I am delighted that Ian Theodoreson has asked me to guest publish this charming performance piece.
The question of what should comprise my Desert Island Disc choices has occupied me for most of my adult life and I realise I am still some way from reaching the definitive selection. So I offer the following as an interim position.
When it comes to my favourite piece of music I wondered whether to include my current fave rave – ‘Drowning in Tears’ by Gary Moore…
…but think I ought to stick with the Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan-Williams which invokes memories of idyllic summer days past and has been part of my personal soundtrack for forty years.
In terms of my favourite book I did consider choosing ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Eric Maria Remarque but given I have read it so many times I have practically memorised it, I thought I would take John Steinbeck’s ‘East of Eden’ instead and enjoy its beautifully crafted analysis of the human condition.
So, I have cheated thus far by naming two books and two pieces of music, but there is no such equivocation when it comes to the ‘luxury’ object. It is, and always has been … a drum kit.
I have wanted to be a drummer for as long as I have wanted to be a fireman, which is basically for ever. For some reason my parents were not willing to indulge my passion and preferred my taking up the violin instead and by the time I left home other interests overwhelmed me and my ambition faded into the background. However a desert island seems like an ideal place to start learning as long as it comes with a never ending supply of drumsticks.
Like many of my generation I was transfixed by what is now termed classic rock, although always avoiding the heavier end of the genre. One group that didn’t particularly trouble my consciousness was Cream, despite being arguably one of the most influential bands of the rock era. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and the drummer Ginger Baker could be considered the founding fathers of rock music.
Although Eric Clapton was the only one to go on to apparent greater exploits the music of Cream remains foundational despite the fact they only played together for just over two years from 1966 to 1968 before the irascible Ginger Baker decided he couldn’t stand touring anymore.
I was only eleven years of age when Cream split up and consequently knew very little about them so it was perhaps surprising that I entered the ballot at work to secure a pair of tickets for one of their four reunion concerts at the Albert Hall in 2005 – the only time they would ever play together again. My employer, Barnardo’s owned two debenture holder seats at the Albert Hall which they would allow staff to purchase, with a ballot being held if demand exceeded supply.
Given it was my p.a. who handled the ballot process it is perhaps fortunate that I was on holiday at the time the ballot was drawn as her phone call to tell me I had been successful was followed not long afterwards by a call from the full time UNISON official to let me know that his members were taking out a collective grievance against me. Fortunately he was joking.
So I subsequently found myself in the Albert Hall, surrounded by a crowd of ‘crusties’ all dressed in suits, having come, like me, straight from work, when it suddenly dawned on me that it was me who was the interloper. The music we were about to hear belonged to this older generation and in actual fact I probably only knew two songs that Cream had ever produced.
The guy sitting next to me looked nervous – he had been at the very last concert Cream had played in October 1968 and he was desperately worried that the moment he had dreamed of for over 36 years would be a crushing disappointment.
The concert was a triumph. Ginger Baker performed one of his trademark ten minute drum solos (while Eric and Jack went back stage to make themselves a cup of tea and finish the Times crossword) and the crowd got drunk on nostalgia.
At the end I asked my neighbour how he had found it. ‘Better than I dared hope’ he said. ‘How did it compare to 1968?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know, I was too stoned in ’68 to remember’ he replied.
If you can remember Cream in the 1960s, you weren’t really there
One impression that night that stayed with me from the concert was the mesmerising performance of Ginger Baker. He was notoriously mercurial character and not given to saying very much so it was surprising then to hear him speaking during the concert and particularly at the end of his mammoth drum solo when he ended up, in his gruff South London tones with ‘I thank you’. He had a very particular way of speaking, and this closing flourish stuck in my head. (Rohan has suggested he was channelling his inner Arthur Askey).
A few days later, with the noise of the concert still ringing in my ears, I was standing on the platform at Loughton tube station when suddenly the tannoy sprang into life:
‘This is a service update from the Loughton control centre. There are slight delays on the Circle and District lines and a good service on all other London Underground lines. I thank you’.
There was that voice again. I looked around excitedly at all my fellow passengers – Ginger Baker works in the control room at Loughton Station, isn’t that amazing – but no one else stirred. I went back down the stairs to peer in through the control room window but I was too late – a shadowy figure was stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him.
Could I really be the only person who knew that Ginger Baker has an alternative career working for London Underground? Did his colleagues realise who they were working alongside? Did he use a pseudonym? … so many questions lay unanswered.
It wasn’t the last time I heard his voice on the station tannoy…each time the announcement was signed off with his ‘I thank you’…but I tell you this, I haven’t heard it since October 2019, which is when Ginger Baker died. Coincidence or what?
Desert Island Discs? Desert Island frigging Discs!
Writing and performing at ThreadZoomMash can help us forget about the privations of lockdown?
How? By getting us to imagine the ultimate self-isolation, alone on some crappy desert island with JUST ONE poxy record? Even Roy Plomley and chums allow eight poxy records.
Look – I know that Desert Island Discs is a quintessentially BBC thing that people in Britain have loved for decades. A national treasure. I cannot deny the success of the genre. Nor can I deny its charm. Heck, I have often listened. I have often enjoyed the programme.
But I profoundly dislike the central conceit of the show. In particular the eight-record scenario leaves me feeling sceptical…or do I mean cynical…most times I listen to the show. Who can sum up their musical tastes and satisfy their thirst for music with just eight tracks?
I suspect that most guests go through a “style consultant” process, to help choose eight records that say enough about them to satisfy their fan base, while not turning too many people off them. That’s why so many people chose some Beethoven and/or Mozart. Unless they are UK politicians, who relentlessly choose a bit of Elgar or Vaughan-Williams; just to prove how very English or British they are.
Actually, that thought about politicians has brought dissembling insincerity to the front of my mind. By gosh, Rohan – this topic choice for ThreadZoomMash reeks of BoJo or DomCum levels of hypocrisy.
After all, YOU are the fellow who recently wrote the lockdown piece, Spotify vs Top Of the Pops. YOU are the fellow who once wrote a live show entitled, “What Listening To 10,000 Love Songs Has Taught Me About Love”. In fact, while you, Rohan Candappa, indulged yourself piloting the latter show at the Cockpit in 2017, a riot kicked off on the surrounding Church Street & Lisson Green Estates. It’s a minor miracle that you and we, your long-suffering friends in the audience, survived to tell the tale.
Anyway, my point Rohan, is that you of all people, the “Spotify, Top Of the Pops, 10,000 love songs” dude, should know how depleting, how devastating, this “one song per island” idea of yours is.
Oh no, not I. I will survive, there, musically. Here is my survival plan.
My object is my trusty friend, Benjy The Baritone Ukulele.
My book, which admittedly has yet to be published…but publishing my choice of book is, frankly, the least you can do for me in these circumstances, is: “The Complete Works Of English Language Song, From The Year c1220 to The Year 2020”. Ideally with chords & music as well as lyrics for the songs.
My one measly track will be a recording of my own mash-up masterpiece, helpfully spanning circa 800 years of English Language Song. It is entitled Mr Blue Sky Is Icumen In and it sounds like this:
MR BLUE SKY IS ICUMEN IN
Sumer is icumen in, the nymphs and shepherds dance
Bryd one brere, groweth sed and bloweth med
And don't you know, amarylis dance in green–ee-ee-een.
