Lord’s At The Start Of The Cricket Season, 6 April 2023

Actually I visited Lord’s twice in the short week before Easter and on both occasions played real tennis.

Given the weather and my other activities, I got more tennis than cricket during those visits.

On the Tuesday, before the start of the cricket season, I had a really good game of doubles, partnering Graham Findlay for the first time and taking on some strong opponents. On paper we should have received some handicap but we played level and still prevailed over 90 minutes. The best I can remember me playing for a long time; perhaps the best I have ever played. Sadly, the CCTV camera stopped running a couple of seconds into our slot, so all I can show of the historic event is this warm-up shot from the hazard end.

Meanwhile Charley “The Gent Malloy” and I had planned to spend the first day of the season at Lord’s together, a bit of a tradition and, with Middlesex playing Essex, a desirable fixture for us both too. But Chas had to withdraw from the planned meet, so I arranged to play tennis first thing with a view to seeing a bit of cricket afterwards, all being well.

Another really good game of doubles, with an opportunity to partner Nick Evans for the first time since goodness-knows-when. Also a chance to play with Bill Taylor again, who was back on court playing competitively after quite a long absence. Again, we played level against the odds for my pairing. This time we lost by a smidgeon. I’d rather not talk about the four set points that went begging, nor my duff call on the opponents’ set point. Again I played well, I felt, but not as well as I had played on the Tuesday.

When I emerged from the dressing room, I ran into Ed Griffiths, Harry Whiteley and Arfan Akram from the London Cricket Trust, who were having an impromptu meeting (chat) about our next stage of activities. They asked me to join them.

In the interludes between the cricket conversation, Ed waxed lyrical about the real tennis, as only he can, suggesting it was a geriatric game, while studiously ignoring the rather good quartet from Prested Hall who were playing by then.

Ed can wax lyrical indoors and outdoors

Arfan looking quizzicalboth of the above pictures from the LCT launch in Southwark Park last autumn.

Then Ed collared young Nat, our apprentice professional, asking him why he wasn’t 60 years older than he looked and then asking Nat to provide a three word description of my real tennis.

Graceful, technically gifted…

…came Nat’s spontaneous reply, which I must say I thought was a fine contribution to the debate. I’m not sure what substances (or planet) Nat is on if he actually believes that, but it was a great answer for the context.

Graceful & technically gifted the day after the Petworth Match last week

The weather then started to smile and Ed wanted to go off to take custody of a ludicrously fast and expensive car for reasons that he did explain but they got a little lost in translation. It’s probably something to do with late-onset-mid-life-crisis.

Ed made a rather disparaging remark about my car, Dumbo, perhaps unaware that Dumbo tends to hang out with ludicrously fast and expensive cars these days:

Two Lamborghinis, Dumbo & a Ferrari: in Waitrose Bayswater Car Park

But I digress.

I got to see some cricket.

I sat for a while in the Writing Room, but then really wanted to get a feel for the outdoor nature of the game, so took up a position in the Warner Stand…

Then, around 3:15, I started to realise how cold I felt and how close the time was getting to the “afternoon showers” predicted by the weather app and increasingly feeling likely. So I went home.

Still, I had played a good game of tennis, had a useful chat about the LCT (between the bants) and seen a couple of hours of cricket. That’s a pretty good day in my book.

A Long Weekend In Sussex, Using A Petworth v Dedanists Tennis Match As The Excuse, 25 to 28 March 2023

In the heat of battle at Petworth

Robert Muir tapped me up for this late March Sunday tennis match at Petworth. I realised that it would make an excellent “excuse” for us (me and Janie) to enjoy a short break in Sussex, having done nothing of that kind for so many months.

I hired, through Air B’n’B, what looked like and turned out to be a charming old cottage in Fittleworth for a few days.

The following piece has about 40 of the photos we took scattered in it. If you prefer pictures to words, here is a Flickr link to all 126 pictures we have stored:

Good shot, sir.

Saturday 25 March – Limping From London To Fittleworth, Then Dining In Petworth

Janie and I played our regular game of (modern) tennis on the Saturday morning and set off after a light lunch.

The adventure did not start well.

Dumbo, The Suzuki Jimny, who had recently had a flat tyre & wheel change, let us know as soon as he went over 40 mph that he was not going to be happy at speed, juddering like crazy. Dumbo is well known around London as a pandemic hero…

…but his popularity on and beyond the M25, juddering along at 35-40 mph. was not evident. People were hooting and gesticulating at us.

Daisy got on the mobile phone, trying to locate garages or “tyre services” near to our location on the M25/M3, with limited success, until someone in goodness knows where recommended someone in Guildford, who suggested that we were nearer to Aldershot…

…two keen lads at Aldershot Kwikfit identified that the problem was tyre-balancing and thought that their machine was not working properly because the imbalance appeared “off the scale”. I guessed that the tyre dude in Acton had sold us a dud, so we decided to limp on to Fittleworth and take stock on Monday.

A sliver of Peshwari Nan, me dear?

We commissioned Sue’s cabs (a two-car, husband & wife combination, in which the wife seems very much in charge…we were allocated husband Charles) to take us to and from our Fittleworth cottage to Basmati in the Petworth Market Square – suitably located next door to the Co-op where we could get some basic supplies for our few days.

We had an excellent meal, comprising Peshwari nan & papadoms to start, followed by chicken tikka shobuz (Daisy’s choice), jatt lamb (my choice) tarkha dhaal and lemon rice. A very juicy Malbec helped to wash all of that down and some very friendly and helpful staff served it all.

Just the ticket.

Sunday 26 March – The Big Match At Petworth

This was not to be my first experience of playing at Petworth – that pleasure was about five years ago, soon after the major refurbishment there had been completed:

Anyway, Robert had kindly arranged for me (and a couple of other Dedanists who had ventured far for this fixture) to play two short rubbers rather than one, which added to the fun.

Kim Walker and Me for the Dedanists

A sweet win, coming from behind

Between my two short rubbers, a fine lunch of pies and veg, produced in ample quantities by Robert and Carole.

I partnered Chris Marguerie in the second of my rubbers, which was closer than the first but, much like that first rubber, a victory despite being behind for most of the rubber.

Janie was absolutely rapt with attention during that second rubber of mine. Unfortunately, she was paying attention to Nigel Pendrigh and discussing all manner of paramedical matters rather than hanging on my every shot. What a strange way to spend your time at a real tennis match.

Joking apart, the whole event was wonderfully convivial time with old friends and new, as well as good fun tennis, which is just as such friendly matches should be.

We snacked light that evening back at our little cottage, enjoying the peace and privacy and the rather fruity bottle of white depicted above, courtesy of our host.

Monday 27 March – A Day In Petworth

At the tennis match, we discussed Dumbo’s little problem with several of the locals. Robert and most of the others were emphatic..

speak with Alan at Market Square Garage in Petworth tomorrow.

…so we did; first thing. Alan said he’d give it a try.

While awaiting Dumbo’s diagnosis, we visited Janie’s favourite shop in Petworth, Tallulah Fox, where we again bought some Italian coloured glasses from Sarah, just as we had on our previous visit to Petworth.

Alan’s Dumbo diagnosis was that the dud tyre was “off the scale unbalanced” and needed replacing. He also pointed out that the spare, upon which I had been unconsciously pinning my hopes for several years, was also a dud and would not be a safe replacement. I asked him to order and replace two, such that I’d have a matching pair at the front and the older front tyre that was not a dud could become a useable spare.

Alan told us that the tyres would definitely arrive at some point that afternoon, enabling him to complete the job, but it could be any time in the afternoon.

