Sex & Bowls & Rock and Roll: How I Swapped My Rock Dreams for Village Greens

There are two types of people in Britain – people with the confidence to take risks with social etiquette, and people who spend their lives concerned that a man will come and shout at them.

‘Who’d shout at us?’ asked Big Andy.

I considered this.

‘The groundsman.’

‘Naaah. He’s fine.’

My nervousness did not abate. I didn’t know any of the other club members and I did not want to start our relationship off on the wrong foot – certainly not as a shoutee.

‘Some other important club official?’

‘Earlier this year, we came up here on our own a lot,’ he insisted. ‘It’s practice. And practice is always encouraged.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘How will you know whether you want to play,’ he demanded, ‘if you don’t know whether you’re any good or not?’

Short Tony, who was looking upon the experiment as the start of a potentially interesting new hobby, similarly did not have proper bowls shoes. But they were at least brown, and from a distance they looked like proper bowls shoes. Mine looked like non-proper non-bowls trainers. I studied the terrain carefully. There was some long grass at the far end, where the green ended and met the farmland beyond. If a man came and shouted at us for playing without permission then I would attempt to quickly step into the long grass, thus camouflaging my footwear and ensuring that he would not be able to follow up his ‘Trespasser!’ shout with: ‘Plus you have not got proper bowls shoes on!’

I tried to make myself relax. It didn’t help that I was probably going to be rubbish at this, and thus make myself look like an idiot. I took a deep breath. There was no man in sight. Instead there was the weak but encouraging-looking sun of an autumnal, early lunchtime casting dewy shadows on an English bowling green.

‘Pint, anyone?’ offered Short Tony, motioning his head towards the big pub that stood looking over us like a comforting older brother appearing with a towel after the rough beating-up kids have been dispersed.

This seemed like a good idea, but I was cautious.

‘Are we allowed?’ I asked. ‘To take drinks onto the green, I mean.’

Short Tony disappeared off to buy beer.

The grass was soft and earthy, with well-worn patches from a season’s play. I padded around guiltily in my clandestine trainers. Big Andy handed me two of his woods; I tossed them down carelessly and they made small indentations in the surface. I drew breath sharply, but no shout came. He then disappeared into the small shed that adjoined the green, re-emerging seconds later with a white ball. Disappearing into a shed! Some people have all the self-confidence. If illegal walking on a bowling green wearing incorrect shoes merited a shout, I was sure that shed-disappearing would warrant at least something cruel and unusual.

The bowls police failed to leap out from behind a hedge and charge us with electric batons.

I picked up a single wood. It was wet from the grass, but felt comfortable in my hand, warm and smooth, not the wood of a guitar body, but a pleasing object nonetheless. I have nice dainty, nimble hands and I suspected that it might be slightly too large a size for them, and perhaps a little heavy for me to be totally sure of control. But I did not say anything for fear of bowls ridicule.

Big Andy, my tutor, lobbed the cott ahead to the other side – it bumped and bobbed on the grass. He then knelt and expertly pitched his wood, which rested intimidatingly close to the target. I watched Short Tony reappear from the pub, ambling up the short hillock and across the gravel car park with a tray of beers the colour of bowls shoes.

And then it was my turn. It is always good to give new things a try. But I couldn’t honestly see it being my sort of thing.

ONE (#ulink_01304193-98cc-509e-8b0d-5f179d664b72)

New towels for the old ceremony

‘Excuse me?’

There is a voice. I turn, surprised, from the post box to locate its source.

A man is ambling over from a small four-by-four thing. He is demonstrably from a town somewhere – it is one of those designer jobs that no genuine country-dweller from round here would dream of possessing. The engine chugs over, chug chug chug chug chug. He is clearly the source of the ‘Excuse me.’ I allow my letter to fall from my hand into the post box’s receptive womb, easing my wrist from its slot and giving my new acquaintance my full attention.

Silver-haired, he is wearing immaculate cream pressed slacks, which reveal that he is comfortably off and retired, and probably has a wife named Pat.

‘I don’t suppose you know where these agents are based?’ He gesticulates towards the ‘For Sale’ sign on the bungalow over the road.

A number of houses around mine are for sale – I do not know whether to take this personally or not. This particular one right opposite has been on the market since about Wednesday, 14th March at 11.32 a.m., and I am excited that I might be meeting a potential new neighbour. New people! I study his face closely. I will need to remember, so that I can report the details back to everybody at the village pub.

I give him the information he requires, waving my hand in the general direction of the coast. He asks me what living in the village is like, and I offer him long examples of how we all know what each other is doing and just pop into each other’s houses to say hello at any time of day or night, sometimes when we have been drinking heavily. It is a neighbourly community like that. He looks a bit less enthusiastic after this, and glances over his shoulder several times as he retreats to his car before accelerating off at some speed, doubtless to catch the estate agents before the shops close for the evening.

He did seem like a pleasant chap, and I am determined to stick by my parting words to him: that I would be quite happy to give him a hand with carrying all his stuff from the van when he eventually moves in.

Before he disappears around the corner, I make sure to take the number of his car. He is not from round here, after all, and he could have been looking at houses for sale with a view to committing some crime. I remember it all the way across the road, all up the path and into the kitchen, where I scribble it on the corner of some newspaper, along with ‘Old bloke. Silver hair. McJeep.’

There is no more excitement, but it will be good to have something extra-interesting to tell the LTLP when she gets home. Time is getting on – I need a bath and something to eat before I go.

I can’t remember exactly when I gave up.

It was probably on a platform at Harringay Station. Perhaps and probably it was raining. Harringay Station in the rain, fighting with hundreds of others for a modicum of shelter under the narrow footbridge, the loudspeaker broadcasting crackling messages of doom from a British Rail announcer based hundreds of miles away in a secret bunker buried deep beneath the Cairngorm mountains.

