Secluded Alley

The secluded back alley was a training ground farfetched from the previous training grounds on which he's spent hours on. But the game was adaptability; and being able to use any strange space, and integrate its idiosyncrasies into a training regime, which would ultimately attain an improvement in an aspect of the game, un-trainable for most, was the beauty of it all. The secluded back alley was like an traffic-stripped T-junction, parts were rocky, parts were smooth, parts were sunny, parts were shaded, parts were covered with smashed glass from a group of drunk dickheads from the night before who had parked their car in the back-streets of Newtown but had then gotten lost. There was a wall.

He would train their almost each day. Starting slowly in a hoodie, but often ending half naked because of the drenching nature of the sweat. Many people would pass by him and he'd usually just try to ignore them as if embarrassed by the skill he was producing. The routine was usually similar almost each day. There was one lady that passed by, on the way to drop her daughter off, who he talked to on an almost regular basis. The techniques were practiced in 20s. Often cars would begin to drive into the secluded back alley - the secluded back alley couldn't accommodate both him and a car - and he would meander effortlessly into whatever crevice he could find, allowing the car to pass without giving it a look, but all the while wondering if the people within were particularly impressed by the last technique he'd produced. The lady would walk past after picking up her child from day-care.

One windy day in the secluded back alley he wasn't feeling well. He was thinking too much. Past mistakes flooded his mind, as the notion of confidence began to overwhelm him. Das Selbstvertrauen. And he started to think horrible thoughts. But they felt so real. Maybe he should just give up. Just quit the game now. He'd has some nice moments, he'd had so many bad ones as well. And sometimes, especially after the last year or so, he just felt like the bad ones were starting to take over in a malignant spiral which would lead to a putrid hate and eventual bitterness. Maybe quitting now was just the best thing to do, he could go out, not on a high, but at least not too far off the back of something that maybe he hadn't pictured as being his high, but could nonetheless suffice. The ball bounced away from him and into the gutter. He walked over to it, picked it up and stopped training.

The next day he walked outside with a hoodie on. It wasn't long before he was warm and just in a t-shirt. He felt good and he liked the way he played, his technique, he thought »Who else can do this?« and began to believe in a sense of arrogance that he had hyped; an arrogance that was so necessary to believe in.