Lightly whipping o’er the dales, with wreaths of rose and laurel,
Fair nymphs tipping, with fauns and satyrs tripping
Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey hey.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Hey you with the angels face, bright, arise, awake, awake!
About her charret, with all admiring strains as today, all creatures now are merry…(merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry merry-minded).
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Hey there mister blue, who likes to love, lhude sing cuccu;
Nauer nu, ne swik thu, sing hey nonny nonny nu.
Mirie it is while sumer ilast, in darkness let me fast,
Flow my tears, farewell all joys for years,
Never mind, I joy not in early, I joy not in early bliss.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
Postscript: The Evening Itself
There were eight of us live on ThreadZoomMash. Rohan Candappa made a short introduction, using John Donne (No Man Is An Island) as a helpful segway into the evening’s pieces.
Possibly it was the Tudor/Jacobean connection that encouraged Rohan to ask me to go first this evening. Possibly he simply wanted to get his own back on me. Who could blame him?
Adrian’s piece followed mine; a really charming rite of passage piece about an evening in 1985 when a 15 year old Adrian was “picked up” and taken to a party by a lovely girl while Live Aid was happening elsewhere.
I guess the Desert Island Discs theme encouraged most of the group to reflect on their lives. Terry certainly did a bit of that, but couldn’t resist the idea of Dessert Island Discs, suggesting that one might be macarooned on a dessert island. Thanks Tel.
Ian Theodoreson made me feel bad about my quip about mendacious politicians choosing Elgar and Vaughan Williams, as Ian admitted that The Lark Ascending would probably be his solo record pick. Sorry Ian – I do not think of you as a mendacious anything; quite the opposite. I guess some people really DO like Nimrod and/or The Lark Ascending best of all.
But Ian’s story mostly focussed on a visit to the Albert Hall to see a Cream Reunion Gig in May 2005. Ian subsequently became convinced that Ginger Baker was making the passenger announcements on Loughton underground station between 2005 and his departure from this mortal coil in October 2019. It’s hard to disprove that theory from where I am sitting.
Jan’s piece was charming and delightful. It focussed on her choice of book: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, which Jan apparently read when still ridiculously young and before she read the book for which Looking Glass is the sequel, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. This I found fascinating as I do recall loving the earlier novel (Wonderland) as a small child but being perplexed and scared by the sequel. Jan’s made of robust stuff. Who knew? I don’t think Make Someone Happy by Jimmy Durante gets much business on Desert Island Discs these days, but Jan would chose it.
Kay also harked back to her youth and the ways she confused people by not conforming to their gender stereotypes. A beautifully constructed piece, full of Kay’s personality and culminating, with predictable hindsight, playing her choice of record, Rebel Rebel.
Geraldine’s poetic piece explored her young adult background; very different from any of ours. Somewhat earlier and in the USA. Evocative without being straightforward narrative, it can do with reading rather than describing, as my describing wouldn’t do it justice. I felt a little badly for the second time of the evening when Geraldine announced that her sole disc would be I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, the central lyric of which I had flagrantly pinched as a bridge in my short piece.
Then Rohan read a wonderful piece by John Eltham, who unfortunately was unable to join us for the evening. Not a straight line narrative. Like many of the pieces, it had a rite of passage at its core, by which I don’t mean “passage” in a Night Boat To Cairo sense (although that was John’s choice of record), but in a Bildugsroman sense. It was a beautifully crafted piece. Much like Geraldine’s, it defies description or rather I couldn’t do it justice with description. It should be read.
If we’re lucky, I might be able to persuade some of the others, including Geraldine and/or John, to publish their pieces on Ogblog so readers can judge the pieces for themselves.
In John Eltham’s case in particular this is a huge credit to Rohan as well as John. I remember John saying to me only a few months ago that he didn’t have the confidence to write ThreadMash pieces. He has now written two superb pieces, both brimming with self-assurance and flourish. I’m genuinely impressed and delighted.
Rohan, of course, couldn’t resist closing off the evening with a masterful pun, linking his opening, John Donne, with his ending, which was reciting the Eltham piece, or, as Rohan put it, the piece “wot John done”. Perhaps we haven’t progressed as far from the schoolboy skits and word plays as I hoped.
Still, it was a tremendous evening. With thanks to everyone involved, not least Rohan, for making it happen.
…I explored the phenomena of wagering and handicapping, which date back at least as far as the late medieval period for tennis.
The evidence suggests that handicapping (or “odds”, as handicapping was more commonly called in olden times) served a twin purpose:
simplifying the wagers – i.e. evening up the contest, such that the choice of winner at the start of the match should be perceived as an even bet;
facilitating good sport – the honour and joy of doing battle in a close competitive contest.
Traditional tennis offers a large array of mechanisms for handicapping, not just point adjustments, which were well documented by the early 19th century and which I shall examine shortly.
But by the mid to late 18th century, there had emerged a third purpose or style of handicapping which I’d like to explore briefly; a form of handicapping linked with showmanship demonstrated by tennis professionals.
Against the best of the amateurs [Masson] also played matches of the most difficult combinations. One of these was, that he should deliver the service seated in a barrel, in which he remained after serving, and from which he leapt continually in order to return each stroke of the amateur.
On the hazard-side, again, he awaited the service seated by the grille in his barrel, which he had to leave precipitately to play his first stroke, and in which he was compelled by the terms of the match to take refuge, before the amateur returned the ball again.
What a shame there were no CCTV cameras on court in those days to provide us with images of those feats. My good lady, Janie, simply doesn’t believe this story in the absence of visual evidence. Perhaps we could persuade one of the modern tennis professionals to deploy this handicapping method and provide us with some video of such play. I gladly volunteer my own services as the hapless opponent.
There’s not much else to find about Monsieur Masson and his antics, other than a few additional notes in the Marshall Annals on Pages 43 & 44, including the fact that Masson (unusually for the time) wore spectacles, that he developed a frowned-upon, sort-of scoop shot to return balls dropping nearly perpendicularly from the penthouse and that his offspring showed disappointingly little talent at the game.
Tennis was enjoying somewhat of a heyday in 18th century France until the revolution came along. A famous moment in the revolution, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume (or “The Tennis Court Oath”) is depicted in the 1791 Jacques-Louis David painting shown below.
But the tradition of tennis professional high jinks lived on into the 19th century. Jacques-Edmond Barre (depicted as the headline picture above), although he was from a modest professional tennis family, became such a great player that, in 1828, age 26, Barre was appointed “poumier du roi” by (post-restoration) King Charles X of France.
On the same occasion [the day he enthralled and was appointed by the King] he had played a game with the Comte de Reignac, an officer in the Lancers of the Guard, in which he gave the latter “all the walls” — the longest possible odds of that kind, — and had won the match with ease.
At its conclusion, de Reignac sa id, “If you will give me my revenge in a few months, I will beat you, for by that time I shall have improved.”
To this Barre replied, “Comte, I will return next May, and I will give you the same odds again; and I undertake to walk on foot from Paris to Fontainebleau before the match.”
This was a bold wager; and he who made it must have not only had great strength, but also great confidence in his strength.
On the 5th of the following May, Barre started from Paris at daybreak, and at three o’clock in the afternoon, somewhat tired with his walk, he arrived at the place of rendezvous, having accomplished the distance, nearly forty-three miles, in ten hours.