Thus our plans were laid. We would do our day of walking around Petworth House, Gardens and Deer Park. Worse things could happen to us on a beautiful sunny spring day, two minutes walk from the entrance to Petworth House & Park.

Two minutes later…the park entrance

At the park entrance, we happened upon Martin, who is the head gardener for the grounds. He and Janie had quite a long conversation about plants, shrubs and trees, quite a bit of which was in Latin. I understood “daffodils”, “ponds”, “deer”, “landscape”, “Capability Brown” and a few other words.

Probably best I tell the next part of the story in pictures more than words.

Mostly my pictures around the deer park – one or two are Janie’s. It is a shame my tennis shots are not as consistent as my photo shots.

After that long walk around the deer park we were ready for an early lunch, so we parted company with the entrance fees and entered the house and gardens.

We were persuaded to join a short talk about J.M.W. Turner in the card room first.

Janie savoured this unlikely scene of cricketers and fallow deer in front of the pond

Then we took an early lunch. Just as well we went early – we managed to get a table and our choice of grub: tuna jacket-tater for Daisy, za’atar chicken bap for me. But before we had finished our grub, another couple asked to share our table and they discovered that almost all of the food was sold out…at around 12:50. (Blame Brexit/Covid/Putin/rail strikes).

Then we had a look around the servants’ quarters, not least the old kitchens, which were fascinating and rather stunning in their own way. Janie coveted some of the larger pieces of equipment which were almost as big as our entire kitchen.

More copper than the Met Police

“Looks real. Are you SURE we can’t eat it?”

The Scullery

Still Room

Janie showed our age by confessing that she did a holiday job as a kid for a wealthy, elderly couple who had a communications system that looked just like this

Then we looked at a small modern art exhibition.

Janie’s gloves were well colour-co-ordinated with several of the pictures

Refreshed and mentally stimulated, we set off for a second walk – this time around the pleasure gardens part. A slightly shorter, similar loop to our morning walk, but very different look in the pleasure garden.

Daffodils – see, I did understand what they had been talking about

Is that the village idiot or did Daisy just twig the folly of the Doric Temple?

Is that the Petworth rough sleeper or were the exertions now catching up with Ged?

Approaching the Rotunda

A thrush at surprisingly close quarters

Along the way, we encountered the gardeners again. Janie asked one of them about a particular shrub, to which he said…

…oh yes, you’re the couple that was talking to Martin earlier. I’m not entirely sure, but Martin will know…

MARTIN (from behind a larger bush): Enkanthus perulaus…

…so now we all know. Was Martin following us around?

Not sure, but when I stopped to take the following picture…

…I heard the gardeners’ buggy coming, stopped, stood to attention, saluted and got well splashed by the puddle they went through. Janie, from a safe distance, saw the whole episode unfolding and could not stop laughing for a while. Nor could I. They must have thought that I was a right twit of a city boy!

Once Janie stopped laughing, I took her photo with that magnolia:

Soon we were back at the house and in need of a little more refreshment – i.e. a cup of coffee to perk ourselves up – before looking at the bits of the main house we hadn’t seen before lunch:

Chapel

The Leconfield Chaucer

Ming, Italianate and Japanese things

Exceptional murals on the grand staircase

St.Mary’s Petworth, as seen from that staircase

We then left Petworth House, wondering where we might go to while away the time until Alan had prepared Dumbo. Just as we were walking through the exit door into the town, my phone went. Dumbo was ready for us.

Dumbo’s new found friends at Alan’s place

Dumbo seemed a little reluctant to leave his new found friends. To be honest, he’s been getting ideas above his service station ever since he encountered the following mob in a car park a couple of week’s ago:

Two Lamborghinis, Dumbo and a red Ferrari. That’s Waitrose Bayswater for you

But I digress. We’d had a super day.

Tuesday 28 March – Brighton, Hove & Home

The weather turned yukky again on the Tuesday, but that didn’t really effect us. We rose quite early, checked out of our sweet little cottage in Fittleworth and went to see Sidney & Joan in Hove, via a short stop at Pendulum in Brighton, where Janie likes to treat me to some louder, fancier clothing than I would ever treat myself. This was a successful visit – three shirts, three pairs of troos and a pair of boat shoes.

Trigger warning: you might need sunglasses for my shirts if you run across me this summer.

Nothing looks colourful on a gloomy day, but Daisy thought the car in front of us was well colour-co-ordinated with the Brighton lamp posts

Then lunch with Sidney and Joan, for the first time since before the pandemic, which is too long of course. It was lovely to see them again and we chatted about many things, not least family stories from way back when. Word had reached Sidney about his Uncle Sid’s revived fame as a saw player, explain and linked within the following:

Lunch and the afternoon flew by, which left only the journey home and an early night, as Janie and I were both tired but very satisfied at the end of our short break.

If you want to see all 126 pictures, here again is the Flickr link:

126 shots on target, which certainly cannot be said for my tennis

Skills Night At Lord’s, 1 March 2023

The curry had to wait while I doled out a vast number of “valuable” prizes – with thanks to Tony Friend and Chris Bray for the pictures.

Putting me in charge of the real tennis skills night is a bit like putting Boris Johnson in charge of an honesty bar, or Suella Braverman in charge of a kindness campaign.

Anyway, the powers that be have deemed me suited to the task, perhaps in a bid to keep me and my tenuous relationship with tennis skills away from attempting the actual skill trials themselves. In truth I very much enjoy hosting the event.

It has become a twice-yearly thing now – once in the spring and once in the autumn, which makes sense.

While this team of three deploys its skills, you might just make me out, in the distance, badgering the next team to ready themselves

I see no point in repeating my write up for the MCC Newsletter here – you can read it through this link if you are eligible. In the unlikely event that the link doesn’t work for you but you still want to read the report, I have scraped it to here.

I did not go into detail in that match report about the vast number of valuable prizes on offer, but the following pictures might provide some clues.

Brandon appreciates winning the “close but no cigar” award

Fergus scores a cool half-million bucks as the most valuable player

Andrew Hinds presents the coveted Hinds trophy to the lowest-scoring team

The victorious trio celebrate their win

As it happens, Tony Friend’s team was victorious again this time, reprising his famous success in 2016 along with yours truly on that occasion – my first skills night and sole success as a player in the skills tournament.

Plenty Of Real Tennis, Including The MCC Club Weekend & “Batting For The Other Side” In The Queen’s Club v Dedanist’s Society Match, Late January & Early February 2023

Brian Sharp presents the Mason Sharp Trophy To The A/B Category Winners at the end of the MCC weekend.

I played plenty of real tennis (and lawn come to that) in January, building up to the MCC Club Weekend, the last weekend of January, an event that I had either steered away from or had cruelly steered away from me until this year. I’m hooked on the idea of playing in it now, though – it was great fun.

Almost everything I want to say about the weekend, including some video links and photos, is in the match report I wrote about the weekend, which you can find by clicking here.

MCC Tennis Chair, Guy Pemberton, applauds, as Graeme Marks presents

The Queen’s Club v The Dedanist’s Society At Queen’s, 3 February 2023

I have previously described the oddities of Dedanist’s Society matches, with many players being eligible for both teams and often not knowing who they are going to play for until the last minute.

I have previous at this – here’s a report on one in which I represented the MCC against the Dedanist’s, with Carl Snitcher, doyen of The Dedanist’s partnering me for the MCC.

or this one from just before the pandemic, in which I had both an MCC and my Dedanist’s shirt in my bag, as I really had no idea which team I’d end up representing. Carl Snitcher, who was the captain of The Dedanist’s team, ended up playing for the MCC:

But I broke yet more new ground in February 2023 in my role in the Queen’s Club match, “batting for the other side”, because I have, in theory, no right whatsoever to represent Queen’s.

