Not much else to say, really, other than the fact that the rain that we dodged resulted in flash flooding and all sorts in West London, so I think we did the right thing to abandon the ground when we did.
On 18 May, for example, I visited my friend Rohan Candappa in Crouch End…
Crouch End’s equivalent of the bread line emerges daily outside the Sourdough Shop
… and then went on to meet Sophie Kent, one of the LCT Trustees, to take a look at Hornsey Cricket Club to discuss a prospective indoor cricket facility project (not an LCT one).
Half-close your eyes, wish and imagine…
On 9 June we had a face-to-face LCT meeting at The Oval. Dumbo, my car, was very excited at the opportunity to park within the hallowed grounds of The Oval, adding to his bucket-list collection of “cricket grounds within which I have parked”:
Why shouldn’t Dumbo have a bucket list like everyone else?
But I digress.
Birchmere Park via New Zealand, Hendon & The Woolwich Ferry
I started the day in New Zealand. Not physically of course, but I did Zoom over to Wellington for a short meeting on Z/Yen business.
Then I set off for Hendon, to Middlesex University for a game of real tennis, in which a sixteen-year-old utterly took me to pieces. I had pretty much been able to keep up with him a couple of weeks ago, but his regular play post GCSEs and the rapid improvement available only to people 40 or more years younger than me means that he is at least 10 handicap points better than me now and shall soon sail off into the stratosphere of only wanting to play with serious sporty folk and pros.
It doesn’t get much better than this
Having allowed bags of time to get to Birchmere Park in Thamesmead, I trusted Waze to sat nav me there and was led to expect to arrive more than an hour before the event, via the Woolwich Ferry. Time for a wander around when I get there, I thought.
I had never attempted the Woolwich Ferry before. My only real knowledge of it, from my youth until this day, was traffic announcements on Capital Radio & Radio London saying that only one ferry was operating and that there were hour-long queues as a result.
I didn’t listen to the radio on my journey from North-West to South-East London. Why should I? The sat nav does that traffic guidance job these days…
…except that the sat nav clearly didn’t know that today, as in my radio-listening days of yore, the ferry was operating with just one boat and the queues were some 40 minutes long.
The Woolwich Ferry from a Dumbo perspective
Still, it was another tick on my bucket-list and Dumbo was very excited to travel by boat again, for the first time since his trip to Ireland with us six years ago.
Fortunately I had allowed so much extra time for this journey, even with the long wait for the ferry, I still arrived at Birchmere Park about half-an-hour before the event.
New Zealanders have an expression for their weather – all four seasons in one day – which can apply to English weather too and certainly did apply on this day. In fact, I think I can safely say that I experienced all four seasons in one two-hour journey from Hendon to Thamesmead.
By the time I arrived at Birchmere Park it was unquestionably the rainy season. It was bucketing down.
My trusty weather app suggested that the rain would ease off after about 15 minutes and even suggested that it should stop completely to allow us a 45 minute event in dry weather.
And so it was. The weather smiled on us for our launch. Only the multiple rainbows in my picture present clues to the changeable weather on that afternoon.
As the Trustee of a cricket charity that is putting dozens of non-turf pitches into parks around London, I am glad to point out that only a non-turf pitch would be playable just a few minutes after the sort of deluge we experienced that afternoon.
Can you see the join?
These cricket pitch projects tend to need several organisations to come together. In this case, not only the LCT, the ECB and the local (Greenwich) council, but also Peabody and in particular its Thamesmead Regeneration arm. It was very interesting to meet the various dignitaries and activists from the area. I also sensed genuine interest in progressing more projects of this kind in that corner of Greater London.
I took my stroll around after the main event. Birchmere Park is a charming place with a lake and plenty of bird life on the far side of the park.
More by luck than judgment, I chose a really good day, the Tuesday, for a pair of seats at The Queen’s Club to see some lawn tennis. It was fine weather and mostly excellent tennis too.
We had also, back in the day, popped in to see a couple of late afternoon matches after work. But that’s not the same thing as a proper day at the tennis.
Socially-distanced (or, as Janie calls it, spatially-distanced) at Queens
Only a 25% crowd was allowed and centre court was the only court with seating. If you chose to wander around you might be forgiven for thinking that you were at Queen’s the day before the tournament – the walkways around the practice courts etc were so quiet.
