Wiff Waff - I try my hand at table tennis - video Dailymotion

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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.

Wiff Waff - I try my hand at table tennis

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