If you’re anything like me, you may have consumed some telly over the festive period.
The World’s Strongest Man, The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, and the annual films: Home Alone, The Muppet Christmas Carol, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Die Hard. It’s a braw time of year to get comfy on the sofa, tune in and tune out.
You may have also watched the darts, or at least been kept abreast of proceedings by everyone who did. The sport gave us something truly special over Christmas and New Year in Luke Littler. A doner-driven dynamo, manhandling his way to the PDC Championship final, only to heartbreakingly fall at the last hurdle. A pretender for now, but one who will surely ascend in short order.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Darts is a punishingly quick game, hurtling from leg to leg and set to set. Luke Littler seems to possess the ability to slow down time, like Neo in The Matrix, and guide the darts wherever he sees fit.
Thump. Thump. Thump. The sound of someone almost existing on another plane of existence from us mere mortals. Trundling down from Olympus for a quick tête-à-tête. Metronomic and meteoric is Luke Littler. Like Beethoven was to music or Brunel to engineering, Littler is to darts. Bombarding the board, throwing winners every chance he gets.
The first match I watched was the battle with Raymond van Barneveld in the last 16. Double-L obliterated him. One of the greatest of all time, swatted away with the nonchalance of a Djokovic, an Ali, a Woods.
How can someone so young be so good? I’m rapidly closing in on 40 and I’ve hardly mastered putting my slippers on at the end of the working day. Yet, here we have someone who is tussling with the legends of the game and has yet to see his 17th birthday.
Becoming a child genius is no longer an option
To rub it in, we all have to witness such youthful spectacle at a time of year when we’re supposed to be enacting numerous resolutions, self-designed to improve and better our very beings. Go back to the gym. Drink less, or not at all. Unfortunately, for most of us, “become a child genius at something or anything” is no longer an option.
There’s a video of a very young Luke Littler doing the rounds, throwing what I hope are Velcro darts at a felt board, with surprising accuracy for a toddler. Depending on the source, he might be anywhere between 18 months and three years old. Mozart didn’t debut until he was four.
Short of resolving to become a professional darts player, I’ve had to resort to more meagre victories in my pursuit of the perfect New Year’s resolution. An occasional jog. Watching fewer cat videos on TikTok (although “watching more” was a close second).
There’s also the classic of spending less money on alcohol. I’ll be engaging in Dry January at least, now that a few key post-New Year social engagements are out of the way. Presumably, 16-year-old Luke Littler has never been in a pub, except the giant one the darts takes place in. Presumably, Luke Littler has never had a pint. He’s beaten us all to sobriety, too.
Like darts, life is a game of inches
Being an expert in something is an aspiration for most of us, I think. At this point, I’d take anything. I’ve started fussing over the plants in the new house in a way that suggests I’ll be pretty good at it by the time I retire – a mere 26 years from now – but it’s not professional expertise, as I had planned.
This, perhaps, is why it’s resolutions we have, and not revolution. The small tweaks at betterment are best at this time of year. It’s dark and the weather is miserable. It’s never been the ideal season for a new direction in life, and you’ll never be Luke Littler.
A Littler is often a lot, and the lot in life for many of us is to simply exist among the gods of this world – the Littlers and the Messis; the Knowles-Carters and the Swifts
There’s value, too, in improving the small things that make up life. Going to bed at a sensible time more often; cooking a meal instead of ordering takeaway; spending more time with those who love and support you.
A Littler is often a lot, and the lot in life for many of us is to simply exist among the gods of this world – the Littlers and the Messis; the Knowles-Carters and the Swifts. Like darts, life is a game of inches, and if you can improve yours a bit at a time, from one year to the next, you’ll be doing all right.
And, failing satisfying yourself with that, you can always hang a dartboard over the living room mantelpiece. It’s never too late, you know. Perfection might only be a gruelling few years of practise away.
Colin Farquhar works as a creative spaces manager and film programmer in the north-east culture sector
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