But we were mostly there for the tennis proper . First up was Matteo Berrettini against Stefano Travaglia. Queen’s was a very Italian affair this year for some reason. That match – depicted in the headline picture, was a close run thing given that Berrettini is the top seed and Travaglia…isn’t.
Next up was Britain’s Dan Evans v Alexei Popyrin, the latter being an Australian with a Russian name.
We chose to stretch our legs at the start of that match, as the Berrettini match had been quite long. While walking around the practice courts, we spotted Herbert and Mahut practicing against each other rather than with each other:
Herbert waiting, Mahut serving
Then back to Centre Court. The small crowd ever so politely took Dan Evans’s side, but with barely a yelp, to be honest, just louder polite applause. It was good to see him play so well.
Good Evans
I had taken responsibility for the picnic, which we went through at a gentle pace throughout the day. Beef and horseradish submarine rolls, Lincolnshire Poacher ciabatta rolls, mixed nuts, grapes, strawberries, two types of smoothie…
…we took some of the food home with us and had a mini-picnic in the evening with the leftovers.
Meanwhile, after the Evans match, the big event was the return of Andy Murray to main tour play after a long interval. At this point there were elements of the crowd that got really quite excited.
Murray was up against Benoît Paire, a French player whose beard has become unfeasibly large over the years.
There goes Benoît Paire with his beard, He said, “It is just as I feared!— Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard.Andy Murray in full flow
After Murray dispensed with Paire, I took a solo leg stretch, snapping one or two more stars along the way on the practice courts:
Nikola Mektić (above) and Lorenzo Sonego (below)
The last match of the day was less interesting to us; Denis Shapovalov v Aleksandar Vukic.
Denis “The Menace” Shapovalov in full flight
Both big servers, it became fairly obvious during set two that the match was likely to go to two tie-breaks which would likely go the way of Shapovalov, so we left a little early and indeed missed precisely that.
It really was a super day. The standard of stewarding, mostly young women, was very high – the atmosphere much calmer than usual but all the more charming for that.
Janie was super happy, to use a phrase that every tennis player seems bound to use these days.
After the “no spectators at all” season of 2020, I was among the first to see live test cricket in England in 2021.
Despite the first test being at my home ground of Lord’s, ahead of the day I felt strange…almost anxious…about spectating under the Covid pandemic protocols.
The first Lord’s test was designated to be MCC members only, with only about 25% of the ground occupied.
The regular Lord’s thing is for members to have a “licence to rove” with other members and friends throughout the members’ areas. This year we had to apply for and then choose a socially-distanced seat, anywhere around the ground, some weeks in advance of the match.
Thus I imagined that the experience, for me, might be more akin to many of my visits for county championship matches. I quite often choose to venture alone, with a pile of reading and modest snack-picnic, choosing to sit in a less-popular corner of the ground.
I promised King Cricket (KC) that I would write up the experience for his site.
While King Cricket match reports on professional matches mustn’t mention the cricket itself, Ogblog has no such rules.
Frankly, there was not much to report on the cricket. England bowled pretty well, yielding only 250-odd runs but only taking three wickets.
The vibe where I was sitting, in the Mound Stand, is described in the above linked piece.
The ground was zoned. Not only were we only permitted to sit in our allocated (socially-distanced) seat, we were only permitted to wander within our chosen zone.
I was in Zone C for Day One.
I wandered along to “Checkpoint Charlie” underneath the Media Centre, between Zone C & Zone B. I usually chat with a friendly regular steward, Rob, there. There he was, in Zone B. I waved at him.
I fully expected Rob to shrug and for me to tell him that I planned to join him in Zone B on Friday. But no. Rob crossed the barricades, did that elbow thing that has replaced handshakes and we had a chat, more or less as normal, just socially-distanced.
Day Two: Thursday 3 June 2021
The Stewards tried, with limited success, to use barriers to stream pedestrians back and forth. The barriers didn’t work very well, but the limited numbers of pedestrians ensured that there were no log-jams.
Here is a link to my King Cricket scribblings on the matter of Day Two in the Allen Stand:
Suffice it to say for now that I spent the day in the Allen Stand, just beside the Allen Stand Gap, whence the headline photo and the above picture of the Compton, Edrich & Media Centre were taken.
