Travel, Theatre, Music, Cricket, Tennis, Writing, Life
Having learnt the previous week that Lisa’s new flat was more or less ready, we arranged to pop around and have a look after tennis on a Saturday morning.
It became a brief impromptu housewarming:
I vaguely recall one of those Champagne flutes biting the dust, resulting in me and Janie getting Lisa another pair as an additional housewarming present.
Janie and I (or should I say Ged and Daisy) went to the Saturday of the Lord’s Ashes test in 2015.
My King Cricket match report linked here, describing our day, was published on King Cricket nine months after the event. That fact is in no way a criticism of King Cricket. My “deal” with him is that I write these quirky pieces when and if I darn well feel like it; he publishes them when and if he darn well feels like it.
This was the first of mine published on King Cricket for some time, as I am reliably informed that some big piece of cricket news has reliably turned up in the past few months whenever King Cricket has been about to reach for my pile of unpublished articles. As it turned out, a few minutes after King Cricket published this piece on 18 April 2016, a big story indeed broke. Rob Key (one of King Cricket’s favourite players) retired. Having just published mine, that at least enabled King Cricket (aka Alex Bowden) to concentrate on writing a wonderful tribute to Rob Key, published on Cricinfo – click link here.
But back to my report on Day 3 of the Ashes test at Lord’s – click here if you didn’t click to see the report above. This piece is, in a way, the third part of a trilogy. It builds on a couple of earlier pieces about Ged and Daisy encountering Mr Johnny Friendly, an MCC member, friend of the family and real tennis enthusiast. In reverse order:
The irony that I myself have now enthusiastically taken up real tennis in the months between writing this piece and it being published is not wasted on me.
To understand my King Cricket match reports you need to know that:
If you do want to know about the cricket itself, you might want to have a look at the on-line scorecard – here. But if you are an England supporter you probably don’t want to look.
Janie has a terrific track record of getting tickets in the Wimbledon ballot in recent years.
This year, we didn’t get, but then quite late in the day she was offered two returns for the first Wednesday on No.2 Court which were not together but were relatively cheap. I thought it would be a good way to get a day at Wimbledon, see some tennis on that court and spend some time doing that thing we’ve never done – just wander around and take in the atmosphere on the outer courts.
To all intents and purposes it worked.
At first we couldn’t sit together on No.2 court as everyone was set in their seats. We therefore watched a very good match between Grigor Dimitrov and Steve Johnson from separate seats.
Here’s a link to the canonical on the men’s singles.
Here’s a link to the canonical on the women’s singles.
It was a very hot day – perhaps the hottest of the year.
Once Maria Sharapova started to demolish qualifer Richel Hogenkamp, we decided to take a wander.
I had marked up some interesting looking stuff on outer courts and we soon found a doubles on Court 10 between Garbine Muguruza / Carla Suarez Navarro and Alexandra Dulgheru / Silvia Soler-Espinos. We’d never seen Muguruza before but she was absolutely the stand-out player in that game, not least in the matter of court presence.
As we wilted in the heat, we sought some shade and some refreshment, as indeed many people were doing that day.
As the day started to cool a little, we returned to No.2 Court, by which time we were able to sit together in excellent seats. We caught the end of an excellent match between Marsel Ilhan and Kevin Anderson. Finally, we saw a spunky little Kazak named Yulia Putintseva almost pull off an upset against Venus Williams.
We won’t do that again if we are offered two separate seats; we’ve done the outer court wander bit now and much prefer to know that we’re all set in our prearranged seats for our picnic and tennis.
But we had a lovely day and were especially pleased for the early glimpse at Garbine Muguruza, who so nearly went on to win the Women’s Singles that year against all odds.
Janie and I (or should I say Ged and Daisy) went to the Sunday of the Lord’s test against New Zealand in 2015.
My King Cricket match report linked here and below, describing our day, was published on King Cricket in October 2015.
Anyone For Real Tennis? – England v New Zealand match report
This piece is, in a way, the second part of a trilogy. It is linked to a couple of other pieces about Ged and Daisy encountering Mr Johnny Friendly, an MCC member, friend of the family and real tennis enthusiast. In reverse order:
The irony that I myself have subsequently taken up real tennis with gusto is not wasted on me.
To understand my King Cricket match reports you need to know that:
If you do want to know about the cricket itself, you might want to have a look at the on-line scorecard – here. We were there the day Stokes scored a scintillating, fastest ever test hundred at Lord’s. Stokes had only just started at tea, when we ran into Mr Johnny Friendly. Of course the King Cricket report is silent on such details.
We were having a pretty shitty Christmas break, with mum in hospital since just before Crimble (and, as it turned out, never to come out). Our main respite had been some reasonable weather that at least enabled us to play tennis in the mornings, as reported on Facebook at the time – see below:
At the end of that long weekend (the Sunday I think) we went to the Park Royal Vue to see Paddington- click here for the IMDb resource on that movie. Janie warned me that I would probably blub at the scene where Paddington loses his old uncle and moves on from his family – she was right as usual.
