One Hundred and Eighty!

Have you ever looked at darts on TV? And have you ever wondered how the players throw a dart from that distance – about eight feet – and it lands in the treble twenty; the sixty. Then they throw two more into the sixty and the announcer says one hundred and EIGHTY!!! And the crowd goes wild? Sometimes if the first one doesn't go in neither do the other two. They might get one more in there but the other will be in the twenty or even the one or five.

The confidence of that first dart spurs them on to the other two or vice-versa.

That's why they will go to the bottom of the board and go for the nineteen to try and get a couple of trebles in there – or they may go down there because the flight of one of the darts is blocking their view of the treble twenty.

Now I am a good shot with a rifle – well I was, I got my marksman's badge when I was in the army cadets (hey!!! the ACF not the CCF!!) - but I was using sights. They weren't telescopic sights, which are easy to use as long as you can keep the rifle still, but a kind of V sight.

There again, though, you have to keep the weapon still. A good way of doing this is to pull it into your shoulder and twist at the same time, then squeezing that trigger so softly that you don't even feel it. Rather like tickling a trout as they swim beneath you and suddenly it's in your arms – but don't ask me as I don't fish even though my son is an expert carp angler.

But going back to the darts with their shooting/firing without sights. I have never really fired many pistols – a sten, yes and a bren gun – but I have been told that if you hold a pistol in your hand and point it at the target as if it's your finger you get a sure shot. So it might be the same principle for dart players.

David Beckham, when he was a boy, would practice hitting the cross bar from way out till he got good. How good? Well you know.

I have always thought that good photographers would be good rifle marksmen as they have the discipline to be still and to touch that shutter at the right time and with the gentleness in the finger of an eye surgeon.

I remember I went out on a smallish boat to see the whales migrating north in the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately I didn't have a zoom lens on my camera and it wasn't automatic focus or anything so as soon as the shout went to – WHALE ON THE STARBOARD SIDE AT TWO-O-CLOCK – or whatever, you had to point, focus and squeeze. I took a few but they were so tiny in the the frame that they didn't look great when I cropped them; not bad, but not great.

It was an Olympus with all the bells and whistles of what was available to me (at my price) at that time so I bought a Canon not long after that. That was great but it eventually wore out; I was having to take gaffa tape with me everywhere to keep the thing closed and I left it on the Queen Mary 2 on our way back to Blighty when the time came – unfortunately I left the lens by mistake.

So recently I looked on eBay for a 35mm camera and bought one. Not remembering that I was looking for a Canon with automatic focus I bought the same kind of Olympus again – mistake!!!

Maybe I should have practiced trying to hit the cross bar or the treble twenty?