The Allen Stand, close to the holy-of-holies (The Pavilion) was, naturally, in Zone A.
This picture is taken from the “Checkpoint Charlie” between Zones A & C.
I finished reading The Great Romantic – a book about Nevil Cardus by Duncan Hamilton, which I reviewed for King Cricket:
The cricket on Day Two was excellent. England fought back well to limit the further damage to only 130 or so runs. Then, after losing two early wickets, batted without further damage until stumps.
I eagerly anticipated Day Three, which I had chosen to spend in The Warner Stand, which would have completed my experience of the trilogy of Zones in Zone B.
Day Three: Friday 4 June 2021
But you know what they say about plans.
Sometimes no amount of planning can save you from the inevitable
The weather forecast earlier in the week had predicted fair weather for the whole match – perhaps a slightly cloudier day on the Friday.
What happened instead was rain.
All day.
I did other things instead…and to some extent did the things I had intended to do at the cricket elsewhere instead.
King Cricket might or might not chose to publish my account of Day Three. One way or another, though, I’ll self-publish or link to that account in the fulness of time.
I witnessed Devon Conway score a test century (indeed, in his case, a double-century) on debut at Lord’s. He is only the sixth batsman in history to achieve that feat.
Apart from Harry Graham, who was the first to achieve that rare feat in 1893, I have seen, live at Lord’s, all the other people who achieved it:
John Hampshire (I met him a few times, including at Lord’s but never saw him play live)
Sourav Ganguly (I saw him play at Lord’s on the following India tour, in 2002)
Andrew Strauss (I was at his debut test the day after that innings, having seen him achieve the century on TV)
Matt Prior (I actually witnessed that debut innings).
Conclusion
Just look what it means to him…
It really was wonderful to see live cricket again. What more can I say?
Rohan Candappa’s brief, for the May 2021 ThreadMash event, was as follows:
All being good, lockdown is scheduled to loosen its collar on Monday 17 May…
…I’m suggesting a theme that encourages us to reclaim some of the things that have been appropriated over the last year and a bit. Things like words. So I’d like you all to recover, repurpose and re-imagine the following words via the stories you write and share:
Rohan says, “never explain” and I have in part explained. Let’s allow my story to tell it’s own tale from here.
HANDS
I have two cack-hands.
Kind people, on observing that I play tennis off both arms, describe me as ambidextrous. But the word “dextrous” should not be used to describe me.
The truth is, I am ambi-cack-handed; neither dextrous with my right nor with my left hand.
For most purposes where only one hand is involved, I use my right hand. Writing and drawing for example. But I do those things cack-handedly. Computers have saved me from a teacher-predicted lifetime of illegible handwriting misery.
I have always brushed my teeth with my left hand. Some experts suggest this means that I am a natural leftie who mistakenly adopted right-handedness for most tasks. But concerted attempts to use my left hand as a child was a bigger disaster than my using the right hand…apart from the left-handed tooth-brushing.
Then along came the need to shave.
FACE
In the late 1970s, an American entrepreneur named Victor Kermit Kiam The Second announced that he was so impressed with the Remington electric shaver his wife bought him as a gift, he henceforward would eschew the use of the wet shavers he had used throughout his life and…
…get this…
…Victor Kiam bought the company that made Remington shavers.
My dad was way ahead of Victor Kiam in switching from blades to Remington electric shavers; by the late 1970s, dad had several of them. Two at the house, plus one at the shop, where dad’s routine required a five-o’clock shave, removing shadow ahead of late afternoon customers (or mostly lack thereof, by the late 1970s). Dad was not ahead of Victor Kiam in the matter of entrepreneurship.
In my early days shaving, I used dad’s spare Remington at home to remove the odd visible patch of dark fluff from my face.
When I set off for Keele University in autumn 1980, dad lent me that spare Remington, plus lotion bottles (pre shave and after shave) plus an old spare illuminated art-deco-style shaving mirror. The makeshift electrical wiring and plugs for that paraphernalia looked like a physics experiment.
But whereas prior to Keele, my facial hair only became visible once every few days, I soon started to notice daily patches of hair and started to shave regularly.
Increased Remington use combined badly with regular intake of beer, cigarettes and the rest. My face and neck became sore losers of facial hair; itchiness and blotchiness abounded.