Still, lots of laughs and fun in Paddington. I loved the way that there was a calypso band on every street corner in this version of Notting Hill, in contrast with the ubiquitously pale look of the neighbourhood in the eponymous movie.
Yet we craved some high culture and had been eyeing up the Allen Jones as high on our list for the holiday season, so we took some respite on New Year’s Day and went to see the Allen Jones in the afternoon.
We really enjoyed this exhibition. Allen Jones’s work is colourful, accessible, fun, sometimes shocking…it was just the ticket for us that day.
Nuff said.
Janie and I (or should I say Ged and Daisy) went to the Saturday of the Lord’s test against Sri Lanka in 2014.
My King Cricket match report linked here, describing our day, was published on King Cricket in October 2014.
This piece is, in a way, the first part of a trilogy. It is linked to a couple of other pieces about Ged and Daisy encountering Mr Johnny Friendly, an MCC member, friend of the family and real tennis enthusiast. In reverse order:
This piece inadvertently became the first part of a trilogy because I misspelt Jane Austen as Jane Austin in this piece. King Cricket missed the error when he subbed; both of us metaphorically ate our own livers for the error in private, but I decided to milk the pun when we ran into Mr Johnny Friendly again.
The irony that I myself have subsequently taken up real tennis with gusto is not wasted on me.
To understand my King Cricket match reports you need to know that:
It was not the most exciting day’s cricket we’ve ever seen. Daisy said the match was destined for a draw and of course she was right. Except that a nail-biter of a nine-down squeaky-bum draw is not the sort of draw Daisy probably had in mind. Of course the King Cricket report is silent on such details.
At our first attempt in the Wimbledon ballot – spurred into action by our attendance at the Olympics the previous summer – click here or below…
London 2012 Olympic Games, Tennis, Wimbledon, Centre Court, 2 August 2012
…Janie secured Court One tickets for the first Friday. Excellent seats – 4th row. Not bad at all.
The weather was not so keen to play ball as the ballot, unfortunately. It was a dodgy weather day to say the least.
The Getty Images from the day show a pretty poor weather scene – click here.
The ESPN photo gallery for the day shows centre court mostly, as that was where most of the action took place – click here.
But there were clearly going to be breaks in the weather too, so I suggested a meet up time to Janie based on the forecast, which Janie felt was overly-optimistic…
…the upshot being that we missed the first 30-40 minutes or so of the first match on our court.
Still, in the end we got to see a surprising amount of tennis, not least the remainder of the second round match between David Ferrer and Roberto Bautista Agut. Below is the highlights reel from that game:
Then we saw most of the third round match between Petra Kvitova and Ekaterina Makarova. Below is the highlights reel for that game:
We’d done surprisingly well, tennis-wise. Also picnic-wise – I laid on a Big Al special picnic which pleased Janie no end.
This was a really super day. When we were applying for tickets, Janie and I debated long and hard about which tennis slot to attempt. I favoured No. 1 Court, as I thought it would improve our chance of success. But Janie’s theory was that she was only interested in Centre Court, as it is the only covered court and she wanted to be assured of play if we did secure tickets.
Thus we applied for quarter finals day on centre court – thus we were successful in our application.
Janie took responsibility for the sumptuous picnic and I planned the journey. We set off good and early to avoid the worst of the crowds and take in some atmosphere on arrival. I guess it was a strange mix of regular Wimbledon and London 2012 atmosphere for this tournament – but that’s “strange in a good way”.
Chapter and verse for the whole tournament Wikipedia style can be found here.
We were treated to four quarter-finals; two women’s singles and two men’s singles:
It was a fabulous day of tennis.
A rather strange American man was sitting next to us, who kept saying “that’s amazing…that’s incredible” whenever one of the players won a point with a good shot or when there was a good rally…which really was quite often. It turned out that the man is a huge tennis fan and goes a lot, so he shouldn’t be quite so continuously astounded by good play in my view, but there you are.
Janie realised that she had a real taste for Wimbledon, so picked up instructions for applying for forms in the Wimbledon ballot, which she has done each year since 2012 with (at the time of writing, in 2016) remarkable success, getting good No. 1 Court tickets two years out of those four. A small but significant Olympic legacy for us.
I don’t often get involved in international matches of any kind, although I had single-handedly (sort of) won the Ashes a few week’s earlier…
…and did defeat the might of Tibet on behalf of England at altitude cricket a year or so earlier:
But I digress.