Admittedly, I did do some advisory work for Queen’s in the early 1990s, enabling me to enact a fiendish piece of Gamesmanship at that club in the late 1999s…

…but I am not a member of Queen’s and not in truth eligible to represent. Further, there were several people listed who were members of both Queen’s and The Dedanist’s. But the timings and handicaps meant that it made sense for me (and one or two other people) to swap sides for this friendliest of friendly fixtures.

I partnered a really pleasant fellow in the first fixture of the day and we did well. I think we set the ball rolling for a Queen’s Club win, but it was hard to tell as we all kept having to look at the schedule to work out which pair was playing for which team.

I think it is fair to say that it REALLY didn’t matter. Nick Browne organised a really enjoyable afternoon and evening – the event was rounded off with a fine meal in the President’s Room – which, as usual, raised money for the Dedanist’s Society’s good causes as well as providing a really good time for us players/attendees.

Reality Meets NewsRevue At Lord’s, 2 to 10 November 2022

Chris Rowe & Ian Harris At Lord’s, Photo by Nat Cherry

A plethora of real tennis at Lord’s in early November:

  • skills night, which I now “match manage”;
  • a match between the MCC and Middlesex University Real Tennis Club (MURTC), which I somehow found myself captaining/match managing for the MCC;
  • a long-in-the-planning “friendly” with fellow NewsRevue alum Chris Rowe.

Skills Night, 2 November 2022

I explained how I “inherited” responsibility for skills night from Johnny Whiting in my review of last year’s event, click here or below:

This year’s event was no less exceptional, with fun and fabulous prizes on offer, ranging from a half-exploded can of Irn Brew (don’t ask) to a most valuable player award of $500,000,000. The winners got proper bottles of Pol Roger (other fizzy drinks are available) and chocolates. The wooden spoon has now been emblazoned in the form of the coveted Hinds Trophy.

MCC Members can read all about skills night and tennis generally here. Should anything ever go awry with that link, a scrape of my match report can be found here.

MCC v MURTC, 9 November 2022

Those who know me well from school etc. know that I am unaccustomed to being a sports team captain. I was more likely to be the chap waving his hand wildly at the captain saying, “me, me, me” in the hope of being spotted and picked. But Carl Snitcher, the MCC captain for this match, needed to be elsewhere and I got the call about 10 days before the match to step in and “lead”.

Leadership in this instance merely comprised turning up, badgering people into paying their match fees and shouting “come on MCC” at regular intervals during the match.

It was also still my role to play in the fourth rubber of this five rubber match, renewing my partnership with John Thirlwell, whom I hadn’t partnered since before the pandemic.

Thirlwell and Harris snapped in the dedans on a previous match evening

John and I tried to get back into practice together by playing singles against each other the week before (a superb, close bout) and a practice doubles as a pair the day before the MURTC fixture. But all that was to no avail in the matter of winning our rubber on the big night. Still, we made a close match of it and the fixture as a whole was won by the MCC, albeit by the narrowest of margins in the final rubber, to take the match 3-2.

Those interested enough can watch the entire match – all six hours of it – on the MCC Real Tennis YouTube channel through the link below. Compelling is not the word for this viewing.

As Walt Whitman put it, no doubt thinking of match managing a real tennis match, not Abe Lincoln or anything of that sort:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won…

NewsRevue Inspired Comedy Singles: Chris Rowe v Ian Harris, 9 November 2022

Soon after taking up real tennis in 2016, I ran into Chris Stanton in the dedans gallery at Lord’s. I had known Chris from NewsRevue since 1992, when I started writing for that show and John Random chose one of my pieces for Chris Stanton to perform, making “Stanny” the first professional actor to perform my material on stage. That, together with the connection with fellow NewsRevue alum Chris Rowe, is explained in my Chris Stanton obituary piece click here or below:

Chris Rowe was a good friend of Stanny’s but a little before my time in NewsRevue…

Stanny & Rowy, 1991 NewsRevue Edinburgh Run

…as I understand it, Chris Rowe introduced Chris Stanton to real tennis at Lord’s, although they had rarely played together in recent years; indeed Chris Rowe had/has played hardly at all for several years.

When Chris Rowe and I communicated and eventually met after Stanny’s sad demise, we resolved that we really should have a game of tennis together.

Eventually that idea came to fruition this very day. It was to be Chris Rowe’s first proper game of singles for some considerable time, although he made sure to have a hit with one of the pros by way of preparation.

Despite Chris’s handicap on paper being far better than mine, the pros thought that, taking dormancy into account, we should play level and see what happens.

It was actually a very good match playing level, with deuces galore and lots of good rests (which is real tennis speak for rallies).

Unfortunately, the CCTV cameras wee not recording our match for posterity, so I cannot show you any clips from the actual singles bout in question, but I can assure you that the level was much higher than my doubles level the day before…

…but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

In the absence of footage from the actual match, I thought the following highlights reel is as close as I can get to illustrating the sort of skills on show that day. Below is a six minute thrillathon, which you might prefer to the six hour marathon of the MCC v MURTC match above:

Actually, there were probably elements of the Rowe v Harris match that might be seen as comedy tennis, in particular when one of us (usually me) got caught in an “it’s behind you” position, unable to call my own chase.

We also both managed an array of “characters” correcting the chase calls and devising arcane etiquette on the fly…

…since you last played here, my good fellow, the MCC Committee has deemed it to be ungentlemanly conduct to make a chap run around the court like that and then take the point from him…

…that sort of thing.

But then, as I said when I first met Chris Stanton at Lord’s:

If John Random were to consider inventing an ancient game with bizarre, arcane rules, for comedy purposes, he need look no further than the actual laws of real tennis.

Joking apart, it was such a pleasure finally to play tennis with Chris Rowe having plotted to do so for so long. I hope we’ll do it again. Although, if he gets back into practice, Chris will need to be giving me quite a few handicap points for sure.

Pass Time With Good Company, With “All Good Sports” For A Few Days, Mid October 2022

Rohan “Candy” Candappa & David Wellbrook

Violets & Fatt Pundit With Mark Ellicott, Simon Jacobs & John White, 17 October 2022

For some reason we were all being too grown up to take photos, but this was a special get together reuniting people who had all known each other at Keele for one reason or another.

I had re-engaged by e-mail with Mark Ellicott during the latter stages of the pandemic while writing my “Forty Years On” series, not least to compare notes over Princess Margaret debacles, a cricket match for which I got picked for the craziest of Ellicott-induced reasons and more recently some exchanges over playlists (or, as we used to call them, mix tapes) from 1982.

Mark Ellicott (right), next to Neil Baldwin of Marvellous fame, 2016

In particular the musical aspects intrigued Simon Jacobs, who wondered out loud to me why I hadn’t set up a get-together with Mark.

Simon, in 2019, trying to make a silk purse out of my (then) sow’s ear voice

Actually, John said something similar when I shared my Mark correspondence with him when we met up in the summer. I had no excuse, so I felt duty bound to act.

John questioning my judgement with his eyes and body language, August 2022

I booked a table at Fatt Pundit in Berwick Street and chose Violet’s as a suitable close-by bar for us to meet for a pre-dinner drink.

I played tennis at Lord’s – a draw at singles seeing as you were going to ask – before hot-footing it (via the flat) to Soho.

I arrived at Violet’s, grabbing a table – just inside but suitably quasi-open to the street – about five minutes before Simon arrived. From that vantage point, we observed Mark walk straight past us and then four or five minutes later he returned having got as confused as everyone else by the Berwick Street door-numbering. John arrived fashionably but not ridiculously last.