For my second term at Keele, Dad switched my loan from the old Remington to a more modern foil-headed electric shaver…
…but the skin irritation persisted; possibly it even got worse.
Thus, over Easter 1981, contra-Kiam as it were, dad and I agreed that I would switch from electric to wet shaving. Dad rebundled my loan, replacing the Remington with the Rolls Razor he had used as a young soldier during the war.
This contraption, which they stopped making before I was born, was a metal box containing a strop and a re-useable safety razor. You would sharpen the blade on the strop, then detach the razor for your wet shave. Eventually you would change the blade, which, if memory serves me well, required a screwdriver and a fair bit of dexterity.
The other thing that needed dexterity was the safe use of such a safety razor.
We could not buy the company that had made Rolls Razor – it had gone bust by then – but we should have invested in the makers of styptic pencils and sticking plasters.
I recall seeing several horror films towards the end of my first year at Keele; The Amityville Horror and The Shining spring to mind, so I had plenty of suitable similes to describe the bloody bathroom scenes of my early Rolls-Razor efforts. I did eventually get the hang of it and wet-shaved for the next 25 years. Left-handed.
SPACE
But why did a long-haired ha’porth of a student, with two cack hands and a skin-sensitive face even bother with shaving?
The answer lies not in the facial hair itself, but in the space between the patches of facial hair.
It was OK for the youngsters who were blessed with a full growth of facial hair at the age of 18. Simon Jacobs, for example, had five-o’clock shadow from the start at Keele. But most of us looked ridiculous with sparse facial hair.
I recall Richard Van Baaren naming our Lindsay F-Block corridor’s five-a-side football team ‘Tempted ‘Tache, in honour of fellow undergraduate males’s failed attempts at moustaches. No, I didn’t play for that team; I have two left feet as well as two cack-hands.
Inadequate facial hair was like a flashing neon sign saying JUVENILE…BOY…NOT YET A MAN. That tell-tale wispy, fluffy face space had to go, even if the result was bloody carnage, born of cack-hands.
Oliver Wise called me out of the blue in March and asked me if I would be prepared to do something similar to the Gresham Society talk as part of a series of on-line events that his club, Boodle’s, has been holding during lockdown.
How could I possibly say no to Oliver? He probably doesn’t even remember it, but he gave me a great deal of encouragement when I started playing real tennis at Lord’s. I’m sure he does that with everyone; his view is that the handicapping system allows newbies and duffers to play with advanced players, so all should be encouraged to participate.
Anyway, I said yes to the Boodle’s on-line talk/discussion and we agreed a storyboard or semi-script with pictures and video clips that went roughly like this.
Playing The Odds: The Storyboard
Oliver: Can you briefly explain how real tennis differs from its offshoot, lawn tennis?
I’d like to answer that question in two respects – in terms of the history of the games and the nature of the games themselves.
Lawn tennis emerged in the mid to late 19th century, following the invention of vulcanised rubber. So when Boodle’s was founded, in 1762, the term “tennis” would refer to the game we now call “real tennis”. Indeed, the use of the single word “tennis” to refer normally to lawn tennis rather than real tennis dates from the early 20th century.
Real tennis is a rich and complex game played, mostly in indoor courts with gallery openings, penthouse roofs, targets and hazards, as well as the central feature of a net, shared between both real and lawn tennis. In France, real tennis is called “jeu de paume”, or “palm game”, which provides some insight into the game’s emergence by the 12th century in France…
…at least that’s when the earliest records emerge. The game was played with the hand. This stunning late 13th century picture from the Cambrai Book Of Hours shows a monk instructing his pupils in the game.
I love this picture; one of the oldest if not the oldest image of real tennis action. The master is unquestionably wearing gloves; the pupils also, perhaps.
You might have noticed that the pupils are learning to play with their left hands – both hands will have been used until the notion of a racket emerged, at which point one-handed forehand and backhand play will also have evolved. The switch from hand play to racket play probably started around the advent of the Renaissance and was all-but complete by the end of the Tudor period.
