Being sent out on audit to a furniture factory in Braintree just brought home the lifestyle contrast.
Travel broadens the mind…even a daily commute from Streatham to Braintree
Strangely, I remember rather liking the commute, as I had acquired a taste for reading on the move during my National BBYO period (1979-1980) and was reading voraciously by the summer of 1981.
I say in the diary that I was summoned back to the office from Braintree before the end of the working day on the Friday. My mum had complained to “the authorities” (via my Uncle Michael no doubt) that my lengthy commute was too onerous a duty for her little one. Her motivation for this unwanted intervention was the delay my long commute caused to the family meal. Dad’s drive from the shop to the house only took 10-15 minutes.
I was really irritated when I discovered that mum had intervened, but the die was cast and I was back in the office for the rest of the summer, with only London-based clients in my auditing-orbit. That did enable me to socialise with my friends a bit more, I suppose, which I most certainly did that summer.
On the Saturday I spent much of the day watching Wimbledon finals day. In those days, the whole tournament was a week earlier than it is today and the men’s finals day was on the Saturday.
That Borg/McEnroe final was an absolute classic and I remember it well. I also remember watching the subsequent doubles matches too. In those days, my mum was keen to watch and probably watched much of it with me.
Below is David Irvine’s take on it all from The Guardian on the following Monday.
I also mention taping charts and Paul (Deacon – also a friend from Alleyn’s) visiting in the evening. There’ll be some more playlists to follow in the fulness of time, but for now I shall sign off this piece, exactly forty years on.
What a sporty day Wednesday 4 December 1974 must have been for me. Just in case you cannot read what the day’s entry says:
11th in chemistry.
Fives lost 15-3 to Wrightson & Weber, beat Mason & Candappa 15-7 and beat Pavasi & I Goodwin 15-3, 15-0.
Fridge ball 533.
Some of this perhaps needs explaining. “11th in chemistry” is and perhaps will remain a bit of a mystery. 11th in the year would be quite good; whereas 11th in the class more predictably mediocre in that subject. It’s not well explained in the diary; much like my answers in the chemistry test, no doubt.
No, it is the fives and the fridge ball that caught my eye for further exposition.
Looks as though Cookie and I warmed up as the afternoon went on; perhaps this was a breakthrough afternoon for our nascent doubles pairing. Earlier references to fives in my diary seem to be singles games.
Apologies to David Pavesi – firstly for the surprising mis-spelling of his name, as we knew each other well from primary school as well as at Alleyn’s. But also apologies to him and Ian “Milk” Goodwin for the drubbing. Why we played a second set against those two after a convincing first set I really cannot imagine. Perhaps they requested another chance. Perhaps we four wanted to play some more and everyone else had disappeared.
Fridge Ball
I suppose I do need to explain the magnificent and extraordinary sport of fridge ball, just in case the reader is unfamiliar with the game.
In short, fridge ball is to table tennis what real tennis is to modern (lawn) tennis, but instead of a medieval courtyard, which is the theatre of play for real tennis, the theatre of play for fridge ball is a modern kitchen. Fridge ball is played with a ping-pong bat and a ping-pong ball.
Sadly, there are no photographs of the 3 Woodfield Avenue, London, SW16 fridge ball court as it looked in 1974, but there is a photograph of the court from 2012, when the house was being refurbished in preparation for letting – see below.
In front of the visible wall (to the left of the picture) stood a large 1960’s-style fridge-freezer; the surface against which the ball has to be hit. The floor surface back then was linoleum of a rather insipid hue. In the photograph you can actually see a layer of blue glue awaiting some fancy modern flooring substance, the suitability of which for fridge ball was not even tested.
The game, simply, is to hit the ball against the fridge door as many times as possible, ideally getting some interesting bouncy business off the floor and/or the jauntily angled pantry door (shown open in the photo but naturally closed for play) and/or the panel doors below the sink,and/or divider doors (just out of shot at the bottom of the photo, which at the time had helpfully unobtrusive recess slots rather than potentially rally-ruining handles).
