Wiff Waff - I try my hand at table tennis
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00:00Why did you decide to open an Al Fresco ping-pong hall right here in Liverpool?
00:06We love outdoor spaces. I think Liverpool is definitely a city of swim-worshippers.
00:10With our other outdoor sites, Botanical Gardens or Brosa in the Baltic,
00:14and just having another outdoor activity, something else to break it up.
00:17We spoke to quite a few resident homes and other people inside of Liverpool,
00:21just do it actively, and have found amazing physical and mental well-being increases,
00:27especially with dementia.
00:29Table tennis, ping-pong, or wiff-waff, whatever you want to call it,
00:33originated in Victorian England, where it was played amongst the upper class
00:37as an after-dinner parlor game.
00:39I'm just very uncoordinated, so I don't have high hopes.
00:43Have you got any top tips?
00:45I think the first Hint or tip would always be, don't worry about dropping the ball.
00:50Do you know what I mean? I think that's definitely the...
00:52Do you know what I mean? Everyone's dropped the ball once in their life,
00:54it's not going to be the end of the world.
00:56You're more likely to get an amazing shot and have a great time
00:59if you don't stress a little bit too much about it.
01:01And then just keep it slow.
01:03I often sort of laugh and joke about sometimes people bring people on first dates
01:06and they just go really hard, really fast,
01:08and you just watch them smash four games against someone on a first date,
01:14and you're like, wow, that's an interesting start of a beautiful friendship.
01:18By 1901, table tennis was growing in popularity to the extent
01:21that tournaments were being organised, books were being written on the subject,
01:25and an unofficial World Championship was held in 1902.
01:29So today we're just going to have a little go at whiff-waffle ping-pong.
01:32Our main goal is going to be to get the ball backwards and forwards across the net,
01:38give it a nice little bit of pace to it.
01:40With serving, we're going to make sure that we hit the ball on our side before it goes over,
01:45but then we can just take it off the paddles.
01:47We'll take it nice and slow and just build up a nice little bit of speed with it.
01:51As well as table tennis, what else can we get up to here?
01:53I mean, we've got an amazing selection of food and drink from our neighbours, Fatback and Antojitos.
01:58So we've got a selection of smash burgers and also tacos and quesadillas, which is really good.
02:04And then for liquid, we've got some amazing drinks.
02:07We've got vodka frozen slushies. We have a non-alcoholic frozen cloudy lemonade.
02:12We've got beer that's made on site, which I think is really nice because you see real connection to that.
02:17In 1988, table tennis was introduced as an Olympic sport,
02:21and I reckon if I put the work in, Team GB might just be calling me up for LA 2028.
02:28One of the things that I'd say I'd definitely do for a living is help facilitate joy with like bars and outdoor spaces.
02:34So I think it was sort of a little bit of a natural progression from this.
02:37Yes, that's obviously named from the noise that the ball is made out of,
02:40like cork used to make as it went backwards and forwards.
02:43And I think like, you know, retro is definitely coming back.
02:45But I think just something else that sort of takes us off our phones for a period of time
02:50and sort of facilitates chat, I feel like sometimes the most important thing about table tennis isn't the table tennis.
02:56It's the chat that you catch up with people.