Just a few comments about the game at this stage; we’ll explore more as we go along in our discussion. The racket and balls for real tennis differ significantly from those used for lawn tennis. The racket is significantly smaller and irregularly shaped; some say the shape is an enlarged palm, others simply that the asymmetric shape assists shots that need to be taken near to the side walls and the nicks. The racket is highly strung; in my case much like its user. The balls look superficially like modern tennis balls, but they are hard items made from a cork core (in medieval times human hair was bound as the core), webbing and a covering of wool felt, hand-made, only approximately regular in shape.
The court is even more asymmetric than the implements. Serving is only done from one end – the bottom end as depicted. The receiving end is known as the hazard end.
The ball is hit back and forth across the net and must be sent back over the net on the volley or after the first bounce. But only a few designated areas of the court are places where a shot might win the point outright, although there is a better opportunity for the server than for the receiver to hit an outright winning shot. Only one gallery opening on each side is a winning target; all of the other gallery openings lead to chases, as does all of the floor at the service end and half the floor at the hazard end. In real tennis, the second bounce does not normally determine that the point has been won, but that a chase has been laid.
[Explain one or two chases using the mouse pointer on the picture]
After one or two chases are laid (depending on the score), the players change ends and the serve therefore switches from one player to the other. The player who has laid each chase then needs to defend their territory – i.e. ensure that their opponent lands a second bounce further away from the rear wall than the chase they laid. The winner of the chase scores the point for that chase.
Apart from the matter of chases, the scoring system for real tennis will be familiar to lawn tennis people. 15-30-40-game. Normally six games to win a set.
Here is a CCTV clip from Lord’s, in which the service has just changed ends after the setting of two chases. Mr Snitcher, now serving, is trying to defend the five yard line for the first chase and the three yard line for the second chase. The score is 30-30 and I am leading by 5 games to four. Oliver Wise will pick up the commentary:
Oliver: (after explaining the two chases that determine the set). Would you please tell us a little about some of the colourful characters from the history of the game.
Ah, that’s one of my favourite topics.
There is documentary evidence of tennis as a royal pursuit from the early 14th century. Tennis’s first “star”, for all the wrong reasons, was Louis X of France, known as Louis The Quarrelsome.
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.
That event also initiated a long and rather sordid tradition of monarchs or heirs to the throne dying in unusual circumstances with tennis standing accused of being central to their demise. We could have an entire talk on real tennis horrible histories if you fancy…no, thought not. But one such demise is relevant to Boodle’s and its links with tennis from Boodle’s earliest days. Frederick Prince of Wales died in 1751, purportedly from a lung injury sustained on the real tennis court some three years prior to his death. Horace Walpole said so and this is the received wisdom handed down from those Georgian times. Presumably there was a well-recorded incident in which the Prince was injured by “wearing one in the chest”. We’ve all occasionally sustained such bruises. Modern historians and doctors think it unlikely that a chest injury sustained three years earlier would cause such a death. More likely it was a pulmonary embolism. But the hard ball sports of cricket and tennis, which Frederick had loved and patronised, took a reputational hit in England for the rest of the Georgian era, reviving as the Victorian era evolved.
So, at the time that Boodle’s was formed in 1762, there was really only one public court of note in the whole of London; The James Street Court near the Haymarket; a short, pleasant walk away from Boodle’s. It was sometimes referred to as The King’s Court as Frederick Prince of Wales was said to frequent the place. He had a reputation for enjoying sport and gambling. At that time, public tennis courts were in part for gaming or gambling as well as for playing the sport.
It is unsurprising that many of the gentlemen who founded Boodle’s, with their love of gaming and sports, were tennis enthusiasts.
Charles James Fox was an early noteworthy…some might say notorious, member of Boodle’s. He was leader of the House of Commons and Foreign Secretary multiple times in the Georgian era. Fox was an inveterate gambler, womaniser and lover of things and fashions foreign. The Conservative historian, Lord Lexden, has compared Fox’s manner with that of the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Fox was also, according to the Georgian equivalent of the tabloids, a keen tennis player.
Here is a quote from the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, Wednesday, July 2, 1777:
“Charles Fox is become conspicuous at the tennis court. When he leaves off play, being generally in a violent perspiration, he wraps himself up in a loose fur coat, and in this garb, is conveyed to his lodgings.”
