Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 0

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

Автор
Год написания книги
2019
<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >>
На страницу:
5 из 9
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля

‘Hopefully we’ll be there with a bit of time to spare,’ says Big Andy. ‘Get a quick pint before we start.’

‘Right,’ says Karen.

It is good to have a bit of new blood in the team. We struggled for players last year, after the club suffered green-uncertainty, and we had almost considered dropping out of the Thursday night league altogether. But a strong showing in the tables and our reputation for being a good-natured bunch of people have held us in good stead.

‘You might find that we take it a bit less seriously than some of your old lot,’ I call over my shoulder, as the Jackson 5 make way for the traffic report. ‘We’ve got some good players, but everybody’s there to have fun. There’s a – there’s a good atmosphere about it, is the best I can say.’

We will indeed be in good time. Park the car, go for a quick pint, get into the Zone. When you play bowls, it is very important to get into the Zone. Mental and spiritual preparation is everything.

‘A good atmosphere,’ confirms Big Andy, as we pull to a halt.

‘No we are not fucking all right,’ snarl Ron and Vicky, stepping out of their car and responding to my cheerful greeting quite alarmingly angrily. ‘He hasn’t picked us, has he? Years we’ve played for this club! Well he’s a fucking arsehole so we’ve turned up here anyway to fucking tell him so, and he can stick his fucking bowls club where it belongs.’

The Zone announces a temporary suspension and apologises for the inconvenience.

‘Right…um,’ I reply.

‘No offence to you lot, and we wish you well, but it’s time he had a piece of my mind, and I shall fucking give it to him when he arrives and it won’t be pleasant, I can tell you,’ says Vicky.

‘We’ve got the trophies from last year – he can fucking take those as well,’ adds Ron.

‘Um – perhaps we’ll go for a quick pint and leave you to it,’ suggests Big Andy.

‘Best not to interfere,’ I agree.

I see a car approaching out of the corner of my eye.

‘Here he is now,’ says Ron.

As the car pulls up, we realise that it is not Howard the club captain, but Nigel. I make frantic ‘we are going to the pub, quick quick stop the car and leap out and join us as fast as you can as there is going to be an angry scene in the car park’ gestures. But he just blinks at us in incomprehension, so we sportingly abandon him.

‘Just a little disagreement,’ explains Big Andy as we hasten away.

‘Right,’ says Karen.

I can see both sides of the quarrel. Doing the Human Resources for a small club is not a job that I would personally volunteer to do, even if I wasn’t so busy at the moment what with the stuff at home and the sorting out the band and things. It is a thankless and tiring task, and you are always likely to upset someone in the act of doing it. But I have always got on well with Ron and Vicky, having played in their block many a time. I hope it will sort itself out, somewhere else, where I won’t be involved with people shouting ‘fuck’ at other people. Big Andy clearly feels the same. We will hide bravely in the pub until the scene is over. It has always been a nice pub.

The pub is closed.

An aroma of angry dispute drifts on the air from behind us. ‘It can’t be closed!’ I moan, pulling once more at the door, ignoring the scrunch of broken glass beneath my feet.

‘It’s definitely closed,’ confirms Big Andy, stepping back from the tightly drawn blinds, the empty bottles discarded on the step, the sign on the door saying ‘This Pub is Closed’.

There are more raised voices. We stand awkwardly on the concrete slabs, thinking that perhaps a cheerful and very slightly out-of-breath publican might suddenly arrive with a key. I wander round the corner to the other side of the pub. That side of the pub is closed as well.

‘I guess we could just walk the streets for fifteen minutes?’ I wonder.

There is a small huddle of players clustered by the gate to the green as we nervously walk back with a view to sprinting around the edge of the car park and thus not getting involved in shouting and finger-poking. It transpires that the gate is locked, so we join the huddle, like refugees from the Gaza Strip. We examine our shoes as the argument approaches. They really are very interesting shoes. You can stare at them for ages without getting bored. The stitching runs all the way round, from the heel, round the toes, back to the heel again. And they keep your feet warm. Warm. And dry.

‘I’m sorry about that little scene,’ the club captain says helplessly, as his antagonists disappear in a cloud of petrol.

A greenkeeper arrives to unlock the gate. We traipse in slowly, in single file, still fixated on our shoes. The Zone hangs up a small sign: ‘This Zone is closed’.

The rules of bowls are simple.

Of course, I mean the local rules: the rules that we play by every Friday night before we go to the village pub; rules that are probably written down somewhere but that may as well be unwritten, that have been passed down by generations of Norfolk bowlers. I am sure that there are variations in different counties, in different leagues, or when you go overseas to any of the other great bowls-playing nations. But as far as I am aware, there is no Sepp Blatter of bowls; no white-capped Juan Antonio Samaranch figure passing resolutions and presiding over standardisation. I guess there is Howard, who goes to the league meetings and picks the team. Howard, or Barry Hearn.