We had a good chat and a drink at Violet’s before heading a block or two up the road to Fatt Pundit, where the food was excellent and the chat got even better.

A few comedy moments with the sweet waitress whose high-pitched voice is possibly in a register that none of us, given our advancing years, could hear. But the menu was pretty-much self-explanatory, so a mixture of sign language, reading the menu and common sense allowed us to order a cracking good meal.

It was a really enjoyable four-way catch up.

Goldmine With Rohan Candappa & David Wellbrook, 18 October 2022

This gathering was originally conceived in Soho when Rohan and I met for dim sum a couple of months ago:

It was basically a “barbeque meats challenge” based on my assertion that the Queensway specialists therein, especially Goldmine, are better than those in Chinatown.

It turned into a small-scale Alleyn’s School alum thing. David Wellbrook, being Wellbrook, needed to join in the challenge, not least because Queensway is an alma mater of his where he attended the University of Romance (his wife used to live there when they were courting).

We tucked into plenty of barbeque meats, diverting briefly at the start and end of the lunchtime feast for some dim sum, just in the interests of science.

At school Rohan Candappa was always known as Candy, so it was with great mirth and merriment that David spotted “Candy World” across the street.

Rohan Candappa’s world

After lunch, we retreated to my flat where I showed the lads my centennial family relic, on what was, after all, its century day.

Hamsters v Dedanists At Hampton Court Palace, 20 October 2022

Almost everything that needs to be said about this match is contained in my match report on the Dedanists web site – here…or perhaps best to read it from the scrape here, scraped before the current piece drops down the running order.

For those who don’t like to click and/or who don’t want all the tennis detail – here is an extract:

“It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” said your intrepid reporter to Carl Snitcher, having braved the 3.5 mile high-pass journey from Notting to Primrose Hill in just over 35 minutes.

“There’s a bad moon on the rise,” agreed Carl, gnomically.

We arrived at a rain-soaked Hampton Court Palace in the nick of time; just as well, as your intemporal reporter was playing in the first rubber. Some might argue that our arrival was actually “worse than two”, but a more substantial discrepancy soon revealed itself; the marker’s sheet was showing a lesser handicap for the Dedanists than the sheet that James McDermott & I had been sent.

In order to avoid a major diplomatic incident, James & I acquiesced to the lesser handicap, yet still somehow contrived to win our rubber, albeit narrowly…

McDermott hitting, me watching

On finally staggering away from the court, your incognizant reporter picked up a message that the Prime Minister had resigned. “That’s the second Liz whose expiration has been announced while I was on the real tennis court in the space of six weeks”, I mused, having been informed of the late Queen’s demise by Tony Friend while I was on the Lord’s court.

I thought I might be the tidings-bringer this time, only to discover that most of the group had learnt the demise of Liz Truss some 45 minutes earlier.

Anyway, this was no time to ponder the fate of shambolic politicians – it was time to tuck into the pies before they too were to become a footnote in history. A positive footnote in the case of the pies of course – once again a delicious choice of
• Chicken Ham & Leek;
• Steak & Ale.

Bread and cheese (yes please) and two species of yummy desert that self-discipline allowed me to avoid, along with the jolly wines on offer…

Pictures by Tony Friend

There’s no better way to lift the spirits on a gloomy, worrisome day than a day of pastance with Dedanists and Hamsters. Symbolically, as the nation’s political shenanigans moved on to its new phase, the heavy clouds and rain of the morning had lifted to reveal a gorgeously bright, sunny evening as we all left.

“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”, said Carl, gnomically, as I dropped him home.

“Pass time with good company”, I replied.

A Sojourn To Prested Hall For Play, Talk and Watching Tennis & Stuff, 12 to 14 September 2022

I played some real tennis (& padel), I spoke at the Real Tennis Society Conference, I watched four sets of the World Championship (the middle day) and had a thoroughly good time.

The idea, from my perspective, was hatched in May, while I was playing in the Lowenthal Trophy Tournament at Queen’s.

Frederika (Freddy) Adam tapped me up (moments before the final I seem to recall) to see if I would produce something vaguely historical for the Real Tennis Society Conference during the World Championship in September.

Only if I can get myself a decent seat for the match that evening and a room at Prested Hall for a couple of nights.

A couple of weeks later, I somewhat idly (more in hope than expectation) checked out the match and room situation. One front row seat had popped back into the pot and so had a room for two nights at Prested Hall. I eagerly grabbed both and resolved to do something for the history conference.

The upshot was an immersive performance piece, which you can read by clicking here or below…

The Prested people (both in the tennis club and the Hall) are incredibly helpful. They arranged for me to play real tennis on the Monday afternoon when I arrived and padel on the Wednesday morning before I left. Both were very good games.

I met one or two of my fellow real tennis addicts at dinner in the hotel on the Monday evening, but the fun really started at breakfast on the Tuesday, where I found Freddy and Michael “Mikko” Lindell, one of the other conference presenters. Almost as soon as we started to chat, Mikko asked if he could draw me. Naturally I agreed. When I got back to my room after breakfast, about 30 minutes after that request, the headline picture (above) was sitting in my e-mail inbox.

Here is a link to the conference programme.

During my performance, just prior to playing an instrumental piece of music, I made a quip about suffering from pre-minstrel tension. As soon as I had finished, Mikko presented me with the following picture:

Janie is already working on getting this prized possession framed.

But we were mostly there for the World Championship, in which Camden Riviere was challenging Rob Fahey for the fifth and probably final time (Rob is now an astonishing 54), having toppled Rob in 2016 but somehow Rob had grabbed the crown back in 2018. This challenge, in September 2022, was the delayed March 2020 one.

Before the tennis was a reception, which was a chance to catch up briefly with real tennis friends who had come down just for the evening. After the tennis there was a loud and convivial atmosphere in the Prested bar/bistro – an atmosphere I can only describe as unique in the real tennis world…but then there is only one real tennis club in Essex.

The tennis that Tuesday evening was very exciting…at least it was in the end. The match was poised 2-2 sets after the first day. Camden won the first three sets on Tuesday evening with relative ease and was even 4-0 up in the fourth set of the night, when Rob somehow managed to start turning things around – astonishingly taking that set having saved several set point along the way.

Rather than read my prattle on this, better you read a proper journalist’s account – that of James (Jim) Zug – click here.

Actually James joined me for breakfast briefly the next morning before he flew back to the states and I scurried over to the padel court. It was a good opportunity to chat in person having exchanged e-mails in the past but not really chatted. Several other conferencistas were there at breakfast, which was a chance to swap metaphorical notes.

After padel, I packed and left, stopping off at Lord’s for one last look at county cricket this season – well it would have been rude not to.

On the pavilion/tennis side of the ground, I ran in to a few people who had been at Prested the night before. Then I wandered round to the new Edrich Stand, gracing it with my presence for the first time in glorious autumn sunshine. It was a fitting end to a very enjoyable short trip.

Middlesex trying to bowl out Glamorgan, second dig, in a crucial promotion battle

Philip The Bold: Wine, Tennis & Song – A Performance Symposium First Presented At The Real Tennis Society Conference During The World Championships,  Prested Hall, 13 September 2022

During the lockdown period of our recent plague, in 2020, I found some solace while not being able to play real tennis by reading a great deal and writing a little about tennis history. 