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was a more conservative character than Fox, both politically and behaviourally. Wellington was another notable member of Boodle’s and another Boodle’s member whose tennis exploits found their way into the papers. Wellington built a tennis court at Stratfield Saye. He even played a few sets there with Prince Albert when the Royal couple visited in 1845. The Illustrated London News reported that:
“we noticed this recreative adjunct to the mansion of Stratfield Saye when chronicling the Royal visit last week, when his Royal Highness Prince Albert enjoyed this olden game”.
But The History of Stratfield Saye does not record the Duke of Wellington as the star tennis player of that court. That history reports that Wellington’s…
“butler, Phillips, became one of the finest players in England of his day, successively beating all the best French players with whom he contended”.
Some years earlier, in 1820, when Robert Lukin turned the James Street Court into a tennis club, Lukin wrote to Wellington inviting him to become a member of the new Club, enclosing a list of the members who had already subscribed; Wellington graciously accepted the invitation. It would be fascinating to compare that 1820 founding members list from The James Street Court Club with the 1820 members list of Boodle’s, to see how much the membership overlapped. I’d guess quite a bit.
Oliver: One of the things I have always loved about the game is the use of a handicapping or odds system. Does the use of handicapping have ancient roots?
Unquestionably so, Oliver. We have written records of the use of handicapping as far back as the Renaissance.
There is no coincidence in the fact that the terms odds and handicap both originate from gambling. From the very dawn of civilisation there is evidence that people have liked to gamble on games of skill as well as on games of chance. We have certain, documented evidence from the middle ages onwards of noblemen and gentlemen gambling on tennis.
The fellow depicted, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, is one of my favourite colourful characters from the history of tennis. Here is a story about him, from an 1801 English book about sports and pastimes:
“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.”
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 15th Century Burgundian school of music. Tennis, wine & music – Philip was my kinda guy…and might I hazard to suggest, also a Boodle’s kinda guy?
Coincidentally, the earliest written reference to handicapping I can find is from a 1506 account of a “visit” to Henry VII at Windsor by Philip The Handsome, a subsequent Duke of Burgundy and also King of Castile. I say “visit” in inverted commas because it seems that the Castilian Royal couple were shipwrecked off the coast of England and Henry VII decided that they should remain in England until they signed a trade deal between Castile and England. There might be a Brexit technique lesson in this sorry tale, but let’s focus on the tennis aspect. I shall read the contemporary account, which is charming:
“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.
The evidence suggests that handicapping served a twin purpose: – (a) – to 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 – (b) facilitating good sport – the honour and joy of doing battle in a close competitive contest.
But by the mid to late 18th century, there had emerged a third purpose or style of handicapping which I’d like to explore with you; a form of handicapping linked with showmanship demonstrated by tennis professionals.
In The Annals of Tennis by Julian Marshall, the antics of the French star player of the mid 18th century, Monsieur Masson, are described in some detail. Here is a particularly vivid extract:
“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.”
My wife, Janie, refuses to believe this story in the absence of CCTV footage. We also know that Monsieur Masson visited England in 1767, just a few years after Boodle’s was founded. He took on and soundly thrashed the English champion of the time, Mr Tompkyns at Whitehall Hall on April 10th.
In fact tennis was enjoying somewhat of a heyday in 18th century France until the revolution came along. There were hundreds of courts in Paris and hundreds more around France. A famous moment in the French Revolution, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume (or “The Tennis Court Oath”), a gathering in a tennis court near the Palace of Versailles is depicted in this 1791 Jacques-Louis David painting. The revolution led to a dramatic decline in French tennis in the ensuing decades, only partially abated by the Bourbon Restoration that followed Napoleon’s defeats.
Which brings us neatly back to the period, about 200 years ago, when Robert Lukin turned the James Street Court into a tennis club and also produced the first English language book on tennis, c1822, A Treatise On Tennis By A Member Of The Club. In this book, the author, believed to be Lukin himself, sets out over several pages all of the different handicaps in use at the time and provides some commentary on their use and their relative betting values.
The basic unit of handicapping was the bisque, whose history is documented as early as the Renaissance and which was used in several games and sports. 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.
There are two distinct types of odds or handicaps for tennis; one being the points-based odds I have just described, the other being known as “cramped odds”, which restrict the better player in some way. Lukin’s book goes into those at some length. They mostly involve preventing the better player from making use of particular features of the court. Most of these handicaps are now obsolete or only used occasionally in fun and friendly games. “Barring The Openings”, for example, renders all of the openings, including the winning targets such as the grille, the dedans and the winning gallery, out of bounds for the better player. One interesting handicap was named “Round Service”, which required the better players serve to touch both the side and the rear penthouse to be a legitimate serve, which normally renders the serve easy to return.