If the ball is accidentally hit to the left of the fridge (to the kitchen entrance), the ball is out and the rally is over. If the ball is hit to the the right of the fridge (an entrance that leads to a little laundry area and side door to the house), the ball is out and the rally is over. If the ball is hit above the fridge, gawd help you because the ball will probably get stuck behind the fridge and is the devil’s own job to retrieve. Needless to say the rally is over but also, almost certainly, your enjoyment for the evening, as mum and dad take matters into their own hands to terminate the game at that juncture.
If you hit the ball hard enough for it to get some action off the back surface or the cooker, the ball is still in play but that is a dangerous tactic given the strange bounces you might get back there. Aficionados of real tennis might enjoy the idea of hitting the grill/grille – a winning shot in realers but merely part of the ongoing fun/difficulty in fridgers.
Where you can see drawers at the back of the court/right hand side of the photograph, in my day there was a recess under a surface there and a stool kept in that space. If the ball went into that recess it was out and the rally was over, making the back of the court even more treacherous than it would be today.
A second bounce does not necessarily terminate the point, although most second bounce situations tend to lead to the ball not bouncing at all and ending up dead, which thus ends the rally.
It really is a magnificent game, full of skill and playable as an addictive solo game, not entirely unlike the pinball addiction that subsequently grabbed me for some time. Indeed given the size of our family kitchen, it worked best as a solo game.
But here’s the thing.
Fridge ball 533.
Just think about that for a moment. A 533 stroke rally. That is a remarkable score.
I think there was also a playing condition that allowed for externalities (such as mum wanting to do the washing up or dad wanting a cup of tea), such that the player could catch the ball in the non-bat hand (not scoring a stroke for the catch, btw) and then continue the rally once the interruption was over. Frankly, I can’t imagine having had the run of the kitchen for long enough to score 533 without such a playing condition. Not on a midweek evening after playing four sets of fives at school.
What a marathon sporting day.
Does anyone reading this piece remember playing fridge ball with me or similar games in their own (or other people’s) homes? I’d love to hear all about it if you did.
I remembered that Andy and Fiona Levinson were involved and several other kids of our age from the street and local area. The following week’s diary is revealing in several additional ways.
I’ll transcribe the diary entries in full at the end of this article, because I want to focus on a couple of key facts that leap out of the page at me.
The first obvious point is that tennis gets a mention in every entry, except the Sunday one which was dominated by (Hebrew) classes and family s*it.
But the item that screamed off this page at me, inducing mixed emotions of joy and embarrassment, is the entry for 3 April:
Wednesday 3 April 1974. Morn uneventful. Afternoon tennis: Gary [Sugarman] Stewart [sic – actually Stuart Harris] and John [almost certainly Davies], M singles & doubles tournament – SH & I won!
The reason for my embarrassment is that I maintained, for best part of half a century, that I had never won anything at hand/racket sports.
…when I again asserted, it seems wrongly, that I had never previously achieved tournament success.
Yet, it seems that my very first tournament, at Woodfield Grove Tennis Club, was, in fact, a winning one.
Just imagine the scale of that tournament and what it must have meant to all concerned. At least four participants (four are named in my diary piece). Further, the tournament was won by a couple of genuinely local boys.
Stuart Harris, my partner in crime for that tournament victory, is not a relative of mine. Our street, Woodfield Avenue, was blessed with a Harris family at each end.
Ours, the smaller Harris family, just me and my parents, at the north end of Woodfield Avenue. Stuart’s family, with multiple children, at the south end of the same road. Stuart’s dad was named Nathan, known as Naff. Stuart’s family were referred to as “The Naff Harrises” to distinguish them from our family, which might thus have been described as “The Tasteful Harrises”, but were probably known as “The Peter Harrises”…or possibly an adjective I would prefer not to learn about after all this time.
Parenthetically [did you see what I did there], calling my family “The Peter Harrises” would subsequently do no good at all, when another unrelated Peter Harris moved in next door to my parents’ house. A nightmare for the postal and delivery services ensued.
The headline photo shows me and Stuart larking around in The Tasteful Harris garden a couple of years later. Sadly, we have no pictures of me and Stuart in action, pulling off our stunning tournament victory that day in 1974, but I did commission DALL-E to reimagine the scene using AI technology and I think it has done quite well:
That tournament success seems to have preoccupied me so much that I simply scrubbed out the following two days. Presumably the celebrations went on deep into the night and then into the next night…
…or perhaps I was starting to lose interest in diary writing for a while, as evidenced by my seven month “sabbatical” between late April and late November that year.
