the punch-line of the story is, when we changed ends for the second round, Craig won 21-1. It turned out that the sun was glaring in your eyes at that end of the table, but the brief moment of triumph was wonderful.

For advice on how to act at such moments, consult `Dear Mary ... Your Social Dilemmas Resolved' by Mary Killen (Constable, pounds 9.99), based on her column in `The Spectator'.