To demonstrate the difference between a round service and a decent serve, I have found some very rare hand-held video of me serving to a certain Mr Wise. In the first clip, I accidentally deploy a round service, which Oliver despatches into the dedans gallery to win the point without a moment’s hesitation.
In the second clip, I produce a serve of decent length and cunning, which lead to a better outcome for my pair. Discerning viewers will notice that I was able to send my second shot to hit the tambour, which is a jutting out bit of wall on the hazard side of the court. The handicap “ban the tambour” remains in use even in the modern game for the more extreme handicaps.
In fact this might be a good moment to show some wonderful footage you pointed out to me, from the 2016 Boomerang Doubles Tournament, when the final was contested between a very uneven couple of pairs, but went right down to the wire. Would you kindly do the honours and talk us through the video sequence, Oliver?
Oliver introduced/explained and then let the clip speak for itself with the Aussie commentary. Clip runs for 2’25” from the start point of 43’35”
Oliver then explained the following highlights reel, of Rob Fahey playing Camden Riviere, which has 6’00” of sound footage but we showed just the first two minutes or so, to give people a flavour of real tennis rests at their very best]
Questions From The Audience
Questions included the following topics:
further examples of extreme handicapping, such as the exploits of Jacques-Edmond Barre, who walked from Paris to Versailles before thrashing a challenger on an extreme points handicap;
The source references for those pieces are as follows:
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
It’s an exciting time for us at FoodCycle Marylebone. We’re finally saying goodbye to the emergency delivery service that has been running there throughout the pandemic and starting the process of migrating back to the more regular FoodCycle model of communal cooking and eating.
Janie and I have been helping with emergency deliveries at several projects during the pandemic. White City for example...
But this week was the last week of the deliveries. It was also one of two piloting weeks for the transitional cook and collect service. The headline photograph shows me and Janie trying to come to grips with the sneeze guard screen. Hopefully we’ll have come to terms with it by next week.
Will I need a third hand to take the register while holding this screen?
The main reason that Marylebone is one of the last FoodCycle projects to migrate to the transitional service is not to do with our low-level flat pack assembly skills.
No.
It is the fact that, uniquely, Marylebone FoodCycle does not have a single site available for cooking and service to the guests, so there are significant logistical challenges with which to grapple.
Bill Miller has been leading the good battle to set up the new service while keeping the emergency service ticking over. He is a pleasure to work with, is Bill. For some obscure reason he doesn’t like to have his photo taken whenever we’re around, yet he is the poster boy for FoodCycle Marylebone on Instagram:
Anyway, while we were grappling with the cook and collect starter kit, such as getting our heads around the vital dating and allergen labelling system for the cooked meals, a small cast had long-since assembled at the nearby Greenhouse Centre to pilot the cooking:
With thanks to Rachelle Gryn Brettler for the kitchen photos
Once the cooked food is ready, a volunteer collects the cooked meals and trolleys then from Greenhouse to St Pauls. This week Janie and I piloted that bit of the volunteering, so we can “project lead” it in future:
Janie is demonstrating the de-luxe food trolley, said to be the Rolls-Royce of such trolleys
Then, once the cooked food was all labelled up, Amandine, Janie and I were snapped by Bill in the process of bagging up food for this week’s delivery service.
Then, just to make sure that Janie and I really had done a decent double or triple shift, we also delivered the cooked food and surplus to a local shelter project and then went on and did our (formerly regular) delivery round for the final time.
No photo of what Dumbo actually looked like when we set off with all that lot in tow, but the picture below from last summer looks a bit like it:
I don’t think Janie and I will miss doing multi-shifts like this. That was an exhausting one-off.
Still, at least once it was done we could relax…it wasn’t as if I was giving a talk that night or anything…
We’re more than a week past April Fools Day, so pieces that start, “we have discovered a long lost…” would normally have to wait another year.
But this one is true.
While Janie was busy deep cleaning the place yesterday, ahead of her restart on Monday, she knocked a small Peter Harris (my dad) painting off the wall, smashing the glass of the clip frame.