After an hour’s repose he entered the Court, and played the match, which he won, apparently, with as much facility as on the previous occasion.
I’m sure the Comte de Reignac will have been a well-humoured fellow who took his humiliating return-match thrashing with good grace.
Both of the above examples are (extreme) examples of a genre known as cramped-odds, i.e. constraints on the mode of play, rather than points-based odds.
Before exploring the cramped-odds phenomenon in all its varied glory, perhaps best to set out the points-based odds.
In short, the basic currency unit of points handicap was the bisque. Little used today, it is a bit like a joker in a card game, in that a bisque enables the holder of the bisque to claim a stroke (point) at any time. Bisques date back at least to the 16th century, where we can find reference to them in French texts.
A great deal of strategy and tactics narrative in 19th century books on tennis revolve around when to take one’s bisques. They sound like great fun and must add some piquancy or frisson, especially if the match is being wagered upon or part of a tournament.
Bisques are rarely seen in any form of tennis in modern times, but I believe their use has survived in croquet, a game which adopted the bisque in earnest, certainly in its formal 19th century manifestation, if not earlier.
Odds of “half-fifteen” means that the receiver starts 15-0 up at the start of every other game, but never the first game of a set.
Odds of “fifteen” means that the receiver of those odds starts 15-0 up at the start of each game.
Odds of “half thirty” meant that the receiver would start 15-0 up on the first game of the set, then alternate between 30-0 up and 15-0 up at the start of each game. Note the past tense “meant” there – we now use “owe” odds as well as “receive” odds – I’ll explain the origins and development of those in part four – such that “half thirty” would not be used unmitigated in the modern game.
Back in the 19th century, odds were sometimes enhanced or mitigated by bisques. Thus, a player who was a bit too good to receive fifteen, but not quite good enough to receive only half-fifteen, might be presented with odds “receive fifteen but give a bisque”. Or a player who wasn’t quite good enough to receive just fifteen but was too good for odds of half-thirty might “receive fifteen and a bisque”.
There’s even a concept of a half or demi-bisque. Lukin suggests that the half-bisque is not used in England but is well-known in France. Marshall some 50 years later describes it as unusual and recommends agreeing in advance of the match what is meant by the term, as it was sometimes used to mean “one bisque every other set”, sometimes to mean “the right to annul a fault”, sometimes “to claim the point after one fault”, or sometimes “to claim chase-off for a chase”.
Lukin describes “Odds at Tennis” as a mechanism “to make a match equal; or in other words to put the inferior player upon a level with the superior.” While he doesn’t state that the main reason for doing this is linked with wagering, Lukin does, helpfully, pp 111-112, linked here and reproduced below, set out an appendix of “The Odds, As Usually Betted”.
At the end of P112, Lukin notes that chases make such betting odds
“very precarious: – to say nothing of the difficulty of making a match so near as to leave neither party the favourite.”
Don’t Cramp My Style With Your Odds
Bet you cannot leap in and out of those barrels between shots
At the less numerical end of the odds scale, we have the various cramped-odds, of which Masson’s barrel-jumping and Barre’s power-walking are rare examples.
Lukin lists several examples in his treatise, probably quite commonly used in the 19th century but rarely used today other than for fun or training:
Round Service – the serve must touch both the side and the rear penthouse to be a legitimate serve – this normally renders the serve easy to return;
Half Court – obliging the better player to confine his balls to one half of the court lengthways (left side or right side);
Touch-No-Wall – obliging the better player to ensure that there would be a second bounce before the ball reached any of the walls, which also renders the openings barred. This makes life extremely tough for the better player and much easier for the lesser player;
Touch-No-Side-Wall – which renders out of bounds, for the better player, the side galleries and doors, as well as the side walls, but it does leave the dedans and the grille in play;
Barring The Hazard – which renders the winning openings (dedans, grille & winning gallery) out of bounds for the better player;
Barring The Openings – which renders all of the openings, including the winning ones listed above, out of bounds for the better player.
Cramped-Odds: odds, in giving which a player agrees to renounce the liberty of playing into some usual part of the Court ; or plays with some unusual dress or implement ; or cramps his game in some other way, by agreement. These odds may be combined with bisques or other Odds, either in augmentation or diminution.
In those pages Julian Marshall also, helpfully, in a footnote, explains the relative value of cramped odds in terms of points odds:
The value of ordinary cramped-odds, though varying with different players, is usually estimated as follows:
Round services = 15 or nearly half-30
Half-court = half-30
Touch-no-side-walls = half-30 and, perhaps, a bisque
Touch no walls = about 40
Bar-the-hazard (no winning openings) = about 15
Bar the openings = 15 and a bisque, or nearly half-30
Simples.
Julian Marshall’s Annals of Tennis was published in 1878, around the time that Marshall and his pals were sharpening their pencils and debating the rules, scoring and handicapping for a novel game with some similarities to tennis. It was known in some circles as sphairistikè, in other circles as lawn tennis.
Part Four of my series will cover the synchronicities and controversies bound up in the evolution of the modern game. Modern tennis offers fewer opportunities for cramped-odds but that didn’t stop handicapping from the ancient and modern games from strongly influencing each other at the end of the Victorian era and early part of the 20th century.
“How’s about I give you a punnet of strawberries for two bisques?”, Wimbledon, 1877
But before signing off this part of the story, I’d like to introduce one other character who was hugely influential during that Victorian period of the sport’s (or should I say sports’s?) development: John Moyer Heathcote.
A contemporary of Julian Marshall; clearly one of Marshall’s pals & adversaries, Heathcote was a real tennis player at the James Street Court, a barrister and a Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) committee member around the time that guardianship of the laws of tennis moved from the James Street Court to Lord’s. He was a central character in the group responsible for codifying the laws of real tennis and latterly modern tennis. More on that in Part Four.
There is an ancient custom for which little can be said, except that it is an ancient custom, that a player who has lost a love set shall pay a shilling to the marker – a cruel and wanton aggravation of the annoyance usually felt by anyone who has been so signally defeated.
The refinement of this injury is carried even a step further in France: the marker on these occasions steps from his compartment into the court opposite to that occupied by the unfortunate victim, kisses the net-rope and saying, “bredouille, monsieur” [I am empty-handed, sir], makes a bow expressive of his claim to the customary douceur [sweetener].
I can find no other references to this “ancient custom”…
…but then, I find no old written references to other customs we know to be ubiquitous and ancient, such as the imperative that, on changing ends, the server-to-be enters the service end of the court before the striker-out-to-be leaves the service end and enters the hazard end. Woe betide any real tennis player who inadvertently forgets to comply with the change-of-ends custom.
I think the only possible explanation for that “big loser pays a shilling” custom is that the markers or tennis-court proprietors in days of yore were also, in effect, keepers of a gambling house. An uneven contest (which would probably have occurred due to the stubbornness of the loser in not taking sufficient handicap) would have much reduced the marker’s earnings from “the wager book” for that match. A shilling might have been sufficient (or at least some) compensation for the paucity of competition and resulting low interest from “spectating punters”.
Ancient customary odds: a King’s shilling for a bagel, or a “Silver Bagel Award”
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part three of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
…it was with some trepidation I switched on the app on my next visit to my Notting Hill “Ivory Tower” the following Tuesday afternoon.
Once bitten twice shy, though. I now knew to regulate my own uptake of the calls by waiting a while between accepting a task and making the call, or between completing a task and confirming that the task was done and that I was available again.