One of the most fascinating passages I found is the following paragraph which I quote here verbatim from “The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the Earliest Period”, Joseph Strutt, 1801

“During the reign of Charles V . palm play , which may properly enough be denominated hand – tennis , was exceedingly fashionable in France, being played by the nobility for large sums of money ; and when they had lost all that they had about them , they would sometimes pledge a part of their wearing apparel rather than give up the pursuit of the game . The Duke of Burgundy, according to an old historian , having lost sixty franks at palm play with the Duke of Bourbon , Messire William de Lyon , and Messire Guy de la Trimouille, and not having money enough to pay them, gave his girdle as a pledge for the remainder; and shortly afterwards he left the same girdle with the comte D ‘ Eu for eighty franks, which he also lost at tennis.”

[The reference in Strutt simply reads “Laboureur, sub an. 1368”.]   

I wanted to find out more about this 14th century loser of a Duke.

Philip The Bold of Burgundy (1342-1404)

I quickly and easily found out that the Duke in question was Philip The Bold, the youngest brother of Charles V, otherwise known as Charles the Wise.

Charles The Wise – no apparel-loser, he.

Despite the pathetic image conjured by the girdle adage, Philip The Bold was no loser. Heralded for his bravery in battle, he became the most influential French nobleman of his period.

Further, as I shall argue in this immersive presentation, his activities had seminal and lasting effects on worlds as diverse as wine, tennis and music.  But evidence to support such arguments is hard to come by for a period as early as the 14th century.

We really only have three contemporary types of information source. Chronicles [e.g. The Chronicles of Jean Froissart] which record major events and edicts. These tend to tell us that major events happened, with scant evidence about how they happened and almost nothing on activities such as tennis and music.

Secondly, the account books of noble households which provide circumstantial evidence of how activities might have been undertaken. My story will be relying quite a bit on those.

The third type of source, more open to interpretation than the other two, comes from poets and lyricists of that period. We have a few fascinating and amusing pieces of this kind for Philip the Bold’s story.

A Potted History Of Philip The Bold’s Life

Philip was born in 1342, the youngest son of John The Good, who become King of France in 1350. Philip joined with his father in 1356 in the Battle of Poitiers, a couple of decades into The Hundred Years War, where both were taken prisoner and removed to England.

John The Good (but not THAT good in battle)

Philip remained a gilded prisoner in England between 1356 and 1360, thus spending the best of his teenage years in captivity and helping to establish the tradition of English residential secondary education resembling a prisoner of war camp. More seriously, there are contemporary accounts of Philip playing chess with his captor, The Black Prince (Prince Edward of Woodstock), but sadly there is nothing in the chronicles connecting Philip with wine, tennis or music during his period in captivity – they don’t even report the chess match results.

Philip’s mother, Bonne of Luxembourg, had been a great patron of the arts, before her untimely death in 1349 of plague.

Bonne & John, were pretty lookin’ people…

When, in 1360, the 18-year-old Philip returned from captivity to the Valois court in Paris, Guillaume de Machaut, one of the most important composer-poets of the 14th century, who had been one of Bonne’s favourites, was still a frequent guest of the royal household, certainly until the death of King John the Good some four years later. 

Guillaume de Machaut

Douce Dame Jolie by Guillaume de Machaut

The structure of the song is a virelai. The subject matter is fin’amor – often now referred to as courtly love – unrequited love directed towards a perfect, unattainable woman – the singer eventually pleads for his lover to kill him as a mercy to end his torment. Typical.

I performed this one mostly acapella with a short instrumental intro and accompanied outro.

Here is a rather beautiful instrumental version of the piece:

While here is Theo Bleckmann singing the song beautifully with electronic backing which should not be mistaken for traditional 14th century accompaniment:

A Potted History Of Philip The Bold’s Life (Continued)

Philip of Rouvres

In 1361 the 15-year-old Duke of Burgundy, Philip of Rouvres died, probably of plague, which meant that the Burgundy Dukedom technically reverted to the Kingdom of France.  In 1363, John The Good, soon before he also died, secretly conferred the Burgundian Dukedom to Philip. In 1364, Philip’s older brother, now King Charles V, officially invested Burgundy upon Phillip.

Thus Philip was a 26-year-old single Duke at the time of the reported 1368 tennis-girdle incident.

In 1369 Philip married Margaret of Flanders which lined Philip up for a much-expanded Dukedom once Louis of Male, Count of Flanders, died, in 1384. 

Marriage of Philip & Margaret. An end, no doubt, to girdle gambling days.

Four years earlier, In 1380, Charles V died, leaving 11-year-old Charles VI King of France.  Three Dukes shared the regency until the youngster reached majority. Philip was the youngest of those three Dukes, but neither Louis, Duke of Anjou nor John, Duke of Berry were particularly interested in governing France, leaving Philip The Bold as de facto regent.

Charles VI, known as Charles The Beloved. Not Charley the Barmy.

In 1388 Charles VI claimed the throne, but within four years was regularly in the throes of violent mental illness, such that a more tentative, disputed regency was in play for most of the rest of Philip the Bold’s life, which ended in 1404 following a flu-like or covid-like respiratory illness.

Evidence Of Expenditure On Tennis & Music

Returning to the search for evidence of Philip’s tennis playing, one of the on-line sources – is the 1888 book “Itineraries of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless, Dukes of Burgundy, 1363-1419, according to the expense accounts of their hotel. Collected and put in order by Ernest Petit”.  On p475, we find the so-called girdle accounts, recorded as May 1368.  My translation:

“On folio 3 1 of the same account, Monseigneur le Duc, having lost sixty pounds in tennis, gave his belt as a pledge for the said sum to the Duc de Bourbon, Guy de la Trémouille and others, who had won it from him.

“Fol. 9-3 from the same account. The duke’s belt is still given as a pledge to the Comte d’Eu for eighty francs which he had lost with him in tennis.”

Leaving a belt as surety at least sounds a little more dignified than leaving a girdle.  It also has a more “sporting trophy” sound to it.

Battle of Pontvallain – 1370 – Philip probably missed out on this one

There are several references to tennis and dice losses in the expense accounts for the period when Philip was in residence in Saumur on a military campaign in 1372.  On that sequence of occasions, it seems the Duke was not required to leave any clothing as surety but he took pains to seek to return and settle his debts.  [This sequence is charmingly written up on-line on the Les Portes Du Temps website.]

Another fascinating reference, cited in Music at the Court of Burgundy 1364-1419 A Documentary History by Craig Wright, from the account books of 1378, shows Philip presenting Jean De Dinnat with a silver belt worth 29 francs and then 1379 with 10 francs for beating him at tennis. Jean de Dinnant was one of Philip’s favourite musicians who accompanied him at times on his travels. Still, it is most unusual to find an accounted example of a nobleman playing tennis with a minstrel. This unusual transaction makes me wonder whether the 29 franc belt might have previously been mortgaged a few times.

What we do know for sure, as reported by Wright and others interested in the history of music in Burgundy at that time, is that Philip ran up huge expenditures by the standards of his time, sending his minstrels around the music schools in France and abroad – certainly in the period 1378 to 1394, with large payments for musicians travel and instruments recorded many times in the household accounts.

Philip was not the first and not the only French/European noble to do this sort of thing in the 14th century. His parents had been great patrons of the arts, as was to some extent, Edward III of England, whose household accounts show him sending minstrels “across the seas, to learn new songs”, as early as 1335. 

But a concerted bout of international minstrel schooling seems to have been triggered by the Bruges peace conferences of 1375 & 1376, brokered between Philip The Bold and his recent adversary at war, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster.  One of the few conclusive results of those peace conferences was exchanges of minstrels; Gautier l’Anglais remained in Philip’s employ for several years, while several of Philip’s minstrels travelled to England with John of Gaunt’s retinue. 

Mike Searle / Tutbury Castle (3) / CC BY-SA 2.0

Gaunt, was, like Philip, a princely patron of arts, known as “King of the Minstrels” in the Minstrels’ Court, a form of trade guild centred on Tutbury Castle, where the apprenticeship of minstrels was organised in late 14th century England.  