She was momentarily upset, wanting everything to look right from day one of the restart, until I pointed out that Amazon Prime could ship an exact replica of the frame to us next day. Of course they could; of course they did.
The new frame has just arrived.
To our surprise we discovered, between the backing sheet and the clipboard, dad had left the above sketch. Perhaps in error. Perhaps deliberately to add bulk to the backing having abandoned the sketch. It’s unsigned, so he clearly didn’t consider it to be finished. He was not one of life’s finishers, my dad.
Good artist, though. And a lovely bloke.
Moved I am, to see this sketch for the first time. Actually Janie and I were both a little moved by the discovery.
For many years I have written occasional guest pieces for the amusing cricket website, King Cricket. Most pieces are written by webmeister Alex Bowden; a fine writer and good bloke.
My contributions tend to be in the following, especially whimsical, King Cricket categories:
Cricket paraphernalia in unusual places;
Animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket;
Cricket match reports, which must meet one of two strict criteria:
if it’s a professional match, on no account can the writer mention the cricket itself,
if it’s an amateur match, the author is expected to go into excruciating detail about the cricket.
I realise that I have just generated a small list; a list of King Cricket categories.
But that is not the list I want to talk about today. No.
I keep a list of my submissions; I call it my King Cricket Article Log.
That’s the list I want to talk about. There are 83 articles on the list at present; 75 published and eight pieces awaiting publication.
I could simply cut, paste and read all the article titles…but I don’t think that would be much fun for you, or me.
Instead, I have written a highlights list, with explanations, which might be an entertaining story in its own right:
Alex Bowden often publishes my pieces “fashionably late”; not knowing when they’ll be released is part of the fun for me. That’s why I keep a canonical list of my King Cricket submissions.
Review Of The Evening
As the brief for this ThreadZoomMash was to write a story based on a list, I think I owe it to the evening’s central conceit to review the evening in the form of a list:
Rohan introduced the evening with some thoughts on what lists are in the grander scheme of things and how they might become central to our stories;
Julie read a truly brilliant short story about a very short-lived romance in the form of a series of daily do-lists;
Geraldine had us in stitches with story named Stitches, about a trip long ago with her baby and an infeasibly long packing list for an activities weekend;
Jill’s list story was very imaginative; based on the idea that all the things she (or her character in the story) had done to escape an unsatisfactory employment were in the form of theme park activities, which she explored as a list of such things;
Jan talked about her love of lists, discussing several different types of list before settling on her “Grumpy List”, a surprisingly short list of highly amusing bugbears. So, we then moved on to…;
…Kay, who opened with a Dorothy Parker quote, which led in to her list of the men/boys for whom she has strong and poignant memories of why she was attracted to them. It was a wonderful mixture of charming, funny and dark;
Terry’s piece was called The Gratitude List. It mostly comprised a list of the people he’s been closest to and to whom Terry is perennially grateful. It was a very touching piece.
We had a great chat about each other’s pieces after the readings, which made for a very enjoyable gathering, as always.
The London Cricket Trust is springing back to life this spring. Our mission is to put cricket back into London’s Parks. I am one of the trustees and we have been going about that business for more than three years now.
For reasons I don’t really need to explain, pretty much all of the London Cricket Trust (LCT) activity we had planned for 2020 had to be postponed.
That doesn’t mean that we have been inactive; far from it. A few dozen new pitches went in during 2020 and a few dozen more will go in during 2021; mostly the early part of the year so they can be used this coming summer.
A few weeks ago, out of the blue, we were contacted by Harjot Sidhu, aka London Writing Guy, who wanted an interview for his sports blog. Naturally I said yes.
That picture is making me feel hungry. Anyway, I’m sure you get the point.
Still, we managed to hit it off through the interweb/blogosphere and the result I hope is a useful addition to Harjot’s blog. It is certainly a timely piece about the LCT.
Timely, because the London Cricket Trust website is to be formally launched in just over a week’s time (you may sneak in and have an advanced peak through the links on this piece – I won’t tell anyone if you don’t).
We also have plans for site launches in May and July, which we hope to be able to confirm and announce soon. One of those is due to be at one of the West London sites between my place and Harjot’s, so hopefully we’ll get a chance, belatedly, to meet in person then.