Thus I was able to field another half-dozen or so calls while also completing the work tasks that I had undertaken to do that afternoon.
The last of those calls did want some shopping. The woman sounded old. With a heavy Caribbean accent, she almost apologised for needing help. Her son had been getting shopping for her all the while, but he had developed a chesty-something and the doctor had recommended that he isolate. Sounds sensible.
She didn’t need much and she hoped that I could get everything she needed from the pound shop on Portobello Road, which is just a couple of minutes walk from her place. Otherwise there is a Sainsbury’s (other supermarket chains are available) just opposite the Poundland (other pound shop chains are available)…
…that’s fine, I said, after making sure we had clarity on the payment protocol…
…I told her I’d be about an hour, as I resolved to finish my work, “shut up shop” in the Ivory Tower and get her shopping on my way back to Noddyland…
…no rush, she said, she didn’t want to inconvenience me too much.
…no trouble, I said, delighted to help.
It must have been about 17:45 by the time I parked up in Elgin Crescent (close to her place and the pound shop).
Photo taken lunchtime a few days later
It was a glorious sunny evening. The pavement outside the Duke of Wellington was heaving with trendy young folk eating, drinking and making merry. Trustafarians, mingling with local folk and people who work in the area.
This end of Portobello is the part where bijou Notting Hill meets social housing Notting Hill.
The street scene looked like Portobello as I had always imagined it before I moved to the area, but never really lived it, although I have lived in the neighbourhood now for well north of 30 years.
I hadn’t seen scenes like this since before lockdown…not since last summer…in truth I’d never really seen scenes like this before – it was as if the Notting Hill of my imaginings, back in the 1980s, when I chose to come and live here, had suddenly been brought into existence, filmically, in this time of pandemic. It certainly showed no signs of social distancing or increasing social need.
Social housing/bijou housing/social housing…
But just around the corner from that hedonistic street festival was an old lady who needs a few things from the pound shop so that she can get by for a few days; her son is ill and she was almost too proud to ask for help with her shopping.
Indeed, just up the road and around the corners are lots of people who need help, because my responder app goes off as often as I let it and the need for FoodCycle deliveries seems to be going up and up still.
But in many ways this is still the Notting Hill where I chose to pitch my tent 30+ years ago. It always was a strange mix of gentility and grunge.
Stand in the middle of Portobello Road at a suitable junction, such as the Elgin/Colville/Portobello one shown above, look one way and you can see boutique-style shops & The Electric…
…look the other way for the Sally Army, pound shops and (if you venture even further north), informal hawkers under the flyover on a market day.
Anyway, the pound shop indeed had all of the food items that my elderly client had requested. I had no idea that pound shops sold quality-stamped Danish bacon and posh-looking tubs of tiramisu for a pound each. Now I know.
Feeling like a mighty hunter who had landed his prey, I swaggered around the corner to my client with her swag. Old school Notting Hill, her place; a conversion in one of the many old, somewhat dilapidated, Victorian houses around there; not vastly different in architectural style from my place.
The client really did look old; late 80s or possibly even 90. She’d have hardly been a youngster when I moved in to the neighbourhood; she’d have been…
…57 or 58…
…that’s what I am now. There’s a pause for thought.
She thanked me. I wished her good luck and hoped she would enjoy her food.
Less than a minute later, I was back at the youthful throng of Portobello/Elgin:
Heaving even more, it was.
I couldn’t help wondering whether some of these trustas might deploy some of their energy towards volunteering. They mostly didn’t look as though they were demob happy after a hard day’s work. They mostly looked as though they had not yet been mobilised on much, ever, in their lives, other than looking good and having a jolly time.
As I drove back to Noddyland, I resolved to write up this little episode, but then realised that I hadn’t taken any pictures for the blog.
I then also realised that I had in fact never taken any pictures around Portobello. Back in the late 1980s, you didn’t tend to take pictures around your own environment…
…why would you?
So I resolved to return at lunchtime on the Friday and snap a few. They depict the market on a Friday lunchtime, rather than the hedonistic bar/cafe life of that Tuesday late afternoon, but the sun shone and I think I snapped a few nice pics around abouts my own manor.
The Government is encouraging people to try and get back to “normal”, whatever that might be, while the pandemic is in its summer recess. This doesn’t seem to have reduced the load on charities, such as FoodCycle, nor yet on the needs emerging for NHS Volunteer Responders.
What it is achieving, though, is a reduced volunteer force…
…Janie was back to work this week, but she’s not letting that stop her from continuing with the volunteering, at least for now…
…yet I get bemused looks from plenty of people when I tell them that our voluntary workload is increasing.
Two examples this week.
FoodCycle Marylebone 15 July 2020
Probably a temporary glitch, for this project, which we have been supporting by doing deliveries for nearly three months now. The delivery load has increased to three teams these past few weeks, but this week, try as they might, they could only find two so we needed to take on an extra half load.
That meant 16 deliveries; 32 bags full (sir).
Our previous record; 24 bags. “32 bags full sir” required some strategic stacking
Mostly on the Lisson Green Estate, plus one or two blocks on the Church Street side and a few up in Maida Vale; mostly people we’d delivered to before, which helps.
When there’s something strange……in your neighbourhood……who ya gonna call?……I said, who ya gonna call???…FoodCycle!!
As usual, we got a lot of satisfaction from this gig; huge amounts of gratitude from the guests who clearly need the food and really appreciate our help.
But it really was a bit of a marathon this week. Back to three teams for Marylebone next week; Janie and I are grateful.
The Day My NHS Volunteer Responder App Went Berserk, 17 July 2020
Since May, we’ve both had a steady stream of calls. Not all that many, frankly, but around a dozen gigs each (more if you count the “no shows”), which, from what I can gather, is significantly above average.
I think the run rate has been increasing slightly, but when the first eight weeks is metaphorical dot balls and the next few weeks is ones, twos and the occasional four, it is hard to be overly analytical about the rate.
Then came Friday 17th July.
I relocated to the flat, for the first time in months, as Janie was taking patients at the house and I thought it was about time I collected the post, flushed the loo, ensured the computer was working/updated properly and got on with preparation for the Z/Yen Board meeting. Frankly, now we do everything in the cloud, I could now do Board preparation work from pretty much anywhere without shlepping loads of files or papers.
I’m not entirely sure what triggered the storm that followed, but basically the NHS Volunteer Responder App decided that, as soon as I closed one call, it wanted to alert me to another one.
I didn’t really notice it earlier in the day. My first call took a while to close. An utterly charming South-East Asian woman – Vietnamese I think from the name – who didn’t answer the first time I called and then wanted to come off the calling scheme as she is no longer isolating and is returning to work. The first such call I have taken, I called the support line to establish the protocol for doing that – basically the woman herself needs to call the support line to be removed from the scheme.
Perhaps my first ever human (telephone) interaction with the scheme itself triggered a new status on my account…
Super-responder. Bit of a mug – probably will help pick up all the slack everywhere. Bombard with calls until this responder expires.
…or perhaps the algorithm detected “a new kid in town” around Notting Hill and there happened to be a lot of business around there on Friday.
Most of the calls were delightful folk who really appreciated the scheme, had used it when they needed stuff but didn’t, as it happens, need any help that day. One other person wanted to come off the scheme and I advised her on how to do that, now I am an expert on that protocol.
