Having another dart at my new hobby

It's the weekend - hallelujah for that.

And I'm planning to spend a significant chunk of it playing darts.

You may mock, and with very good reason. But let me explain.

I bought a dartboard on New Year's Eve 2008 because I'd been watching the world championship on TV and fancied having a go myself.

However, after screwing the board to the wall and firing my first few arrows at it, I quickly discovered that it wasn't as easy as those fat blokes on the telly make it appear. In fact, at times I did well to hit the board at all.

And the problem with missing the board was that I then hit the wall - and Vanessa hit me. So I gave up.

But last Saturday I was bored and, in a flight of unplanned fancy, went on t'Internet and spent £20 on a dartboard wall protector which was delivered yesterday (it's the black thing in the picture above). And last night I had a go at trying not to hit it.

The good news is that I only missed the board three times during my 30 minutes of firing, and even achieved a highest score of 101 - which you can also see in the photo.

But, to be honest, that total is a little deceiving. I did hit a treble 20 with my first dart which was great. But the double 20 with my second was not intentional and neither, obviously enough, was the single one which I scored with dart three.

However, at least I appear to have made a little progress in the year and a bit since I bought my board. The next challenge is to continue to get better.

And after that, it's to get a life. That might be the really hard bit.