Welcome to The Silver Ball, my pinball blog. To start things off I thought I’d introduce myself with a brief summary of my pinball experience.

I started playing occasionally as a very young kid - whenever I went to a fairground or seaside arcade with my parents my Dad played pinball and I soon picked it up. However I only really began playing properly at University.

The University of Warwick in the early ’80s was a great place for a pinball fan and the Games Room was my usual haunt. Half a dozen pinball machine, often including the latest models, and all kept in good nick by friendly engineers who would often leave credits on them. I became a competent player - never one of the best, but definitely competent. My speciality was saving the ball from a seemingly impossible situation. Which sounds impressive until you remember that a really good player wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place!

After university I was still able to play pinball - back then almost every pub had a table. But shortly afterwards the Decline began. Tables became rarer in pubs, being replaced by cheaper and easier to maintain video games. Instead of choosing a pub based on which machine it had, I was choosing a pub based on whether it had a machine at all.

My opportunities to play continued to become fewer and fewer until today - living in Edinburgh - I don’t know a single pub with a playable machine.

So I’ve been forced to play simulations instead, on the PC and consoles such as the PS2 and Wii. They’re nowhere near as good as the real thing but for now they’ll have to do.