As the afternoon went on and my little “ivory tower” office heated up, I decided to return to Noddyland, taking one last call. I think my 12th of the day. A charming gentleman in Earls Court who did, on this occasion, as it happened, need a prescription collected and one or two other things from the pharmacy.
In truth, I was glad to at least have one of my calls today result in an errand, even though it was a little out of my way on a hot day.
I ran the errand and returned to my car, opened the windows and checked my messages.
I picked up one message from a client that absolutely needed dealing with before I could draw stumps on my working week, but my mobile phone battery was already running low (NHS Volunteer Responder does that) so I arranged a call with the client for 30-45 minutes hence, when I’d be home.
Then I cleared the good deed I had just done by clicking the “completed task” button.
The responder went off again instantly.
I realised that I should switch myself off duty, so I hit the “reject call” button and switched myself to “off duty”.
The responder went off again instantly.
The “off duty” signal must have crossed in the post with that one, I thought. So I rejected that call and started the engine of my car.
The responder went off again instantly.
I’m starting to sweat a little now. I rejected that call. I had now been off duty for a good two or three minutes.
The responder went off again instantly.
I rejected the call and closed down the app. That would shut it up, surely?
The responder went off again instantly.
People in the street are starting to look. It’s not a quiet thing, the NHS Volunteer Responder App. It has been borrowed from the Royal Voluntary Service GoodSam scheme for emergency defibrillation, so it sounds like an emergency alarm.
In fact, if you haven’t heard it before, brace your lug holes and listen to this:
There was only one thing for it, I deleted the NHS Volunteer Responder App from my phone.
That did shut it up.
I reloaded the app later on, once I had spoken to my client, cooled down and seen real umpires draw stumps on the test match day. In short, once I had fully recovered my composure.
Fully recovered
I dread to think what might happen if the UK Government’s world beating “track and trace” app can go into that sort of overdrive. Perhaps best not to think about it.
Joking apart, that bizarre day was unusually rewarding. Swathes of gratitude from people, many of whom don’t need a lot of help (or rather, they have their own sources of help) but feel much reassured by the periodic calls to know that they have a back up service that will seek them out if they find themselves needing the help. It must be a very vulnerable feeling, to be shielding for several months and needing people to help you. Even if we are mostly just providing some psychological comfort to shielding people, as much as the occasional “errand running” gigs that form part of the deal, I think it is a very worthwhile service.
Plenty of calls for me again the next day, too. So I think this is partly about a build up of demand and a reduction in supply. Anyone out there who hasn’t volunteered yet, simply because you’ve heard there is no demand…that’s not so…
…I trawled a great many authoritative (and some nonauthoritative) sources in search of the source of the tennis scoring system. In so doing, I also learnt a great deal about the odds, or handicapping systems that tend to accompany tennis scoring.
I also learnt that the origins of tennis, its scoring and handicapping are inextricably linked to the fact that tennis was widely played and observed as a wagering game, certainly as far back as medieval times. Enjoy the following example:
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 .
I love that 14th century story about my new friend, Philip The Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Of course, the detail might be more legend than history, but it forms part of a significant body of evidence that tennis was already a structured sport way back then, with wagering being “part of the scene”.
As an aside, Philip the Bold was not only well-known to be an enthusiast of jeu de paume (tennis), he was also a great enthusiast for the Pinot Noir grape; prohibiting the cultivation of the Gamay grape in Burgundy (1395), thus initiating that region’s fine wine tradition. Philip the Bold also initiated a musical chapel which founded the great Burgundian school of music. Tennis, wine & music – Philip was my kinda guy.
Medieval Kings & Their Love/Hate Relationship With Tennis
There is documentary evidence that Philip IV, Louis’s dad, bought the Tour de Nesle in 1308 and had a covered tennis court built within. While Philip was clearly keen on the game, there is no evidence that he played. It is said that the fashion for covered courts emanated from young Louis’s love of the game. That love also, perhaps, proved to be Louis’s undoing. Just a couple of years after succeeding to the French throne, Louis X died, age 26, apparently after playing an especially rigorous game of tennis at Vincennes, in 1316. Louis X thus became the earliest named tennis player in history.
Quarrelsome? Moi?
Louis X’s kid sister, Isabella, married Edward II of England. Isabella quite possibly murdered the latter; for sure she had him deposed and had her 14 year old son, Edward III, inserted on the throne of England. That allowed Isabella and her mate, Roger Mortimer, to dabble in ruling England as regents for a bit, until Edward III asserted himself, aged 18.
Anyway, my point is, Philip IV of France (Louis X’s dad), Edward III of England and Charles V of France (Edward III’s third cousin, Philip The Bold of Burgundy’s brother) all had one thing in common in the matter of tennis; they banned it by decree.
In truth, medieval kings made a bit of a habit of banning tennis (along with most sports and games other than warlike sports, such as archery) for the middling sort, while at the same time building tennis courts and letting their families and noble entourages play tennis at will.
That sort of hypocritical prohibition by decree continued well into the 15th and 16th centuries, which almost certainly helped the game become rather popular as an underground activity.
(As an aside, I have often attributed my own love of cricket to the fact that my primary school headmistress banned cricket in the school playground when I was 10, which inevitably led to clandestine games of cricket on the common whenever the opportunity arose – thank you Miss Plumridge. I don’t suppose the teachers who ruled Rosemead School were hypocritically playing cricket, while prohibiting their charges from doing so. But who knows? Anyway, I digress.)
Renaissance Tennis, Honour & Wagering
While we have strong direct evidence that noble folk wagered on their play and sometimes wagered big – Henry VIII has a great many well-documented, substantial losses from playing tennis – we also have plenty of indirect evidence that tennis was a popular game around which the players indulged in wagering and observers often indulged in gambling.
Heiner Gillmeister in his Cultural History of Tennis is unequivocal on this point:
…in the Middle Ages tennis was always played for money…
This seminal treatise on tennis was a youthful act of patronage by Alfonso II d’Este, who went on to become Duke of Ferrara and to patronise a great many works of art and science, not least the works of Torquato Tasso. An arty family, those d’Este folk. Alfonso II’s grandmother was Lucretia Borgia and his auntie was Leonora d’Este, who most probably composed the wonderful sacred music sampled below:
So Scaino’s commission to write his treatise on tennis came from a noble, art-loving patron; it is perhaps unsurprising that the treatise focuses on matters noble and honourable about the game, while ignoring the seedier, money-oriented side of the game.
Note how Scaino explains the reasoning behind the “win by two clear points” aspect of the scoring system:
It is to be noted that the game of tennis is of a beautiful and well-reasoned ordinance. The winning of points is called by the numbers 15, 30 and 45 and if the two teams have each won three points the score is “a dua”, meaning that the game is reduced to two points (became “à deux” or “deux à” in French, “deuce” in English) and not one! The method of fighting such a distinguished battle should be removed from any suspicion of chance or fortune. He who wins must be sure that he has won by his own valour, not by any outside favour. Who does not see now that the game could not be devised with good reason to end with only one point? The good and staunch Cavalier is judged not by one thrust of his lance; the elegant Dancer not by just one leap, however bold and skilful, but by prolongued dancing, and the sure and cautious Bombardier not by one discharge of his Artillery, but by many.
