I have been playing real tennis at The Queen’s Club this September, as the Lord’s court is closed for refurbishment and a few other clubs, such as Queen’s, have, very kindly, offered us MCC tennis types refugee status for the month.
It’s been a somewhat sobering experience at times.
My first gig as a refugee was a singles friendly match against a 12-year-old…
…who absolutely took me to pieces.
To be fair, he is the champion player at his age group and, if “the book” is to be believed, he is even capable of beating the U15 champion now. Here is some film of him winning the French Open:
I’m pretty sure he’ll be an exceptionally good player. Remember where you first heard the name: Bertie Vallat…
…I know, you couldn’t make up a more Wodehouseian name than that…
…he’s the boy in the foreground at the start of the filum.
Anyway, point is, after that ego-bruising episode, I decided that I needed a lesson in technique, so arranged to play an hour-long friendly match with one of my Lord’s chums, then an hour of coaching, ahead of meeting up with Simon in Hammersmith.
I did well in my friendly match – reclaiming the handicap points I had lost to Bertie. Then I enjoyed my lesson too, which I think will help my lawners as well as my realers…am I starting to spend to much time hanging around the arcane language of this game?
Then, after killing some time in a couple of coffee bars along the way, I met up with Simon Jacobs for a relatively early dinner at Brasserie Blanc.
I explained my difficult hour at the hands of a twelve-year-old the previous week, which led Simon to suggest that I might have “done a Serena” and/or resorted to corporal punishment. Neither of these suggestions seemed, to me, worthy of Simon.
But then Simon might well have had other things on his mind. He was very kindly taking time out to have dinner with me just a couple of days ahead of the launch of his latest single; Top Of The Pops. How cool is that?
Well, you can judge for youreselves by listening to and watching the following YouTube:
We discussed without irony the increasingly ghastly political landscape. The absence of irony is not because we have lost our senses of humour – heaven forbid. No, it appears that we never did have a sense of irony, due to ethnic accidents of birth. No point mocking us (we wouldn’t get it), simply pity us.
The food was very good indeed. The wine was also very good. The service was excellent, until we asked our waiter to leave us alone for a short while to consider what to have for, or indeed if to have, desert. Then we complained when the waiter returned because he had neglected us for so long.
The waiter laughed and told us that we were his favourite table of the evening. Poor chap, he clearly thought we were being ironic…he didn’t realise that we really meant it – he didn’t realise that we don’t do irony.
We talked a fair bit about music; not only Simon’s new single but his plans for the album and also the stuff that I am fiddling around with at the moment. Simon set me some homework around “I Only Have Eyes For You” and also “Nothing Rhymed”, the latter of which has yielded faster results than the somewhat tricky former.
The evening whizzed by and I had no idea how late it was until we got to Hammersmith Station. Still, not so late that the tubes get tricky.
As always, it had been a very enjoyable evening with Simon.