Anyway, I shall use this diary discovery to try and reconnect with Stuart after all these years (I think I have found him) and we’ll see if any amusing memories and/or law suits ensue from him.
Postscript: Stuart Harris And I Are Indeed Now Back In Touch With One Another
Stuart, amongst many other things unrelated to this piece, points out that there was a Stewart in our street: Stewart Starkin, who quite probably was part of our tennis-take-up group that Easter. Indeed, re-reading my diary entry I strongly suspect that the name Stewart does indeed refer to the other Stewart and SH refers to Stuart Harris. That means that there must have been at least five of us in that tournament, which puts the victory on an even more impressive footing, don’t you think?
Here, For The Record, Is That Entire Diary Week Transcribed.
Sunday 31 March 1974 – Classes in morn. G Anne, Ida trouble [that means a family row]. VERY BAD DAY.
Monday 1 April 1974 – Tennis v good in morn. Afternoon OK. Andrew [Levinson] for badminton.
Tuesday 2 April 1974 – Tennis instruction v good. Classes good. Donuts for class notes. [Some form of sweetmeat bribery to do our studies, if I recall correctly]
Wednesday 3 April 1974. Morn uneventful. Afternoon tennis: Gary [Sugarman] Stewart [sic – actually Stuart Harris] and John [almost certainly Davies], M singles & doubles tournament – SH & I won!
Thursday X
Friday X
Saturday 6 April 1974 – Tennis morn. Afternoon uneventful. Seder v good – sung Ma Nishtana – v enjoyable evening.
Oh boy, was I hooked on the tennis early.
Here is another 1976 take on the dynamic duo that won that Woodfield Grove trophy in 1974 – the pictures below taken the same day as the headline picture:
On 30 March 1974 I played tennis “properly” for the first time. How do I know?
Diary says so. Allow me to transliterate the relevant cypher:
Saturday 30 March 1974 – joined tennis club. Learnt forhand [sic] and backhand. Shoped [sic] in p.m.
Apologies for the dreadful spelling of “forehand” and “shopped” in there – no wonder I had just come 27th in class that term, the second term of my secondary schooling.
In 1974, the three courts you can see in the background – now described as “cushioned acrylic” which sounds well posh, were clay and were strictly adults only. We children had not been allowed in at all until most of us had reached the age of eleven – Fiona Levinson I think sneaked in with us before she had reached that age. Children were only allowed to play on the single court visible in the foreground. Now macadam, in those days it was a rather uneven concrete that might have had, at one time, a macadam component to it. Beginners and children only, I expect in those days, but good enough for us.
I seem to recall that the brains behind the operation was a rather formidable lady named Mrs Mussey, who I think lived in our street, Woodfield Avenue, just around the corner from Woodfield Grove.
I have a feeling that, unless you showed real talent and/or had parents who were willing and able to stump up some significant membership fees, the deal for children was a few starter lessons and then “be off with you”.
But that was Ok, my career in tennis was launched. Who wanted rather snooty clay courts that you weren’t allowed to use, when for a few pence you could play on municipal grass on Tooting Bec Common in the summer holidays. At school there were courts available too, although fives and cricket were more my thing than tennis at school.
As my diaries from the 1970s and 1980s attest – and countless more Ogblog pieces will reveal as I roll them out – tennis played a significant role in my childhood and my student days. Here are a couple of examples from the student years.
Even more significantly, Janie and I played tennis (albeit sloppy, post-party tennis) the day we met at Kim & Micky’s party, in August 1992, and have played regularly in the decades since:
Janie and I started out in Lammas Park, but since around the turn of the century, Janie and I have played at Boston Manor Tennis Club, which has three courts in Boston Manor Park. Less formal than Woodfield Grove but just the ticket for us.
Janie and I rarely play lawn (modern) tennis anywhere else, except when we are on holiday, but I have played the odd game in more rarified surroundings…
I have also formed a deep enthusiasm for real tennis since 2016, which I mostly play at Lord’s but, like most realists, I am an addict who will play that game whenever the opportunity arises. here’s an example or two, including some video evidence as well as photographs:
Wimbledon Finals Day 4 July 1981 Reviewed In Guardian 06 Jul 1981, Mon The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