Song Two: Puis Que Je Suy Amoureux, attributed Richard Loqueville

  • Attributed to Richard Loqueville – a harper and teacher at Cambrai;
  • A rondeau in form;
  • Another unrequited love song – in this one the singer hopes for just one glance from his beloved. Typical;
  • Performs well either as a harp/gittern instrumental or song.

I performed this one as a short instrumental. There is a beautiful recording of this as a harp instrumental performed by Andrew Lawrence King – still available for purchase/download here.

Below is a beautiful rendition of the song by Asteria.

Without question Philip the Bold went large on employing musicians towards the end of his life. When his father-in-law Louis, Count of Flanders, died, Philip retained the entire Flanders collection of musicians along with his own to create probably the largest payroll of musicians anywhere at that time. His prior collection was made up primarily of minstrels, but the collection Philip acquired on the death of Louis of Flanders included a substantial chapel as well as minstrels. The burgeoning importance of the music school at Cambrai in the late 14th and early 15th century was largely attributable to Philip The Bold’s investment in musicians.

We don’t know for sure what types of music specifically Philip The Bold favoured but we do know that Phillip’s library, towards the end of his life and posthumously, was well stocked with Guillaume de Machaut’s work. Machaut, unlike many of the lyric poets who followed him, was very much a composer of music as well as a poet.

One of Machaut’s most famous pupils was Eustache Deschamps, a prolific lyric-poet otherwise known as Morel. Deschamps was a contemporary of Philip The Bold.  Deschamps’s estates in Champagne had been ransacked by the English, probably under the auspices of John of Gaunt. Unsurprisingly, Deschamps writes disdainfully about the English generally. He was, however, fond of Geoffrey Chaucer, another contemporary of these chaps, such that Deschamps wrote a tribute to Chaucer lauding his work.

Geoffeey Chaucer – Eustace Deschamps was a fan

In the 14th century there was no real distinction between lyricists and poets. Much of Deschamps’s canon is written in lyrical forms such as virelays and rondeaus that make it hard to imagine that those poems were not intended to be sung. However, many of Deschamps’s ballad poems, including those that mention Philip the Bold and tennis, were probably intended for recitation, not song.

Philip the Bold is mentioned in far from flattering terms in a couple of Deschamps’ poems. The poem “Ordre de la Baboue” describes an imaginary drinking club of unsightly looking people who are members of Philip the Bold’s household.

Image, assumed public domain/fair use, borrowed from Brewminate

More interesting is the Dit du Gieu des Dez, The Ballad Of The Dice Game, (1395), in which Deschamps imagines a drunken drinking and dice session at the Hotel de Nesle, the Duke of Berry’s Paris mansion – in which Philip the Bold together with his host & the Duke of Bourbon enjoy a night of excess and ribaldry.

The Hotel de Nesle was the location of a very early indoor tennis court, built by Philip The Fair around 1300 for his son Louis, latterly Louis X, the Quarrelsome, who famously died in the aftermath of a game of tennis, possibly drunk, possibly murdered or possibly both.

It is clear from Deschmaps and other medieval sources that an entertainment and gambling session would often have begun with the rigours of tennis and then, to continue gambling, turned to drinking and playing dice.

On similar themes, an earlier, 1372 Deschamps poem, The Charter of Good Youths of Vertus in Champagne, is a satirical ballad, set in Deschamps’s home town of Vertus, explaining how to live a “good life”. This ballad mentions tennis a couple of times.  I shall recite a couple of dozen lines from this relatively long poem (more than 250 lines), sometimes swapping strict meaning to allow the English language version to follow the lyrical and satirical quality of the Medieval French. 

The king of the hedonists,

Lived the long life of a dedanist;

Deep inside a tavern in Vertus,

Badly dressed, yet virtuous;

To all the young in the town,

Who habitually would come on down;

Saying “cheers”, while following this charter faithfully,

Which I shall now report to you thoughtfully and gracefully.

First, as soon as we rise, whatever the time,

Let’s refresh our mouths with the best and most expensive wine;

From dawn until dusk, without leaving or pausing for food,

As none of that would do us any good.

Assign the bill, no-one’s entitled to force it,

He who gripes or tinkers should pay double as forfeit;

Grandiose talk might turn out to be wisest,

Trading in goods might be done in many guises;

Games of tennis and dice often need arbitration,

Agree peacefully – indoors – in the court of libation.

Serve yourselves grandly and serve yourselves lazily,

Never care to work – people kill themselves ploughing crazily;

Play dice and tennis on sloping roofs or on thatch,

To exercise within – but if you must go out – find a match;

In women’s cloisters or communes or village communities…

[…followed by another 160 lines of bawdy verse, which no amount of trigger warnings or woke translation could repair for 21st century ears]

Philip The Bold & The Grapes Of Wrath (Pinot Noir v Gamay)

Those mentions of wine bring me to the third aspect of Philip The Bold’s legacy which I’m keen to discuss with you. 

The beloved Pinot Noir

On 31 July 1395 Philip The Bold made a solemn decree about wine, banning the Gamay grape from Burgundy, insisting that the traditional, high-quality, low-yield grape, pinot noir, be restored to its rightful place in Burgundian vineyards.  [The whole text of the ordinance can be found on-line in many places, including the source linked here.] Here is a loosely translated extract from the ordinance, in which Philip objects to the planting of:

“a very bad and treacherous variety of grape called Gameez, which produces abundant quantities of wine; and to allow the greater production of this bad wine they have left in a ruinous state good places where the best sort of grapes might be grown. Wine from Gameez is the type of wine that is extremely harmful to human beings, to the extent that, we are reliably informed,  many people who previously partook of this wine were infested by serious diseases, because such wine from grapes of that nature is infused with much foul and horrible bitterness. For these reasons we solemnly command all who have said Gameez vines to cut them down or have them cut down, wherever they may be in our country, within five months.”

The ordinance goes on to stipulate and restrict other agricultural practices for Burgundy. It is a seminally comprehensive and prescriptive state decree on food and/or wine standards.  It’s context was almost certainly the aftermath of the plague, which would have hit Burgundian wine-growers badly, both in terms of massively reduced manpower to produce fine wines from a difficult grape such as pinot noir and a reduced wider market for Burgundy’s fine wines. The Gamay grape – a cross-breed between Pinot Noir and a despised, peasant-variety, Gouais, does indeed grow abundantly compared with its high-falutin’ parent grape. Intriguingly, the Chardonnay grape is also a cross-breed between Pinot and Gouais, yet the white cross-breed latterly found favour for the fine white wines of Burgundy.

The decree was not popular at the time. The farmers were suffering and the abundant production of Gamay was saving their livelihoods and those of the wine merchants. The town council in Dijon that August voted that the ordinance was a breach of their privileges, thus rejecting it. Philip the Bold had the Mayor imprisoned and replaced. Also several councillors were fined as a result of that impertinence. When Philip made a decree he really meant it.

The agrarian crisis that led to the decree and followed from it is well-documented,  including a fascinating 1982 academic piece The “Disloyal” Grape: The Agrarian Crisis of Late Fourteenth-Century Burgundy by Rosalind Kent Berlow, and a more folksy article summarising the topic by Rupert Millar on thedrinksbusiness.com is available on-line here.  Further, as Ben O’Donnell points out in The Exile of Burgundy on winespectator.com, Philip did not go so far as to implement his decree in Beaujolais, which he perhaps saw as a lesser, rural backwater in any case. There the Gamay continued to be planted and wines produced from it, as they are still in Beaujolais.