‘We apologise for the delay to the seven forty-four service to London Moorgate. This service is running approximately fifty-two minutes late. The first train to arrive will be the eight fourteen service, also to London Moorgate. Due to a short train, this service will consist of half a coach only, which will be of convertible open-top design, have no seats, and will be powered by passenger-manned oars. We apologise for any inconvenience that this might possibly cause you. To cheer you up, here is some music by the Stereophonics.’

When I say ‘a platform’, that implies a multitude of the things. In fact, there are but two platforms at Harringay Station. Standing, boxed in, elbow to arse with frustrated Key Account Executives and Change Implementation Managers and Human Resource Officers. Waiting, worrying if the tingly electricness of the rain is a genuine cause for concern as it drips from the overhead power lines onto your face. Pacing, irresistibly tempted to bolt for that footbridge, to leap aboard one of the frequent empty and invariably on-time trains returning north from the City, and head for the overwhelming excitement and vibrancy of Enfield Chase, New Southgate or, at a pinch, even Potter’s Bar. But of course you don’t. The train arrives and you fight for any form of nook, stuffing yourself frantically up against your fellow passengers like a veal calf undergoing sardine-replacement therapy.

Yes, it must have been then that I gave up. Then.

I’ve never given up on the music, however.

OK, I’m a bit older now. But Debbie Harry was already thirty when Blondie was formed; she was thirty-five when they released ‘Atomic’, which would have made her almost as old as I am. And yet she was famous and successful the world over at this late age, becoming an icon and achieving sales in the millions of millions, with men becoming physically sexually aroused – literally sexually aroused – whenever she sang or appeared on Top of the Pops. I’ve almost got there once, having supported the Sultans of Ping on one key date of their seminal 1992 UK tour. But Debbie Harry is one hell of an inspiration, and a lesson to anybody who thinks that exciting popular music can only be made by teenagers. Given just one small lucky break, there really is no reason whatsoever why I should not be the next Debbie Harry, but with women.

I call her ‘the LTLP’ for the purposes of the narrative.

I don’t want to upset her by using her real name. The WAGs are generally lower-key than their football equivalents; more down-to-earth and less publicity-hungry. She is my life-partner and has been for a long time; one of the very few people who have been both WAG and rock-chick wife. Every bowls player needs their Yoko Ono figure. She gives me an airy wave as I leave the house.

The canvas bag is weighty, betraying my relative novice status with its clean newness. It contains my four bowls (or ‘woods’, as we bowls people know them), an old beer towel for wiping purposes and some deeply, deeply unfashionable shoes. You have to have four woods, even though you only ever use two, as otherwise the other bowlers will laugh at you and think that you are some sort of idiot amateur without all the proper equipment. I lug it down the drive, across the road, and then sprint to Big Andy’s as fast as an unfit fat bloke carrying a rigid square bag of heavy bowls implements can sprint. He is jangling car keys impatiently; Mrs Big Andy stands hands-on-hips in their doorway, shaking her head and making ‘have a good evening, if this is really the way you want to spend your Friday night’ noises. I leap into the passenger seat and we are away in a haze of dust and sporting expectation.

In my pocket: house keys, some small change, a mobile phone. A mobile phone! Why do I bother with a mobile phone these days? I do not have important people to call any more; there is no reason why anybody would need to get hold of me. I get the odd text message from Short Tony that simply reads ‘pub?’, but seeing that he lives in the cottage next door you cannot really count the mobile connection as a vital communications lifeline. My mum and dad have a mobile phone but do not know how to use it; the LTLP knows where I’ll be all day. My friend Unlucky John, the only other person in the world whom I speak to, tends to prefer mobile to landline. But he’s in London, where such status is important.

It is a comfort thing, however. I will have it to hand should there be an emergency at bowls. The LTLP’s employers have given her a BlackBerry, which means that half the emails that pop up in my inbox with a cheerful ‘bing!’, causing such excitement and anticipation, turn out to be mundane and uninteresting things like ‘get the dinner on and don’t burn it this time you idiot’. So I took her old phone when my one finally gave up the ghost. It is a bright lurid pink Motorola, small and dainty, and adorned with girlish graphics.

But who cares? Once, this pink phone would have been a shameful accessory for me, as I wandered amidst the Neanderthal plains of people in chequered suits and wanky black-rimmed spectacles, of braying rah rah me me me idiots, of money-and-status-obsessed bottled-beer-drinking, testosteroned pre-Dibley clowns. That’s one of the big advantages of living in a tiny village in Norfolk. Nobody is particularly bothered about the superficial. Just one more stupid unnecessary mental weight that disappears when you leave the world of commuter trains and Strategic HR Initiatives.

It’s an easy-going game; none of the other bowlers really mind if you leave your phone on through the evening. Aside from that one time when it escalated a bit, and people ended up shouting ‘Well fuck you then! Fuck you!’ at each other, across the green. That was an exception.

Personally, I have a system. I keep my mobile phone switched on just in case there is an emergency or somebody important does call – but I make sure that I leave it in the pocket of my anorak which hangs in the clubhouse. That way nobody will hear it ringing and be disturbed during a crucial end. It seems a reasonable compromise.

Yes, my name is Alex Marsh and I play bowls.

I am thirty-thing years old, and I play bowls. Bowls is what I play. I am not ashamed of it; I do not seek to apologise or be defensive. I play bowls. It is not as if I am Mrs Karen Matthews, or have been exposed having sex with livestock on YouTube, or wrote and produced ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’. I play my bowls with pride. I would shout it from the rooftops, but I am afraid of heights.