For many years, Victor Benissan coached at Boston Manor Tennis Club, where Janie and I regulary play. He very rarely coached us – we’re more-or-less uncoachable now, but we became friends with him. Here is a picture of him (from Queen’s, not Boston Manor), which I have “borrowed” from his Le Cavalier Style Facebook Area:
Victor is from Togo originally, long before Togolese people were perceived as naturals for tennis stardom. But Victor was, presumably, one of Togo’s top players in his day.
Victor would occasionally bemoan the fact that he found it hard to get a game at his level.
Jacques Malan, who had also been a fine tennis player in his youth and who works/worked with Heinrich Groenewald, would similarly bemoan his lack of tennis-playing opportunities, especially when roped into playing in our silly cricket matches.
Anyway, it occurred to me that we could have some fun one afternoon by pairing up Jacques and Victor for an up-market hit, while Heinrich and I would…do our thing.
I seem to recall being on the wrong end of things against Heinrich that day, while I think Victor and Jacques had a good contest but I cannot honestly remember who won.
Then I took on Jacques left-handed for a short set, which worked out very well for me as I am used to playing off the wrong hand whereas he isn’t. He was rapidly getting better during the set and I’m pretty sure he’d have won a second set.
Then we played mixed doubles…as in mixed ability doubles…with me and Victor taking on the visiting, Southern-Hemisphere pair of Heinrich and Jacques.
It was a very enjoyable way to spend a Friday afternoon at Boston Manor.
Leo Fishman’s textbook shot (economics textbook, sadly, not tennis textbook)
Z/Yen works outings and events tend to work out successfully – not much can go wrong if you organise a jolly with activities, libations and grub.
But just occasionally, such a jolly turns out to be very special indeed; exceptionally enjoyable at the time and exceptionally memorable long after the event.
Such was, in my opinion, the Z/Yen tennis event at Boston Manor Tennis Club (BMTC); especially the first time we did it, in July 2010.
Janie and I play tennis at BMTC every weekend, unless absence or extremely foul weather prevents. We knew it would be a friendly, informal venue for a bit of sport and a barbecue…
…and an opportunity for BMTC to make a little bit of money towards its floodlight project – which met its objectives within three years of Z/Yen’s visit.
Anyway, this idea seemed to catch the collective Z/Yen imagination, as we ended up a group of 30 or so for the event; 16 playing, 14 trying to put the players off and all 30 of us eating and drinking.
I wrote the event up at the time on Now And Z/Yen – click here for link.
Actually the unsung hero (or should I say heroine) of the evening was undoubtedly Monique Gore, who organised pretty much everything (apart from the tennis itself, which was organised by Jez “Games Teacher” Horne) and also took over 100 photographs. You can click here or click through the photograph below to see all of the pictures:
Monique is an excellent photographer. Observe, in the picture above, she has managed to produce the visual illusion that I know what I am doing playing doubles up at the net. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I do look the part in that picture – as does Chiara hitting the ball in the background – thanks Monique.
The above picture does remind me of one early memory of the evening, which found its way into the Now and Z/Yen report:
It was Chiara von Gunten’s first working day, so we hope she doesn’t get into the habit of knocking off work every day at 15:30 and spending the rest of the afternoon enjoying sport and revelry. Within about 15 seconds of starting practice with her randomly-picked doubles partner, Ian Harris, she had “caught him amidships” from behind. Not a good career move on your first day, Chiara.
Strangely, the above incident didn’t adversely affect Chiara’s career in the end…probably because she was so good at her job.
You could be forgiven for assuming, if you only saw the above picture of Leo Fishman swatting a fly…I mean trying to hit a tennis ball…that Leo wasn’t too sure what she was doing…
…but I knew that Leo comes from good tennis stock – I spent many hours on the tennis courts at Keele in my student days while her grandfather, Professor Les Fishman, was playing with his entourage on one of the other courts.
So it wasn’t a complete surprise when Leo and Joey took the coveted trophy that year; presented by Jez.
To quote from the Now and Z/Yen write up:
With the barbeque sizzling and the refreshments flowing, the tennis competition soon became secondary, although plenty of people enjoyed some makeshift tennis after the tournament ended. The revelry went on long after dark, which takes some late-night stamina at this time of year.
The above memory is my most abiding one – a surprisingly large group of people lingering on, enjoying the glorious long summer evening and each other’s company until very late.
One memory absent from the Now and Z/Yen report was the appearance of Angela Broad with her friend Doreen, who was briefly in the country at that time. Doreen’s chauffeur parked the ginormous Mercedes “inconspicuously” on the far side of the car park. This worked in a way, because if you weren’t looking out for it, you probably wouldn’t have noticed it from the courts or associated that vehicle with our event. It must have caused a bit of a stir amongst the regular park users, though. Janie and I thought it was very funny at the time.
I’d love to know if other people remember this particular event as fondly as I do…
…and do people have some other/alternative memories of that evening they would care to share