[ANNOUNCE MINI WINE TASTING BEFORE RETURNING BRIEFLY TO MUSIC – the wine samples were served during the remainder of the session]

Burgundian Music & Tennis Reprise

Guillaume Dulay (left) & Gilles Binchois (right)

Towards the end of Philip’s life, a very young Guillaume Dufay was taken to Cambrai by his mother, where he joined the chapel as a choirboy.  Little is known of Dufay’s formative years at Cambrai, but he no doubt have studied under several of the Burundian-sponsored masters and benefitted from the many conventions of musicians for which Cambrai became famous at that time. Parenthetically, there is a beautiful picture in a Cambrai book of hours, dated c1300, of monks playing jeu de paume (see below…or click this link to see many of the stunning images from that Book of Hours).

Paume had been a big deal at Cambrai since c1300, based on this Book Of Hours picture

Dufay lived a long life and his compositions are seen as central to the Burgundian School’s importance in the development of music from Medieval Ars Nova into Renaissance music. This song, probably from early in Dufay’s life, is a rondeau in the ars nova style popular towards the end of Philip The Bold’s life. It would have been close to the top of the medieval charts for several of the early 1400s decades. Unlike the fin’amor love song I sang earlier, this song is a lament for leaving behind a beloved place, along with, no doubt, loved ones in that place.

Adieu Ces Bon Vins De Lannoy by Guillaume Dufay

  • Another rondeau, said to be inspired by Loqueville’s style, as Dufay would have studied under him.

I performed this song acapella.

Here are Asteria again, with a lovely accompanied rendition of this song.

By the end of Dufay’s life, in 1474, the Valois-Ducal-Burgundian line was almost at an end. Charles The Bold died at the Battle of Nancy in 1477 leaving no male issue.  His daughter, Mary of Burgundy, Philip The Bold’s great, great granddaughter, married Maximillian I, ending the Valois dynasty, joining its remainder with the Habsburg dynasty.  The Burgundian lands soon reverted to France, but by that time tennis had become more firmly established as a grand game for nobles as well as a smaller-scale town and tavern game for the middling sort.

Mary of Burgundy (1458–1482).*oil on oak panel.*47.5 x 35 cm

As for music, the cross-fertilisation of music styles between the burgeoning Burgundian School and emerging techniques from England (John Dunstable’s influence was overtly recognised by Burgundian musicians) led to the development of multi-part polyphony based on triads and chords which we now consider central to Western music and which are seen musically as the transition from Medieval to Renaissance music.

My closing number is another lament to a place – Innsbruck – written by Heinrich Isaac, probably in the middle of the 1480s, when he was employed there by the Habsburg Archduke Sigismund. This piece is sometimes misattributed to Maximillian I which is as likely as the attribution of Greensleeves to Henry VIII – i.e. utterly implausible.

Innsbruck Ich Muss Dich Lassen

Here is a recording of my first (2017) attempt at this song for The Gresham Society.

Nearly five years later, I think I’m a little bit better at making music, which is more than can be said for my tennis. The following video is a good example of the full four parts Isaac wrote for this song:

In many ways Philip’s wine & music legacies are more evidentially direct, but his influence on the progress of tennis is, arguably, just as seminal and lasting. We learn from  Jean-Michel Mehl, Les Jeux Au Royaume de France, 1998 that:

“in 1385, Philippe le Hardi had made, in his hotel in Arras, “a pavement of thirty feet of stone to play tennis with palms. Without doubt, this tennis court was still used by Philip the Good.”

The last overt reference to tennis in the accounts of Philip’s household, according to Petit, was in 1390:

“On 10th of March, the duke donated to the lady of Suilly, a clasp of gold, garnished with four brooms and eight large pearls to three children playing tennis, shining, to the value of 180 gold francs. (Letter to the Duke, dated Rouvre 10 March)”

Here we see an older Philip sponsoring things he found beautiful, although whether the donation was primarily for the woman or primarily for the young tennis stars we’ll never know.  But Philip was, repeatedly, a generous sponsor of things he liked and wanted to encourage.  I warm to that aspect of him. I also share his love for wine, tennis and music.

Mini Wine Tasting

Wine One: Morgon La Chanaise 2020, Dominique Piron – Cru Beajolais – Gamay – Price range £12 to £16 per bottle

Wine Two: Les Pierres Rouges Bourgogne 2020, Louis Jadot – Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée – Pinot Noir – Price range £14 to £18 per bottle

Acknowledgements

I’d especially like to thank my friend, Gresham Society colleague and linguist Professor Tim Connell, who has helped me with translation of several Deschamps poems. One fascinating aspect of working through these poems is how open to interpretation some of the material is.  I have most certainly taken liberties with some of Tim’s diligent translation, substituting an attempt to emulate the lyrical and satirical rhythm of the work at the expense of strict meaning/translation.

Also with grateful thanks to my early music tutor, Ian Pittaway, whose patient tutelage on both the music history and the techniques of medieval music-making can only be explained by his depth of knowledge and sense of humour.

Thanks also to my wife, Janie, for tolerating my incessant tapping at the keyboard, plucking at the guitar strings and warbling of the songs, regardless of whatever else might have been on the agenda these past few weeks.

Further Reading & References

Ian Harris’s Ogblog Tetralogy On The Origins Of Tennis:

Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister, A&C Black, 1998 or Tennis A Cultural History (Second edition), Heiner Gillmeister, Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2017

Real Tennis Today and Yesterday, John Shneerson, Ronaldson Publications, 2015

Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets, Lord Aberdare, Hutchinson, 1980

The Annals Of Tennis, Julian Marshall, “The Field” Office, 1878

Colloquia Familiaria by Desiderius Erasmus, c1518

Antonio Scaino, 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla (Treatise of the Ball Game)

 A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin, 1822

De Corrupti Sermonis Emendatione, Mathurin Cordier (Corderius), 1536

The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the Earliest Period, Joseph Strutt, 1801

Music At the Court of Burgundy 1364-1419, Craig Wright, Institute of Medieval Music, 1979.

“Dijon, Burgundy,” in Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418, Volume 1. Ed. David Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016: 102-124

The Chronicles of Froissart, Selected, Edited & Translated by Geoffrey Brereton, Penguin Classics, 1968

The “Disloyal” Grape: The Agrarian Crisis of Late Fourteenth-Century Burgundy, Rosalind Kent Berlow, 1982

‘A very bad and disloyal variety’: The banning of Gamay, Rupert Millar, thedrinksbusiness.com, July 2016.

The Exile of Burgundy, Ben O’Donnell, winespectator.com, November 2011.

Histoire et statistique de la vigne et des grands vins de la Côte d’Or, By Jean Lavalle, 1855.

Jean-Michel Mehl, Les Jeux Au Royaume de France, 1998

And Finally…We Visit Wimbledon Centre Court On A Finals Day, 7 July 2022

In the past decade, Janie and I have been incredibly lucky scoring good tickets for Wimbledon in the ballot. Many good days, including quarter finals days and semi finals days. But until now, we have never attended a finals day.

It seems to be my year in this “finals” respect. A few weeks ago I was able to report a first in the matter of me getting to a final playing tennis, albeit the real variety and albeit at Queen’s:

Much as the Queen’s tournament described above was a mixed doubles affair (in that case, mixed ability i.e. handicap doubles), I am talking about Wimbledon’s new idea to hold the Mixed Doubles Final on Ladies Semi-Final day.

In truth, it wasn’t until a couple of days before we went that it occurred to me that I had inadvertently scored a brace of tickets for a finals day. It was a nice surprise when we found out. It became even more of a pleasant surprise when we learnt that Neal Skupski & Desirae Krawczyk would be appearing in that final.

