January, eh? I know, I know: it's grim. A nothing, gloomy, dull, dreary, dismal, miserable excuse for a month, stuck in the calendar purely so that we don't complain about the other 11 months as much. Some would say it's why Mikael Silvestre is still in the Manchester United starting line-up, so that the crowd will get off Gary Neville's back. I've heard worse analogies. They even wrote songs about January's direness. Dire songs too. Remember "January, sick and tired, you've been hanging on me, you make me sad with your eyes, you're telling me lies, don't go, don't gooooOOO"? Like me, did you often wonder why they didn't want it to go when it made them sick and tired? Maybe they were being sardonic or a tad ironic, although I don't think irony was big in your average mid-seventies Hit Parade smash tune. Maybe they meant "shag off January, you've a face like a heifer's rear end", but worried that the song would be banned and, thus, they'd never see Pan's People do their funky thang to it. Who knows. It's too late to ask now because they're probably all dead. Anyway, January. It's when they should stage the football World Cup, or the All-Ireland finals, or the Olympics or any sparkly sporty event, anything to cheer us up and give us a good enough reason to get out of bed in the morning. But, in the first half of this godforsaken month, what do we get? The Darts World Championships. That's as exhilarating as January gets, in a sporty sense. So, at that point, your honour, I rest my case. Did you watch it? Me too. Well, as Victoria Wood once put it: "Jogging is for people who aren't intelligent enough to watch Breakfast TV".
Mortified for John Part, the lad annihilated 7-0 in the final at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, darts' Croke Park, Madison Square Garden and Nou Camp rolled in to one. Phil "The Power" Taylor did the damage, leaving Part to describe his mauling as "a totally oppressive experience". "John Blown A Part", I confidently predicted the headlines would say, and, spookily enough, they did.
I read a report on the final and it went something like this: "Taylor was a man on a mission, and the mission was to take the game to the most elevated heights in its history." Ah lads, steady. The ship is listing. And. During the final I learnt that Phil "The Power" was in rattling good form because he'd locked himself away for a two-week practice session in a secret hideaway on the outskirts of Durham. Now, one of my New Year resolutions was not to be bitchy about darts, Mikael Silvestre, showjumping or Eurosport ever again, but - why was it a secret hideaway? Did Phil "The Power" truly believe that the paparazzi would scuttle south, faster than the speed of sound, from the scene of Madonna's wedding in Scotland so that they could hide in the bushes of a garden of a house on the outskirts of Durham and use their telephoto lenses to take pictures through the bedroom window of him practising his "one 'undred and 'ay tees"?
And then follow him to the corner shop to surreptitiously snap pics of him purchasing 800 John Player blue and a dozen cans of Scrumpy Jack? "Where do you want to go today," Microsoft always ask the paparazzi when they turn on their computers, and never once have they said "the bushes of a garden of a house on the outskirts of Durham to photograph a dart chucker".
Trust me, they haven't. Secret hideaway my . . . howarya Jim Royle.
And what is it about English women and dart chuckers? Why is the Circus Tavern packed to the rafters every January with Hildas and Veras swooning at the mere sight of a dart chucker steadying himself on the oche? I guarantee you, if a naked Brad Pitt obscured their view of the stage while serving them their brews they'd holler "Moooove Chuck, Phil The Power's limbering up". I don't see the attraction myself, but clearly polyester smocks (with "The Power" embroidered on the back) and beards that stretch from the belly button to the cheek bones are a turn-on for your average Hilda and Vera. But, each to their own, that's what I say.
What we probably all have in common with Hilda and Vera, though, is that we've all devoted a little spell of our lives to dart chucking because it seemed like the easiest way to earn a quick, big buck.
"So, what area do you want to work in when you're released from here," our Career Guidance teachers asked all of us when we were 18 and which one of us didn't reply "Darts"? And which one of us didn't end up with a bedroom wall covered in circles of pin pricks, revealed when we moved our dart boards to another room once we'd discovered a smidgeon too late that the water pipes were housed behind the wall, four feet to the left of the bull's eye? Eh?
Never once, though, was I on a mission to take the game to the most elevated heights in its history, all I wanted was an easy way to make a living. All I wanted was something to help me forget it was January, like a trip to the Circus Tavern in Purfleet. It wasn't to be, though, and now there's nothing for it but to wait for January to go. 'Cos, tell you something, it's making me sick and tired, it's been hanging on me and it has a face like a heifer's rear end.