In any case, there aren’t many rules in the big scheme of things. Not compared with cricket, or American football, or just living in general. If we assume that everybody knows the object of the game – to get as close to the cott – the little white ball – as possible, then we can dispense with that and get on to the important bits. And the most important bit comes at the very beginning of each match, before a mat has been laid or a wood tossed.

The first, undisputed law of bowls is to shake your opponent’s hand and wish him a good game.

‘Have a good game.’

‘Have a good game.’

‘And you – have a good game.’

‘Have a good game.’

‘Have a good game.’

If you are playing triples – three on each block – as is normal on Fridays, then that equates to eighteen announcements of ‘have a good game’. That is, I wish each of the three people on the opposing block a good game, and each of those three wishes one back – six ‘have a good game’s. This is repeated by the two colleagues on my side, making eighteen declarations in total before you even acknowledge your own side. That is not all, however. A ‘block’ is merely one-third of a bowls team – we play nine-a-side, three blocks playing their separate games side-by-side on different parts of the green (‘rinks’), their individual results being added together to decide the outcome of the match. That is fifty-four ‘have a good game’s resounding around the green, drifting amidst the trees and the mats and the scoreboards and echoing off the hedgerow. Often it is dark before we have finished wishing each other a good game.

And ‘have a good game’ it must be – that is the wording that is acceptable. There is no ‘good luck’; no ‘have a nice one’; no simple ‘cheers’ or ‘all the best’. ‘Have a good game’ is the phrase that is said, and has been, and always will be.

‘Have a good game.’

Cricket was my first sporting love.

Travelling with my dad to watch him play, my own small child’s kit stashed hopefully in the boot, in the wishful anticipation of one of the men suffering a horrible injury and being unable to continue. Watching my dad intently as he stood crouched like a panther in the gully; ambling around the boundary together as he waited for his turn to bat. And then – oh joy! – somebody would be too slow to move and would be hit in the nuts at silly point, and I would be called upon to substitute. And then cakes at tea, and being given cider in the pub afterwards. What could be a better way of spending a Saturday afternoon for a boy?

Then making it into the team, and running around, and batting and bowling, and buying cider in the pub afterwards. And playing with your dad, and discovering rock music, and skipping the odd game because of band practice, and leaving before the cider to go drinking with your new friends, and not having so much time on Saturdays to do stuff with your dad, and…

I think I am a bit fat to play cricket these days. I did give it a go again a couple of years back, but I was really only still good at the cider bit, and after a while I became aware of small boys lurking around the ground, regarding me as a dead-cert nuts casualty. It was fun, but I don’t miss it. That was then and this is now.

Football was never my thing. I did play at a reasonably high level, for the 3rd Billericay cub troop. My position was left back, which, as my dad explained to me, was probably the most important position on the field. Unfortunately, none of the other cubs realised this, and they used to shout things like ‘Haha – left back in the changing room, more like! Left back! Left back in the changing room!’ I didn’t move on to another club when I left the cubs. My fellow players eventually went on to become people in the City with aggressive suits and wanky spectacles and too much testosterone. They were happy times.

Tennis half-killed me, and I was never built for rugby, so now it’s just a bit of snooker, with John Twonil, Mick and Short Tony and the gang – and the bowls. I wonder what would have happened had I discovered bowls at a very early age? There are probably hundreds of thousands of small boys who have never had a chance to play; never seen a bowling green. It is a shame, and the reason why Barry Hearn must succeed.

Triples – three on a block. Each has a specific role: the ‘skip’, the ‘lead’, who bowls first, and the one who bowls second/in the middle, who does not have a particularly satisfactory title.

The first thing that you’ll not appreciate on Barry Hearn’s television coverage is this: when you step forward to bowl, you can’t really see what’s happening at the other end – the ‘head’ of woods that collect around the cott. It is too far away, and difficult to judge distances between the woods. This is the role of the skipper – to stand by the head, making judgements about the position of each wood and letting you know what’s going on via a combination of words and gestures. These will include his recommendation on what would be the best shot to try in the circumstances. Sometimes this is a gentle suggestion, sometimes a barked order followed up with ‘Oh well – do it your own fucking way then.’ Skips have different styles.

Each player has two woods to bowl. The home and away skippers bowl theirs last, their responsibility being to tie everything up – not merely hoping to gain points for the team, but perhaps to knock an opponent’s wood out from a scoring position, or to block things off in front in order to protect an advantage.

If you’re the one in the middle, then you have a dual role to play. First, you will be looking to build up a good strategic position within the head, to make the skipper’s life easier when he comes to claim the points. Second, you will sometimes be called upon to merely get as close to the cott as possible, if the lead bowler has failed to trouble the surrounding grass with his efforts.

The lead has a simple job – a very simple one. The lead must bowl two woods that come to rest right next to the cott, thus putting the opposition on the back foot from the word ‘have a good game’. It is a big responsibility, and it takes a certain type of person to make a good lead. Paradoxically, as your two colleagues are yet to bowl, there is the opportunity of rescue, and thus the lead position is also a good place to hide somebody if they are shit.
<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >>
На страницу:
5 из 9