But let us start from the beginning of a truly magical day.

We like to get to Wimbledon reasonably early on such a day to see some smaller court stuff before the grand event. On this occasion we managed to get to the Wimbledon campus about 11:45, giving us nearly two hours to take a look around.

Mili Poljicak
Kilian Feldbausch

First up we wanted to see, on Court 12, the infeasibly named Kilian Feldbausch of Switzerland against the equally infeasibly named Mili Poljicak of Croatia.

Goran Ivanišević also wanted a look at the Croatian lad

We’d missed the first set, which the Swiss lad had won convincingly, but Mili turned it all around in sets two and three, looking very convincing indeed. News update: Mili went on to win the entire Boys tournament.

Mili Poljicak: crazy name, crazy guy – remember where you heard the name first.

Here is a listing of all the games we saw (and the ones we didn’t) that day, if you want to know the scores.

Next, we wandered across to No. 2 Court to take a look at a young American named Liv Hovde against a German girl named Ella Seidel.

Liv Hovde
Ella Seidel

Liv Hovde played really well to win her first set and indeed (it turns out) went on to win not only the match but the entire Girls tournament.

It transpired that we were sitting very close to Liv’s coach, whom Liv was ignoring throughout the set, so we tried to engage him in some motivational pleasantries as we departed, but he did not seem to be an especially communicative chap. Alejandro Garcia Cenzano he’s called, which, together with my new-found Rossiter family connection, made me think of this corny commercial – click here.

Remember where you heard the name first…Liv Hovde I mean.

Next, we popped in to No. 3 Court to see a few minutes of Czech girl Linda Klimovikova against promising Brit Jasmine Conway.

Linda Klimovikova
Jasmine Conway

No. 3 Court has a tasty view of Members & Centre

We saw Jasmine win the first set, by which time we needed to get across to Centre Court for the start of the semi-finals. A steward asked us why we were leaving so soon. We explained. He said…

thank you for slumming it for a while with us here on No. 3 Court,

…which I thought was pretty funny.


On the way to Centre Court we ran into Mats Wilander, Àlex Corretja & Barbara Schett; Daisy was keen to snap them.

First up, Ons Jabeur against Tatjana Maria. Those two are incredibly close friends, by all accounts, which made their embrace and the interview with the victorious Ons after the match especially moving.

Snacking on nuts and fruit only gets you so far at this stage of the day – it was “out with the trout” time:

My classic smoked fish sandwiches

Elena Rybakina serves to Simona Halep…
…and vice versa

Elena Rybakina, surprisingly (to us) blew away Simona Halep. Meanwhile, Matthew Ebden, one of the Mixed Doubles finalists, had only just finished his Gentlemen’s Doubles five-set-epic semi-final on No. 1 Court, so while he got some well-deserved rest, the authorities laid on some Invitation Mixed Doubles to keep the crowd entertained.

Mansour Bahrami serving

Todd Woodbridge & Cara Black verses the evergreen Mansour Bahrami and Conchita Martinez. Some people love this exhibition stuff. I tire of it quite quickly and in any case needed to move my legs and butt, so I decided to go for a stroll after a short while.

On my stroll, I watched the end of an Under 14’s girls match between young Brit Isabelle Britton and young Algerian Maria Badache.

It did not go well for Maria. Isabelle looks very promising.

Then on to Court 8 to see the end of Arabella Loftus (GB) against Marianne Angel of Mexico.

Arabella Loftus
Arabella and Marianne

By the time I got back to Centre Court, the Old Git Doubles was also close to the handshake moment and we started to feel the buzz for the Mixed Doubles Final.

Neal Skupski, Desirae Krawczyk, Matthew Ebden & Samantha Stosur warming up
Ebden serves to Skupski

Those enormous strawberries all had to go.

Soon enough came the winning moment – Skupski & Krawczyk were to be the champions.

It was a long day – over all too quickly. Daisy snapped the headline picture and the one below as we left in the late evening sunshine, which sort-of sums up the Wimbledon vibe.

So-Called “Proper Tennis” At Edgbaston Priory, 17 June But Not 18 June 2022

Beatriz Haddad Maia Awaits

Janie was doing so well with the Leamington real tennis crowd at lunch the day before, until she announced that we would be seeing “proper tennis” at Edgbaston Priory the next day. Following a stoney silence, lunch was swiftly over. At least, that’s how I’m choosing to remember it.

Please don’t tell me she said that…

Mercifully, the fellas refrained from reposting with the phrase “girlie tennis”, which I had previously suggested to them would not go down well with Janie.

Anyway – another day, another form of tennis. Lawn tennis. On proper lawns. Quarter finals day at Edgbaston Priory. A blisteringly hot and sunny day. A sun factor and water aplenty day.

Sorana Cirstea

First up – Sorana Cirstea against Donna Vekic. A really good match, this. Such a long match that I even went for a quick walk to top up my water bottle between sets during the first match of the day. Unprecedented.

At Edgbaston Priory you can just wander around and see e.g. doubles on outer courts

At one point during the final set, Donna Vekic threw herself at a wide ball (unsuccessfully), hurtling straight towards our front row position close to the baseline. She stopped at the barrier right in front of me, looked me straight in the eye and emitted the single-word, modern tennis court oath (as described in this performance piece – click here).

Donna spoke to me”…even if it was an expletive word of one syllable

In the end Sorana Cirstea prevailed 5-7, 6-3, 6-4.

Fun & friendly post match interview with Sorana Cirstea

Next up, Beatriz Haddad Maia (depicted in headline picture) completing a Round Of 16 match against Magdalena Frech.

While they were warming up, we spotted Camila Giorgi’s mad dad (he’s hard to miss) who was taking a not-particularly-surreptitious look at the other players in the tournament.

Camila’s dad, looking as “Harpo Marx” as ever.

Magdalena Frech

Frech was 4-2 up in the deciding set overnight, but Haddad-Maia took advantage of the overnight break to take the match and progress.

Janie and I then took a break from the heat, as we did a couple of times during that day. We wandered to the bar overlooking Court 1 and took some shade. We also took some iced coffee in the refreshments tent.

When we returned to our seats, the match between Shuai Zhang and Dayana Yastremska was quite advanced. We had caught some of the first set on the screens while sitting in the shade. We then watched the remainder of that match and indeed the remainder of the day’s play live.

Dayana Yastremska
Shuai Zhang

Shuai won in straight sets, 7-5, 6-4, over Dayana Yastremska, but it looked far from straightforward and Yastremska still looks like “one to watch” in my book.

The worst of the heat was starting to ease; in any case we stuck around to see the remaining two matches, the first of which being the match between Britain’s Katie Boulter and Simona Halep.

Very watchable, but ultimately doomed, plucky Brit, Katie Boulter

The first set was very watchable but Simona Halep took complete control quite early in the second set to win 6-4, 6-1.

Halep probably still not quite at her best, but good enough on the day

Last up was Beatriz Haddad Maia against Camila Giorgi, which looked on paper to be the best (and potentially closest) match up of the day.

Camila Giorgi…

…was stretched to the limit by Beatriz

But Camila was not at her best after a strong early start. Beatriz Haddad-Maia winning 6-3, 6-2.

One of the longest days of the year, it was still well light when we got home and we made full use of the garden to have our major picnic as an evening meal, having only taken a minor picnic with us to the ground on such a hot day.

Lovely it was.

We were supposed to do it all again on the Saturday for the semi-finals, but the temperature dropped by 15 degrees and it rained all day. That’s the English summer for you.

But we did have a great meal at Colbeh in the evening – a repeat for Janie of 2017 and a repeat of several visits for me.