While the above reasoning does not preclude the use of odds, or handicapping, it certainly does not in any way allude to it either. But we do have plenty of evidence to support the assertion that medieval tennis was played for money and we also have documentary evidence of the use of handicapping, some 50 years before Scaino.
At Odds With Renaissance Handicapping: Meet the Bisque
The earliest reference to odds, or handicapping, that I can find, is from early 1506, reported in Julian Marshall’s 1878 book, The Annals of Tennis. It is an eye-witness account, by one of Henry VII of England’s attendants, of a “visit” to Windsor Castle by Philip The Handsome (another Duke of Burgundy, plus also King of Castille) and his Queen: Joanna The Mad of Castille.
Philip The Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, King of Castille, husband to Joanna The Mad, not long for this world
The Sattordaye the 7 of ffebruary…
Bothe Kyngs wente to the Tennys plays and in the upper gallery theare was Layd ij Cushenes of Clothe of gold for the ij Kyngs…
…wheare played my Lord marques [of Dorset] the Lord Howard and two other knights togethers, and after the Kyngs of Casteele had scene them play a whylle , he made partys wth the Lord marques and then played the Kyngs of Casteele with the Lord Marques of Dorset the Kyngs Lookynge one them, but the Kyngs of Castelle played wth the Rackets and gave the Lord Marques xv. and after that he had pled his pleasure and arrayed himself agene it was almost nights, and so bothe Kyngs Retorned agayne to their Lodgingss.”
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in that eye-witness account. That early 16th century period was a period of transition between hand-play and racket-play at tennis. Most scholars agree that the racket came into use around 1500. So the handicap described in the account has the King of Castille playing with a racket and the Marquess of Dorset playing with his hand, while receiving fifteen (i.e. starting each game 15-0 up). Personally, I’d prefer the racket, but perhaps the Marquess was a very handy player.
Sadly, the account doesn’t tell us who won the tennis match, but the story doesn’t end brilliantly well for the visiting monarch; who in reality was more a hostage than a guest of Henry VII. Philip signed some helpful treaties and trade deals to help bring his “visit” to an amicable conclusion. Still, within a few months, Philip The Handsome died in Spain; probably poisoned/assassinated there. This made Joanna The Mad even more distraught than usual, apparently.
Joanna The Mad, but possibly Joanna The Gaslit or Joanna The Misconstrued
Thomas Grey, the Marquess of Dorset, who as a youngster had been a ward of Henry VII, was, by 1508, sent to the tower as a suspected conspirator against Henry VII. Only the accession of Henry VIII the following year saved Grey, who had a decent run as a high-ranking courtier after that narrow escape. His grand-daughter, Lady Jane Grey, was not so lucky; famously the “nine day queen”.
Not that type of bisque
In days of yore, the most common currency in tennis handicaps or odds was the bisque. A player who receives a bisque per set can claim one stroke (point) ahead of that point being played, at any stage during a set. Any number of bisques can be given, but the use of other point handicaps, such as giving fifteen every game or half-fifteen (i.e. fifteen every other game) means that the number of bisques per set would normally have been limited to one or two, perhaps occasionally three or four. Bisques would also be used sometimes to mitigate handicaps; for example Player A might receive fifteen but give a bisque or two to Player B to make the overall handicap less than fifteen.
The object of the exercise with odds (or handicapping) is to even up the game between players of differing quality. In days of yore, it almost certainly evolved as a mechanism to make wagering simpler and/or more exciting; hence the terms odds and handicapping (both gambling terms) to describe the practice.
In real tennis, handicapping is still very much part of the scene in all but the very highest level of play, as I shall explain in the third piece in this series.
As for the origins of the term “bisque”, that is lost in the mists of time. Some say the term “bisca” is Italian for tennis court and gambling house, much as the term “tripot” in French has those two meanings. But Scaino doesn’t use the term bisca or bisque at all in his treatise. The term bisque (spelt bisquaye) first appears in writing in the 1582 paper Signification de l’ancien jeu des chartes pythagorique et la déclaration de deux doubtes qui se trouvent en comptant le jeu de la paume by Jean Gosselin, but the context implies that this form of handicapping had been in regular use for some time, as Gosselin assumes that the term will be understood by the reader.
Many subsequent papers and books on tennis go into a great deal of detail about the tactical use of bisques by the player who has been given the opportunity to apply one or more of them.
Indeed, by the start of the 19th century, a fascinating array of odds/handicaps had emerged, mostly no doubt to enhance the enjoyment of wagering & gambling on the sport, but also as part of the honour system, by which the contestants were seeking to even up the match, better to enjoy the sport of the occasion. It is the latter rationale that prevails in real tennis to this day, to great effect.
But those 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st century developments will be the subject of my subsequent scribblings. As will the intriguing notion that handicaps were an intrinsic part of lawn tennis in the early days of that game.
Tennis Handicap Tournament, 1918, Upper Arlington Tennis Club
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part two of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
Pondering tennis scoring, abacus in hand, Moreton Morrell, 2019
Why Score Points/Strokes in 15s?
Lovers of tennis have long pondered the origins of the scoring system. In particular, the notion that the first point scores 15, the second point 30 and so on, until one player has scored four points, or, if the score reaches three-all, once one player has subsequently taken two consecutive points.
There are a great many theories about the origins of this convention.
At the time of writing this piece (the summer of 2020) there are two prevailing “origins” theories on the internet, both of which fail the credibility test as soon as some historical facts are thrown into the mix.
The most common of the fallacious origin theories is that tennis scorers habitually used clock faces to score the games, taking the minute hand numbers as scores, i.e. 15 to signify a quarter of the job done, 30 to signify half, 40 (as an abbreviation for 45), 60 to conclude the game.
Unfortunately for this elegant, oft-touted and much-believed theory, there are early written accounts of the 15/30/45 scoring system dating back to the Renaissance; long before anyone had considered the idea of minute markings on clock faces. While it is possible that such devices might have been used at times in the last 300 years, this simply is not a credible “origins” theory.
The second style of origin theory, often to be found on the internet, is connected with the chase markings on a real tennis court. Variations of this theory include the notion that there were traditionally 14 chase lines on the floor, so the concluded point was called, to avoid confusion, 15. The other main variation of the “floor plan” theory is that the court was traditionally 90 feet long (45 feet on each side) and that the server had to advance 15 feet on winning the first point, a further 15 on winning the second etc.
Lovers of the early forms of the game, known variously as real tennis, royal tennis, court tennis and jeu du paume, will recognise that there is no such standardisation of courts, whether on length or on court markings (or even on how to name the game). Just naming it “tennis” pleases me best.
There was a tradition in France at one time to have 14 floor marks on the service side, but that French tradition of floor marking was initiated long after the scoring system was established. It is possible that the French floor marking style was a nod to the fact that the scoring system was based on 15/30/45/60, but it cannot have been the cause of that scoring system.
While Internet Babble Might Hinder, So Might Historic, Original Sources, Now Available Freely Through The Internet, Help
So internet babble couldn’t solve this one for me. I needed to retreat into ancient texts on tennis. There I found such a rich collection of writings I could happily generate several essays on the origins of many aspects of the game; indeed I intend to do just that.
The Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets by Lord Aberdare (I had to purchase this one; it is not in the public domain) is an authoritative book on the subject. Aberdare shows documentary evidence that 15/30/45 were used as far back as the Middle Ages. Heiner Gillmeister quotes an early 15th Century Middle English poem about the Battle of Agincourt, which uses a game of tennis as a metaphor for the battle and quotes the scores XV, XXX and XLV. A poem by Charles d’Orleans, dated in the 1430s, also mentions 45 in the context of tennis. Erasmus’s Colloquies c 1518, mention the scoring of a love game as Quindecim, Trigenta, Quadraginta quinque.
Lord Aberdare also tells us that writers as far back as the 1430s wondered “why 15s?”, but could find no satisfactory answer.
Aberdare also quotes and lists his sources extensively. A great many of those original sources are now freely available on-line through the internet archive and other such public domain sources. I have provided links in this article where such sources exist.
In The Renaissance Period, The Italians & The French Were Doing Most Of The Running In Tennis
The very first treatise on tennis, attempting to set down its rules comprehensively, was written by Antonio Scaino in 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla (Treatise of the Ball Game). Like so many of these ancient texts, it is freely available on-line through the Internet Archive – click the preceding link or image below to read the document.
I need to rely on Julian Marshall’s translation and interpretation of that text in his wonderful, seminal English work on the history of tennis; The Annals Of Tennis, 1878, which is also freely available through the internet archive. Julian Marshall’s work will feature large in some of my later pieces on tennis history. Lord Aberdare relies on Marshall heavily for the history of the game.
According to Marshall, Antonio Scaino advances a rather convoluted theory for the use of 15, based on (as he sees it) three types of game and the five points required to turn a 0-40 position into a game in one’s own favour.
While Scaino’s theory seems rather weak to my modern, forensic mind, yet it is still fascinating to note that Scaino speaks of this kind of scoring, including the use of deuces, as a standard thing for almost all ball games. Marshall writes:
This was, evidently, even then a matter of universal custom which needed no comment; and, with the “setting” of the game at deuce (a dua), it was common, Scaino says, to all ball-games, with the exception of foot-ball…
…why we should count, as from time immemorial we have counted, 15, 30, 45 and then game, which latter should be equivalent to 60, rather than by any other numbers greater or lesser than these.
Gosselin comes up with two “solutions” to his doubts. One based on astronomy or a sextant, being a sixth part of a circle itself consisting of 60 degrees and sixty minutes. Unfortunately, at that time, a set tended to comprise four games, not six as has more recently become common, so his 60 times four does not complete the circle.
His second theory is based on geometry and a rather convoluted theory around Roman measures, as four fingers =1 palm, 4 palms = 1 foot and 1 Clima = a square of 60 feet by 60 feet, 1 Actus = 2 Climates in length and breadth, 1 Jugerum = 2 Actus in length and 1 Actus in breadth.
After dancing around his two theories for a while, Gosselin concludes that he has solved the matter decisively, Q.E.F. (as the French say).
Readers might form their own views on Gosselin’s “extremely complicated” (as Lord Aberdare puts it) geometrical theories and the somewhat arrogant tone of Gosselin’s certainty that he has solved the doubts about the origins of the scoring system.
But I shall shortly return to the notions, which are undoubtedly so, that the origins are buried in antiquity and that, again as Lord Aberdare summarise it:
…the number 60 often represented a complete whole in mediaeval times…
While Italian written sources go back to the mid 16th century and relevant French ones to the late 16th century, there are no English authorities on tennis until the 19th century; just the occasional fragment or mention of tennis in other works.
On the question of using the term “forty” rather than “forty-five”, which several correspondents have raised, I have written a short Appendix:
19th & 20th Century English Contributions To Tennis History
The first English book on tennis was published in 1822: A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin. “The Club” referred to in the title was the James Street Court in Haymarket; at the time the club acted as “guardian of the laws” of tennis, until “the Tennis Club” closed and handed that guardianship role to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in the 1860s.
Again, these days, you can simply click the link and read the whole book on the internet archive. A fun and short read. That book is strong on odds/handicaps and also has a fascinating appendix with historical notes about notable royal lovers/players of the game, but the scoring system is merely stated as fact with the aside that strokes:
…are reckoned in a manner, which makes it at first very difficult to understand.
The first Stroke or point is called 15
The second…30
The third…40 or 45
…
So it really isn’t until Julian Marshall’s 1878 book, The Annals of Tennis (previously mentioned and linked, but, heck, here’s the link again) that the origins of the scoring system is given thoughtful coverage in English. Marshall’s influence spans lawn tennis as well as real tennis, as I shall explain in a subsequent piece about the intriguing ways the two games have developed, like conjoined twins, somewhat independent and yet in several ways metaphorically joined at the hip. Marshall was also a prominent MCC member who played a major role in the codification of the laws of tennis in the last few decades of the 19th century.
But Marshall doesn’t progress the thinking about the origins of the scoring system, he simply catalogues the Italian and French writings on the topic authoritatively and helpfully.
More recently, in the 1990s, the subject has had in depth and well-researched coverage in Heiner Gillmeister’s book, Tennis: A Cultural History:
Gillmeister is a leading expert on the history and origins of ball games generally and in particular tennis. Gillmeister’s extensive research leaves him in little or no doubt that the game we recognise today as tennis, including the scoring system, has its origins in medieval Europe and that scoring games using base 60, divided by four, is probably related to money matters at the time.
Whisper it, people, but medieval tennis, once it became popular among the secular classes, was not played for honour and valour; it was primarily played for money. It was a mechanism for the players and also sometimes spectators, to wager.
Many jurisdictions had wager limits embedded in the law. Nuremberg commoners are:
…enjoined not to play for more than sixty “haller”and for no object or possession valued at over sixty “pfennige”
A similar edict from Munich in 1365 limits stakes to 60 “denare” (deniers). But there is no direct evidence that such limits were applied in France, nor is there direct evidence that these regulations, which were applied to dice games, would also have been deemed to apply to wagers on tennis.
Gillmeister also says, regarding such gambling regulations:
…they do without doubt prove one thing: by at least the end of the thirteenth century and during the fourteenth century, the time when sous worth fifteen deniers were in circulation, games played for stakes of over 60 deniers were forbidden
Now Mr Gillmeister might know a heck of a lot about linguistics and the history of ball games, but I’m not as convinced that he has quite such a strong grasp on the history of money. While there were many variations of coinage at that stage of the medieval period, the relative standard of 12 deniers to the sous and 20 sous to the livre was fairly well established across Europe. In England this was expressed as 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. There were many local variations, including a coin known as the patard which was, at times, in circulation and worth 15d. At the higher end of the scale, Gillmeister mentions the double royal d’or and the gros denier tournois, but frankly neither of those coins became a standard based on sixty sous or fifteen deniers.
Still, I find compelling the arguments that medieval tennis was regularly played for stakes and that a maximum stake of 60 pfennigs (or 60 deniers, or 60 pennies) per game might have been a de facto standard regulation at a vital stage of the development of tennis. I find the “coinage arguments” for division into 15s less convincing, but it is quite possible that the principle of “the first to four wins the game, unless…” was well-established, making 15 the natural point counter, if you seek to get to 60 points for a game.
A further point regarding money, which Gillmeister misses but I recognise and find compelling, is the notion that, if 60 represents a game, 240 would, at that time, have represented a set. Until relatively recently, a set was, more commonly, the first to four games, not the first to six. Sets of tennis mostly being to six emerged as a standard in the last 200-300 years. So while Gillmeister agonises over coins that might or might not have been valued at 15 deniers in various places at various time, he misses some clear evidence in plain view, that a set of tennis, if counted to four games of 60, i.e. 240, would almost universally in Europe have represented a livre, or, as we say in English old money, 240 pennies makes one pound.
