You may remember that my mum and I went to the World Snooker Championships last year in Sheffield. We tried to get tickets for this year when they went on sale, but didn't. But a couple of weeks later I noticed some tickets were available for the quarter finals so we decided to buy them. We already had tickets for the Seniors Championships so were excited for the quarter finals too! We set off early, Lee took us to Sheffield, meaning we had time to go to Marmadukes which is close to the Crucible for breakfast.
I had smashed avocado on toast with some other stuff which was totally gorgeous and vegan! I like eating accidentally vegan at times. I also had a latte. We went over to The Crucible at about 9.40. Because of the Just Stop Oil protestors the week before, security was pretty high. We were frisked and I had to show them what my t shirt said - it said PETS HUGS ROCK N ROLL so it was fine. We took our seats on table one and then it turned out we were seeing Ronnie O'Sullivan! It was a possibility but we weren't sure, so we were thrilled! What a privilege to see the greatest player of all time!
You can buy earpieces where you can listen to the commentary, I didn't bother last year but I did this year and I'm glad I did. I was listening to Ken Doherty and Dennis Taylor, so that was nice. As I said last year, I don't go out of my way to watch the snooker but I don't mind if it's on the TV. But live it has such a good atmosphere and the commentary added to that. It's interesting too because while I won't call myself an expert, someone would make a shot and I would think something about it, and then one of the commentators would say exactly what I thought, so I can't have done that badly!
Ronnie was playing Luca Brecel and Luca definitely made him work for the frames he won. It was a great session and finished about 1.15. As we were leaving, planning on getting lunch and then heading into the Winter Gardens to watch the commentary going on there, my mum asked at the box office if they had any tickets for the afternoon session. And they did! In Row D! My mum wanted to stay so I ws happy to go along with it. Exciting!
We ended up walking to Pho for lunch and they made sure it was quick as we only had about an hour before we had to be back in the theatre. My mum went with me last year and enjoyed the curry, so she got that. I did too, I went for tofu and she went for chicken. It was as always so delicious! We headed back down to The Crucible and went it. The afternoon session was Anthony McGill (who we saw last year) versus Si Jiahui, who is one of the new Chinese players that is moving up through the ranks. He was leading at the mid session interval, but Anthony came back and they ended up at 4 frames each. It was interesting - Si gave up quite a few penalty points too. The session finally finished at abour 6pm.
We walked down to the train station for the 6.30 train. It was a long and tiring day but I really enjoyed the snooker we saw and it was great to see Ronnie. Lee made me some tea and then I got into bed at 8.30 because I was exhausted. I had caught quite a bad cold when I went away with my friends, and it was taking me a while to get over. I slept from 11pm until 9 the next morning when Lee woke me up!
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