Gillmeister is far more convincing and consistent on the “medieval chivalric” case for deuces, or at least the principle that games should be determined by a margin of two points, not just one point. Jan Van Berghe – he of the early 15th century Agincourt poem, discusses, in a later work, the continuation of play from deuce until one player has won two consecutive chases.
Scaino, our Italian Renaissance correspondent from 1555, is emphatic on this point in his Trattato:
The method of fighting such a distinguished battle should be removed from any suspicion of chance or fortune. He who wins must be sure that he has won by his own valour, not by any outside favour. Who does not see now that the game could not be devised with good reason to end with only one point? The good and staunch Cavalier is judged not by one thrust of his lance; the elegant Dancer not by just one leap, however bold and skilful…
Less convincing, to my mind, is Gillmeister’s alternative view on the origins of the term “love” to describe the “lack of” score for the unfortunate player who has not yet won a stroke. He is not convinced that “love” is a bastardisation of the French word “l’oeuf”, i.e. egg, representing “0” – zero. He prefers the Dutch or Flemish word “lof”, meaning honour, or “nothing more than the love of the game”. Gillmeister is a linguist as well as a ball game historian, so what do I know when I say that I find the “oeuf” explanation more convincing than the “lof” argument?
The Stuff Of Ancient Legend; As Deep In Antiquity As Can Be
Gillmeister starts his book Tennis: A Cultural History with a fascinating legend from the late 12th century.
A young, intellectually-challenged trainee monk does a deal with the devil in order to shine in his studies. One day he falls ill and has a near-death experience, during which he descends into a hellish valley where demons fashion his soul into a ball and play jeu de paume (medieval tennis) with it.
The story is recorded in the early 13th century work, Dialogus Miraculorum, by Caesarius of Heisterbach – yet another of these wonderful old texts that is freely available on-line if you wish to read or just look in awe at the ancient text.
This legend, along with the Gillmeister’s central numerical point about the scoring system; that the use of base 60 was important in medieval Europe, brought another, much earlier culture to my mind.
The very earliest civilisation known to have urbanised, the Sumerians in Southern Mesopotamia.
They started writing stuff down around 5000 to 5500 years ago, did the Sumerians. Most of the stuff they wrote down was rather dull, accounting type records, in cuneiform, on clay tablets.
The Sumerians used the sexagesimal (base 60) counting system. Sexagesimal is, in many ways, a more sensible base for counting and dividing stuff up than the decimal system we use today. As the wikipedia entry so succinctly puts it:
Given that the Sumerians basically wanted to count crops, divide them up and pay for them, sexagesimal made a great deal of sense. They also wanted to measure angles and stuff; these latter habits in sexagesimal became so deeply established in ancient times (the Greeks and Romans persevered with those aspects) that elements of sexagesimal have found their way into measures in our society still; 360 degrees to a circle, hence latterly 60 minutes to an hour, 60 seconds to a minute, etc.
Unlike the hotch-potch of currencies and translation rates known to have existed in medieval Europe, records indicate that Sumerian money was unequivocally denominated in terms linked with base 60. The basic monetary unit was the shekel. There were 60 shekels to the mina and sixty minas to the talent.
Not only did the Sumerians leave plenty of evidence of proto accountants, they also left evidence of proto lawyers. The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest known legal code, more than 4000 years old (c.2100 BC). Only some of this code survives, sadly. But those surviving passages include fines and compensation rates, which include the following:
If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay (her) one mina (60 shekels) of silver.
If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay (her) half a mina (30 shekels) of silver.
If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver. (Love).
If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.
We also know that the Sumerians (and their successor civilisation, the Babylonians) were very keen on games. Boards for the Royal Game Of Ur have been found dating back more than 4500 years. Some boards have been found with additional counters, believed to be evidence of gambling on the games.
The Royal Game Of Ur
The game is a proto-game closely related to chase games popular today, such as ludo and backgammon. Sumerians used several four-sided dice for this game. A rules tablet for the Royal Game Of Ur was discovered and translated in the early 1980s.
“So did the Sumerians play ball games?”, I hear you cry.
Yes, they did.
Unfortunately, we, as yet, have very little on record as to what those ball games might have been like.
But the Epic Of Gilgamesh, arguably the earliest surviving work of great literature, written more than 4000 years ago, has passages that allude to ball games at the start and end of the epic.
At the start of the epic story, Gilgamesh exhausts his male companions through the playing of ball games while exercising his droit du seigneur on the local female brides. He’s not a nice chap, that Gilgamesh.
The final part of the story (in some ways disconnected from the earlier parts) is known as Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld. In this story, Gilgamesh’s ball and ball-playing implement (sometimes translated as a mallet) has found its way into the Netherworld. Enkidu, who is Gilgamesh’s companion and/or nemesis throughout the epic, descends into the netherworld to retrieve the ball game apparatus, with predictably epic results.
This last story is hauntingly similar to the medieval story about a hellish game of tennis at the beginning of Heiner Gillmeister’s tennis history. It is also achingly similar to folklore tales throughout the world. A fascinating academic paper on this topic, The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore by Amar Annus and Mari Sarv, can be found on Researchgate through the preceding link. Many traditional folk stories have ball games as their plot triggers, including Persian direct descendants of the Gilgamesh legends and the Estonian stories described in the “Ball Game Motif” paper.
Conclusion: An Absence Of Claims But A Wealth of Interesting Stuff
Let me be clear about this; I am not claiming that the ancient Sumerians played tennis or even anything like it. The ball games played in Sumeria were probably more akin to hockey or polo. But while we don’t know exactly how they played ball games; we do know for sure that they played such things, with implements, to the extent that such artefacts were the subject of legend.
We also know for sure that the Sumerians counted, divided and used a monetary system in base 60. We know that Sumerian regulations used denominations of 15, 30 and 60 as compensation payments and fines. We also know that this very ancient civilisation not only played ball games but also board games using four-sided dice. We strongly suspect that they gambled.
We know that lawyers and accountants tend to get involved in games as guardians of the rules and as scorers. In more modern times, the MCC is a living example of that phenomenon (in the matters of cricket and tennis anyway) and has been so for several hundred years.
Me, marking, with Hampton Court abacus in hand
The Sumerians devised the abacus too.
One of the other truly intriguing things about the Sumerian civilisation is that we still have so much to discover about them. Only a fraction of the relics that are almost certainly preserved and buried there waiting to be discovered have yet been excavated from Southern Mesopotamia. So we (or our descendants) might yet learn some further fascinating details about Sumerian games and scoring systems.
But my main point in this piece is that legends, cultural mores and gaming traditions have a strange habit of surviving and/or re-emerging across centuries and millennia.
Our game, tennis, undoubtedly emerged in medieval times and evolved from there. The extent to which the scoring system was novel in the middle ages, based on the monetary system and gambling regulations, or was based on traditional counting and gaming conventions handed down across the centuries and millennia, is unknown and cannot be known. Such mysteries are part of the fun playing and observing a game so steeped in traditions and history.
Other Pieces On Tennis History
This piece is part one of four pieces. The other three pieces are:
