This year, men’s quarter-finals day on No. 1 Court. Oh boy was Janie excited again when those came through.
Picnic duties for me once again, with the centrepiece smoked salmon kindly supplied by Helga from her local West Cork smokehouse.
We had such success last year getting to Wimbledon early, getting to see Cori (now Coco) Gauff play in a Girls’ Quarter-Final on Court 18 before our main matches, I suggested that we get to Wimbledon before the start of play this year.
On the way, we were joined on the District Line by this keen tennis fan who couldn’t resist eating his fill on the train before even getting to Wimbledon:
He got on at Earl’s Court and was still on the train when we got to Southfields
In fact, we ended up at the All England Club so early they wouldn’t even let us into the main compound for a few minutes – not until 10:30 – a lesson for next time, if there is a next time for us.
Still, that early arrival at least enabled us to get front row seats (actually second row, as the front row view is a little restricted) on Court 12 to see a Ladies’ Doubles Quarter-Final: Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Danielle Collins v Gabriela Dabrowski and Yifan Xu. The latter pair went on to be runners up this year but it was really the former pair we were especially keen to see.
So ready to watch tennisNot so ready to watch tennisLadies’ Doubles
We had plenty of time between that (rather short) match and the start of the No. 1 Court action, which enabled us to amble across the compound and take in the atmosphere before taking up our No. 1 Court seats.
Then to our seats on No 1. Court. Almost right at the back…
Must be one of the Backseat BoysThis must have been Janie’s fifth attempt at a double-selfie
Roberto Bautista Agut (our end) playing Guido Pella (hazard end)
That first match was a very good one. Bautista Agut always looked likely to win but was not so far ahead of Pella for the result to be sure until the very end – especially after Pella took a set.
During the innings break (between sets one and two) I took a long stroll to stretch my legs and stuff, running into Nick Compton (formerly Middlesex and England). We had a chat before wending our ways back to our respective courts.
It seems that we were missing some stuff on other courts and also missed out on Bautista Agut’s press conference after winning, in which he admitted that winning had messed up his stag do plans:
Sam Querrey (our end) against Rafael Nadal (other end)
The first set of the Querrey/Nadal match was excellent, but when Nadal eventually prevailed in that set, Querrey seemed to run out of juice for the remaining sets.
We didn’t stick around for the evening entertainment of old crock’s doubles – we felt we’d had a superb day and a sufficiency in having seen three good, week two matches.
Let’s see how Janie gets on in the ballot next time – she has been extremely lucky these past few years, only missing out completely in 2017. I hope she isn’t too disappointed if the balloting system doesn’t pick us again for a while. But I also hope that her lucky streak continues!
Photo of me on the East Court at The Queen’s Club with opponents (from a previous occasion) airbrushed out
Exile. The humiliation of it. Condemned to the role of real tennis supplicants for several weeks while the forces of global domination (cricket branch) took over Lord’s for the world cup.
We Lord’s real tennis players know how to suffer, so many of us have taken up the very generous offer of The Queen’s Club to play there for most of our weeks of exile. I say most, because the first of our wandering weeks coincided with The Queen’s Club ATP tournament for the modern variety of tennis.
But on this day, with the help of the kind professionals at Queen’s, three of us came in search of doubles practice. At one point, I think it was the day before, Ben Ronaldson e-mailed me to say he was having trouble finding us a fourth, but by the time I got to my e-mails he had e-mailed again to say that he had found us a suitable player.
So, Dominic (my doubles partner for this year’s Lord’s tournament) and Bill were joined by Chrissie for a two hour doubles slot. Ben said when I arrived:
I think this should be quite well matched. Try playing level and see what happens.
What happened was a five set epic. Dominic and I started strongly, with him facing Bill and me facing Chrissie. We won the first set 6-2. We tried the alternative server/receiver pairing on the next set, which led to Bill and Chrissie winning that set 2-6.
Dominic and I chose to persevere with the pairing of me facing Bill and Dominic facing Chrissie for the third set. We managed to turn things around and won that close set 6-4. We tried reversing again for the fourth, only to lose that set 1-6. Despite that loss, we chose to stick with that Ian facing Chrissie, Dominic facing Bill for the start of the fifth set; a set we didn’t expect to finish as we were now about 110 minutes into our two-hour slot.
But no-one came along to use the East Court at the end of our slot. Our sole (mostly sleeping) spectator from most of the match had been replaced by a keen scout who was 30 minutes early for his West Court contest. He encouraged us to continue. Or should I simply say that the crowd, as one, was baying for more and urging the metaphorical umpire not to suspend play.
So we saw through the whole of the fifth set, which turned out to be a cracker. Dominic and I got to 5-3 up, only to lose the next two games which (in real tennis, unlike the modern variety) leads to sudden death on the final game which was, as it happened, me and Chrissie doing the serving/receiving.
Somehow, at 2-sets-all, five-games-all, 30-30, with me on serve, I managed to conjure a couple of good-‘uns to seal the match. 6-2, 2-6, 6-4, 1-6, 6-5. Did that matter? Not really. Except that Dominic and I are trying to learn how to play as a pair, so the constant scoreboard pressure and trying to perform as a pair in that circumstance was just what we needed.
Great fun. Nearly two-and-a-half-hours in the end and oh boy did I feel it later in the day.
Coincidentally, much like my Keele experience described above, I developed a slight cold that evening which left me a bit husky for the next couple of days. That was not ideal preparation for a jam with DJ, except that DJ rather liked the variation it gave to my vocal range, despite that variation seeming, to me, rather restrictive.
Ged “Husky” Ladd sings sea shanties?
Still, DJ and I tried a few new ideas, sang a few of our favourites and had a good chat and a good meal. There are far worse ways to spend an evening even when you are a little husky.
Two very enjoyable activities with people who make excellent company.
Unusually this year, the first Lord’s County Championship match of the season didn’t work out for me and Charles “Charley the Gent Malloy” Bartlett to have our traditional early season meet, but this second match did, so we arranged to spend Day Two of the match together.
A Cunning Plan: Tuesday 14 May 2019
Actually I was able to attend for the latter part of the first day. My cunning plan was to get my work out of the way, drive over to St John’s Wood Road around 15:00 – it is almost always possible to find a Ringo parking place at that hour, drop off my tennis kit ahead of tomorrow, get some reading done and watch some cricket in the sunshine.
The cunning plan worked.
I briefly popped in to the pavilion and chatted for a brief while with Colin, before going in search of some warmth in the spring sunshine of the Mound Stand.
Barmy Kev joined me briefly in the Mound Stand that afternoon before going off to speak with more important folk than me:
Borrowed from Barmy Kev’s Facebook posting – Click the picture to see that posting.
As I left Lord’s that evening, I ran into John Lee from the Leicestershire committee, who was on his way to try to find his hotel on Sussex Gardens, so I was able to give him a lift there and have a chat along the way.
A Great Day Although The Picnic Partially Went Pear-Shaped: Wednesday 15 May 2019
I rose early to prepare the picnic and set off for Lord’s soon after 8:00 in order to play tennis at 9:00. I used the rucksack that DJ kindly gave me last year, as that is an ample size for a picnic for two…
…except that I didn’t think about relative softness and hardness of items in the various compartments and planted a bag containing Chas’s pears (Green Williams) towards the bottom of the rucksack.
Other Species Of Pears And Bagels From A Previous Visit To Lord’s
Charley’s fussiness about his pears is a matter of some legend and a yet unpublished piece that should appear on King Cricket at some point in the next few years.
Infuriatingly, I had procured and ripened the bag of pears to perfection for this visit, but they got badly bruised in the rucksack. Message to self: put pears in a protective fruit box next time.
Chas threatened to go public about my pear preparation going pear-shaped, but I decided that the best way to prevent the risk of blackmail was to come clean myself. Now Chas will have to decide how to deal with the other side of the “mutually assured destruction” information unholy bargain we had with each other. It could get as messy as that bag of bruised pears.
Anyway, I played quite a good game of tennis (won) and spotted, as soon as I got off court, that Chas had messaged me to say that he was in the vicinity ridiculously early. I suggested that he make haste to the gate where I could get him into the ground with his voucher before I showered and changed. This ploy worked well.
In the morning, we braved the traditional back/backside ache of the pavilion benches. John Freer from the visiting Leicestershire group spotted us on those benches and came out for a pleasant chat. Peter Moore also chatted with us for a while. Chas and I didn’t get around to the picnic (apart from nibbling some cashews) until we got around to the Mound Stand in the afternoon.
Apart from the pear debacle, the picnic was a great success. Poppy-seed bagels with Alaskan smoked salmon, Prosciutto and Parmesan cheese sandwiches on sourdough, a fruity Riesling and several sweet treats – the latter arranged by Chas.
There were some large school groups sitting quite close to us – very well behaved but autograph hunting like crazy – especially from Nick Gubbins who was fielding down our way and patiently worked his way through a long queue.
At one point in the afternoon Dawid Malan (out injured) wandered around the outfield and stopped to chat with us briefly. Some of the junior autograph hunters asked him who he was and/but seemed minimally impressed that he was the Captain of the team. Only some sought his autograph; still Dawid handled the matter with great dignity and willingness to please the junior crowd.
As always, the day just flew by and it seemed like a blink of an eye after meeting that Chas and I were parting company again.
I watched tennis for a few minutes to let the crowd and traffic die down before Ubering home.
A Random Ramble Around Lord’s: Thursday 16 May 2019
When arranging that visit, I mentioned in passing that Middlesex were playing at Lord’s that day and that I could show John around the place properly if he was interested. His previous visit had been to watch tennis only:
Anyway, John said he would really enjoy that, so after the concert we legged it to Lord’s, where John reckoned he could spare 90 minutes to two hours before heading back to do some work.
I gave John an informal tour of the pavilion, which I think he really enjoyed, stopping most of the way through the tour to take some refreshment and watch some cricket on the sun deck, at Janie’s favourite spot under one of the turrets.
While chomping and drinking coffee there, John informed me that, although he had no pedigree in cricket whatsoever, his grandfather, Hector Ireland, had been a leading light in Widnes Cricket Club in days of yore, to such an extent that a bar in the club is named the Hector Ireland Room:
I explained to John that, while I like to pretend that the Harris Garden at Lord’s is named after my grandfather, the truth of the matter is that I have no cricket in my ancestry at all, so I felt that John’s so-called remote cricketing pedigree was trumping mine big time.
We completed our informal tour in time for John to get away in a timely fashion, I hope.
After saying goodbye to John, I then returned to the pavilion to join the Leicestershire visitors in the Committee Room. John and Penny Freer were in there, as was John Lee and also new Chairman Roy Bent, together with a smattering of Middlesex hosting folk.
Postscript To John Random’s VISIT To LORD’S
In August 2021 John visited Widnes CC and reported the event to me with the following charming words and photographs:
…I finally managed my pilgrimage to the Hector Ireland Lounge of the Widnes Cricket Club, Hector Ireland being – as I think you know – my grandfather; as opposed to the one [George Corke] who had a honeymoon in London and Paris. That was a generation earlier. I was so proud and happy to see his name memorialized on the plaques and his photo still above the bar. I was shown such a warm welcome by men who knew him even though he died fully fifty years ago. I even watched some cricket.
The Match Was Poised, But…: Friday 17 May 2019
I returned to Lord’s again early that morning; a long-planned appointment with the tennis court. In fact, I ended up being press-ganged into playing two hours, from 9:00 to 11:00, which is a bit of a mad idea for playing singles at my age, but there you go.
John Lee had threatened to come and watch me play real tennis for a while before the cricket started and saw through that threat. Afterwards, he reported that he had been baffled by the tennis at first, then after a while decided that he understood it, then after a few more minutes realised that he hadn’t understood it.
Meanwhile, I played quite well that morning and then, after changing, joined the small remaining group in the Committee Room for the rest of the morning session. A few overs had been lost to bad light but the forecast was hopeful for the rest of the day.
Nevertheless, I realised that I needed to get some work out of the way to relieve the pressure from the first half of next week, so went home at lunch, resolving to return for the lasts session of the match.
Sadly, the drizzle started as I arrived back at Lord’s around 16:00 and that last session was much curtailed, turning an interestingly poised match into a draw. David Morgan joined us for a while during that stop-start session.
It was probably Leicestershire who had the most reason to feel aggrieved by the rain, although a couple of quick wickets would have turned the match back Middlesex’s way. Infuriating that a poised match ends that way, but that’s cricket.
It was nevertheless very enjoyable company with which to pass the time at the end a few days of cricket intermingled with work and other activities.
I saw several bits of cricket matches in the first 10 days of May, squeezed between lots of work, real tennis and other activities.
Wednesday 1 May 2019: Radlett & Lord’s
Originally, I had planned to block out that day for cricket, but I needed to fit a client meeting in mid to late morning, so had all-but abandoned the idea of seeing cricket that day.
Then I got a message from Fran to say that she and Simon were packing their sun cream, tee-shirts, thick winter coats, galoshes and brollies with every intention of going to the match come what may.
It also turned out to be a week for me being press-ganged into extra real tennis at Lord’s, so after I had stayed on court for an extra hour the day before to get some doubles experience, one of the pros asked if I could be a late stand-in at 20:00 on 1 May for a tough singles.
So the combination of the Fran message, the timing of that tennis press-ganging, together with some favourable weather and an interesting match position…
…persuaded me to jump into Dumbo to join Fran and Simon for a few hours at Radlett, where Middlesex were hosting Somerset, before driving home via Lord’s.
So, I got home from my client meeting, had a quick bite to eat while watching the closing overs of the Middlesex innings on the Chromecast/TV and then jumped into Dumbo who “rode like the wind” to Radlett. We arrived just after 15:00.
Dumbo wasn’t very impressed with the large public field in which he had to park – his previous visit, to a second team match, enabled him a parking space with a bit of a view.
I, on the other hand, was pretty impressed by the scale of the enterprise and how well organised the outground team seemed to be on a match day. Very friendly and helpful.
Having learnt from our rather chilly experience in the shade last time, Fran and Simon had grabbed some excellent seats on the sunny side. It was one of those “layers of clothes” days, on which I ended up in rolled up shirtsleeves when the sun came out and then donning my thick jacket, scarf and hat by the end of the match after the sun had gone in.
It was really pleasant to sit watching cricket with Fran and Simon again – they are very knowledgeable cricket followers; there was plenty to discuss in the matter of county and international cricket since we’d last met. Oh, plus catching up on our other news of course.
Middlesex took its time to take the last wicket and I had almost decided to give up on waiting to be sure to get out of the car park and back down to Lord’s in good time, but the trusty satnav kept insisting that the journey wouldn’t take long against the main flow of rush hour traffic.
So I did stick it out to the final ball and we did find it surprisingly easy and relatively quick to get out of the car field – the stewards operating very efficiently to keep the funnelling out of the ground decorous.
So Dumbo and I got to Lord’s nice and early. Moreover, as a special treat for Dumbo, it transpired that there were no functions on that evening so he was allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap and look out onto the field of play.
Don’t tell Dumbo that there was no cricket on; I’m not sure he noticed.
Dumbo and I returned to Lord’s for tennis on the Friday morning (3rd) when, very unusually, Dumbo was again allowed to park in the Allen Stand gap, as a result of works vehicles blocking the way to his regular Car Park No 6 spot. Actually the above photo was taken on the Friday morning.
I had long-since pre-arranged a tennis lesson on this morning, so rumours that I was having the equivalent of a “naughty boy net” after our somewhat bruising visit to Middlesex University at the weekend are simply not true. Fake news. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spread those rumours myself in the first place.
Anyway, I found myself at two major cricket grounds on the same day for the first time ever, I think, as a result of being asked to attend a somewhat last-minute ad hoc London Cricket Trust meeting with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), for which the only convenient venue was the Oval, where England were supposed to be playing a one-day-international against Pakistan.
It was a horribly rainy day and I thought it unlikely that there would be any cricket at all, but heck, I wasn’t really there for cricket, I was there for a meeting. Still, the way to get us in to the ground on a big match day was to provide us with comps, so I did have an OCS stand ticket for a rather good balcony seat.
Strangely, as there were no rooms available for the meeting, we ended up on the top level of the OCS stand having the meeting on outdoor (albeit covered area) tables and chairs. Even more strangely, the rain stopped and some play was possible for just over an hour, which coincided almost exactly with the hour we spent meeting.
Some people in the meeting must have been making very profound points, because as soon as they had finished their sentence the crowd oohed and aahed – especially if the speaker was talking during one of Jofra Archer’s overs. I didn’t manage to time any of my pearls of wisdom to coincide with an ejaculation of crowd noise, sadly. Perhaps my pearls of wisdom are not so spectacular after all.
After the meeting, AccuWeather told me that there might be 15 minutes or so before the next short but heavy rain storm, so I thought I might as well make full use of my comp for three or four overs before heading home.
A rare glimpse of sunshine on a very wet dayAs seen from the OCS Stand 2nd tier balcony
I did well, thanks to AccuWeather, as I managed to get home between showers too.
Friday 10th May 2019: Lord’s…Just Lord’s
Just one cricket ground that day? What was the matter with me?
Still, one ground, two purposes; real tennis and cricket. I had arranged to play real tennis on the Friday afternoon long since, with no expectation that Middlesex might have a home draw at Lord’s in a knockout tournament. After all, it is several decades since Middlesex has had one of those, so it hardly falls into the “expectation” category.
I watched the start of the Middlesex v Lancashire match on the TV at home, while having lunch. My plan, which worked well, was to head off for Lord’s in Dumbo at around 14:30, enabling me to put Dumbo onto a four-hour meter near the ground and then not have to worry about him for the rest of the afternoon/evening. Plan worked.
So I watched about 30-40 minutes of cricket before getting changed for tennis. Janie (Daisy) informed me that she’d probably arrive while I was playing tennis, which she did.
Daisy tried very hard to distract my opponent, Stuart, with sledging and left-field questions, but seemed better able to distract my concentration than Stuart’s. All the more so when she was joined in the dedans gallery by Dominic and Pamela…followed soon enough by John Thirlwell. The more they tried to help me with their crowd noise, the more they seemed to help Stuart.
Actually it was a very good, close game of tennis, which I lost very narrowly and felt I’d done well to stay that close, given how well Stuart was playing.
Meanwhile, by the time I got changed, Middlesex were in all sorts of trouble and it looked as though our evening watching cricket might be severely foreshortened.
Still, Janie hunkered down with some wine and nibbles up on the top deck…
…then soon after John Thirlwell joined us.
“And how are you today?”“Better than half-a-yard”
James Harris (no relation) got Middlesex infeasibly close to the 300+ target having been 24-5 at one point, but (as I had suspected throughout the innings) it wasn’t quite enough to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Still, it was a very pleasant couple of hours of cricket watching and chat. Janie and I rounded off the evening by picking up some of our favourite Chinese grub from Four Seasons, Queensway on the way home.
I paraphrase the WhatsApp message I received from Carl Snitcher (Snitch) only 10 days before the match. I suspect I was one of quite a few people who got such a message from him that day.
The upshot was that Snitch was in the backveld of South Africa, doing valuable charitable works no doubt, while the far more crucial matter of arranging the MURTC v MCC real tennis match had slipped his mind.
I spotted an opportunity to get a bit of practice with my tournament doubles partner, Dominic Flint, if by chance Dominic was also available, which he was. Somehow, probably through methods and devices similarly arcane to my recruitment of Our Man Flint, Snitch managed to cobble together a team.
I have also represented the MCC in the home leg of this match a couple of times – a matter which went unreported on Ogblog a few months ago despite the nail-biting nature of the fixture, which (for once) the MCC won by the skin of its teeth.
No doubt the MURTC folk were hell-bent for revenge…
…except it isn’t actually that kind of fixture, as far as I can tell. The MURTC crowd are as convivial and friendly as any competitive sporting fixture can be. The eating, drinking and socialising seems to be a pretty important element.
To that end, step forward Catherine Hudson, who, together with John Harrington, put on a phenomenal spread for our fixture lunch, centred around several massive trays of The Pie Man’s phenomenal pies. A caterer well known to me – I think it was Angela Broad (coincidentally a former real tennis player from many years gone by) who put us in touch with the Pie Man himself, Murray Tollemache, when we first started catering Z/Yen events, 20 to 25 years ago.
The most difficult decision I had to make, soon after we arrived at about 12:15, was whether to eat before or after playing at 14:00. The smell and look of the food had my heart say “eat” , but my head said, “wait”. Head won.
Janie joined us, as she did last year, which helped with the congeniality of the day, not that these two teams need help. But Janie did take lots of video clips, through which I can show the progress of our rubber which was, if I might say so, a fine metaphor for the whole match, MCC-wise.
The little video below, titled “One For The Career Highlights Reel” is, um, one for the career highlights reel. Dominic with the magnificent winner.
https://youtu.be/05Kowd-jaCI
The next video might need some explanation for the uninitiated. The call of “up” tells your partner that you believe the ball will go above the dedans gallery and onto the back penthouse. The call of “yours” means that you want your partner to take the ball. Only very rarely have I had the opportunity to sat “up yours” to my partner descriptively. Of course I would never use those words expletively… not on the tennis court anyway.
https://youtu.be/YtqPHBOg23U
https://youtu.be/HHFOdw3lLSI
It was actually a very good game of tennis for most of the rubber, with the pendulum swinging one way and then the other.
https://youtu.be/F6Pgij8NmOw
https://youtu.be/GLIhpvIlqiU
But soon enough our rubber turned against us. Well played, Peter and Paul.
https://youtu.be/7_fZIJ7-5Fc
Were Dominic and I able to cope with our disappointment and rejoin the increasingly party-like atmosphere? Would we be able to digest our food after all of that excitement and the roller-coaster ride of sporting emotions?
Yes.
It really was a most enjoyable day. The teams get on really well, despite the fierceness of the competition on court, while the professionals (Chris Bray this time, Will Burns on my previous visits) make us visitors feel extremely welcome.
So I suspect that only two questions remain for the casual reader. Firstly, who won the fixture this time? Well, I think I planted enough clues in the text, but in any case, as they say in Las Vegas, “what happens in Hendon, stays in Hendon.”
The other question, normally delivered in song at sporting fixtures, is “who ate all the pies?” The answer, of course, “what happens in Hendon, stays in Hendon.”
Anyway, life hasn’t been taking me to Manchester much lately, so when John White told me that his daughter, Lydia, was to have her first professional stage role in Rags The Musical at the Hope Mill Theatre…
…I decided to construct a short trip to that fair, clement City.
I contacted Ashley Fletcher, who had been unavailable on my previous visit or two; we arranged to meet for dinner on the evening of 12 March. So I booked three goes at the Manchester Tennis and Racquets Club, a ticket for Rags for 13 March and an Airbnb apartment near to the Hope Mill Theatre for two nights.
Unfortunately, Ashley got called away at the last minute on family matters, leaving the first night free. This possibly afforded me an opportunity to meet up with Alex “King Cricket” Bowden instead…
…but Alex spotted that Manchester City were to play Schalke 04 at the City Of Manchester Stadium that night, which is within chaos distance of my chosen location for diggings and musical theatre. What do I know of football? For a start, why are Schalke given 04 just for turning up – are they using a handicapping system in football now, much as we do in real tennis?
Strangely there had been a big European match at that same stadium when I was last in Manchester in 2016 against a shibbolethic team named…
…Borussia Mönchengladbach….
…But as I was staying in Salford Quays that time, the resulting disruption was merely hearsay to me, whereas this time I had inadvertently arranged to stay right in the thick of it.
I sought some spiritual advice on the matter.
I had arranged to meet Andy Salmon at Sacred Trinity Church briefly before playing tennis that Tuesday afternoon. We are both involved with the Church’s on-line service register initiative, which Andy is piloting.
Sacred Trinity: a beautiful church in Salford which happens to be just around the corner from the Manchester Tennis And Racquets Club
It was actually very interesting for me to see one of the Churches involved in our project, not least to see what such places are like on a regular, non-service day. Andy of course made me very welcome and also gave me some helpful local North-East Manchester advice regarding what to do when a big match is on. Basically, get to your digs early enough to avoid the chaotic roads/transport and then only go out again during the hours of play.
Manchester Tennis And Racquets Club – not so special looking from the outside – you can see why I drove around the block a couple of times on my first visit there.
After tennis (a close match in which I came second, despite having received handicap points) I dashed off sharpish to get to New Islington early and settle in to my apartment. Probably just as well, not least because I could see the police getting ready to herd fans round the ring road and along Pollard Street. Also, it took me a while once I got to the apartment to sort out parking and entry – some goon had parked in the designated parking space for my car. The errant parking goon had been given a parking ticket, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do in the circumstances, so I waited for my host to sort out an alternative space for me to use, which he did reasonably quickly.
Getting in and out of these fancy apartments in converted industrial buildings is often quite a palaver (this is not my first time in such a place), but this one was quite exceptional, with codes for the car park, building entrance, stairs (if needed – wasn’t), corridors and then finally the front door. Once you know all of these things its OK, but the first time, laden with baggage…
…anyway, I was there in decent time and liaised with Alex. We concluded that getting either of us to and from each other within the hours of play would leave precious little time to actually do anything of merit, so abandoned the idea of meeting.
Plenty of time to eat there between the start and end of a football match.
Indeed I was home well before the end of the match and was very tired. I had driven almost all the way to Manchester through torrential rain; my least favourite driving conditions. I went to bed early and thought I heard the roar of the crowd from the stadium. Probably a goal I thought, dozily.
I also discovered that Manchester City had done similarly well on my previous 2016 visit, scoring four against a team requiring no handicap – I’m starting to get the hang of this new soccer scoring system now. I’m sure the soccer crowds just love the additional nuance that handicap scoring can bring.
Anyway, after that enjoyably early night, I rose early and had plenty of time for reading and practising my Renaissance guitar technique before going off again to Salford for a lunchtime tennis match up. This time no handicap at all and this time I prevailed over my opponent. Both of the matches had been very good ones; really nice people and good challenging tennis. Tomorrow I’ll return for a lesson.
Back to the apartment for some more music and reading. Then back to the Thai place to try a rice dish – a beef massaman.
The next morning I vacated my apartment and drove round the ring road for my tennis lesson. I decided to take a picture of the main lobby of the club, which, in contrast to the exterior, looks like a grand club from a bygone era. Trigger warning: the heads of deceased beasts line the walls:
Through the arched window (as they would say in Play School) is the real tennis court.
Darren Long gave me my lesson – as indeed he did on my last visit. He does some different drills from the guys at Lord’s and has some interesting thoughts on the one or two things I might do to transform my game from the ordinary to the utterly exceptional. It might be as easy as that…although it might not.
Seriously, Darren is a very good coach and it was a very enjoyable hour. Once again, the team at the Manchester Tennis and Racquets Club had made me feel extremely welcome and looked after me as well as I could possibly have hoped for.
I made two stops on the journey home to ensure an adequate state of alertness and to stretch a bit – driving from Manchester to London straight after a rigorous hour of drills on the tennis court is probably not ideal on the old body, but still.
It had been an enjoyable trip; apart from the cold, the wind and the rain. Manchester really should try and do something about that – otherwise it could end up with somewhat of a reputation for its inclement weather.
I haven’t written about real tennis for a while. I am motivated to do so now (February 2019) due to the sad news that Michael Constantinidi, one of the MCC’s most senior players, passed away, aged 90, last week.
I partnered Michael in a game of “senior doubles” only a few week’s before he died and saw him on court just a few days before his sudden and unexpected departure.
Michael was an extremely likeable and charming man. It was always a pleasure to share the tennis court with him, either as his partner or as one of his adversaries.
Partnering Michael was almost like having a lesson. Not only because Chris Swallow, one of the professionals, was very often on the other side of the net trying to make life difficult (but not too difficult) for me, but because Michael would gently help me with praise and/or with context for my mistakes.
If I berated myself or apologised for a miss, he might say…
no, no, that was a very difficult ball, you did well to almost make it
…or if I missed a straight-forward shot, as oft I do, he might say:
never mind – you haven’t missed many all day.
On that day we played together in early January, I sensed that I was flagging a little towards the end of my second hour – I had played a rigorous game of singles against the actor Michael Keane (another delightful playing companion) before joining the seniors for doubles. But you wouldn’t have sensed any frustration from my doubles partner as my performance dipped late in the hour.
Michael Constantinidi was also a delightful gentleman with whom to chat in the locker room after a game. He’d led an interesting life and could discuss a great many subjects with insight and warmth.
He had been keen fives player – he had chaired the Eton Fives Association for many years. My fives game had been the Rugby Fives variety, but it transpired that Michael had spent much of his time with the Eton Fives Association building bridges between the two versions of the sport. Indeed, he had opened the refurbished fives courts at my old school, Alleyn’s some years ago.
Here’s a video that shows one of Michael’s pet Eton Fives projects, at Westway:
Whereas here is a promo video about Rugby Fives – no buttress but there is a back wall:
Michael Constantinidi used to joke with me that he was no use at taking the real tennis ball off the back wall because of his Eton Fives background, which presumably means that I still have ever so much more to learn about the tambour (the real tennis buttress) as a former Rugby Fives player.
But returning to Michael Constantinidi and real tennis; for a gentleman in his late 80s and latterly over 90, Michael was a remarkably good player still, moving around the court with surprising ease and speed.
But the thing about Michael’s real tennis play that I simply must write down and try to describe for posterity was his serve. It was bizarre…almost defying description…quite simply unique.
There are a great many different serves at real tennis, all with quirky names: giraffe, boomerang, railroad, bobble, demi-piquet and piquet (my own favourite)…
…but Michael’s serve was seemingly from another lexicon, or even from another planet.
Try to imagine an exaggerated version of a lawn tennis over-arm serve motion, not a million miles different from a “T-serve”, broken down into a couple of dozen individual, jerky, stop-frame motions, before the racket finally makes contact with the ball…
…Michael’s serve looked a little like that.
The coaches are encouraging me to try to simplify my serve, to minimise the amount of pre-impact movement, to concentrate on the essential part of the serve – where the racket impacts the ball – trying to get the desired amount of force, spin and length onto the ball. That is excellent advice, I understand, but it is entirely contre-Constantinidi.
And the extraordinary thing is, that not only did Michael’s Heath-Robinson-looking wind up to serve tend to transfix, hypnotise and confuse his opponent…
…it was on most occasions consistently accurate and surprisingly tricky to return. Like much in real tennis, it made little or no sense but somehow it worked for Michael. And probably only for Michael.
I don’t think we’ll see the like of Michael’s serve again, but if by some strange quirk of fate someone, somewhere decides to serve in that manner, I think it should be known for ever more as “The Constantinidi Serve”.
One can only assume the near-spherical symbols indicate “hard balls”.
Like the vast majority of real tennis players, Michael Constantinidi loved his hard ball sports, yet he was the softest, gentlest fellow with whom to play sport and delightful company off the court. His cheerful and charming demeanour will be fondly remembered and sadly missed around Lord’s.
Janie and I had (are having) ample opportunity to play tennis over the holiday season this year. The weather is dull but basically dry and warm enough to enable us to play.
The majority of our contests have been draws. Of the eight contests we’ve had over the holiday season so far (as I write on 31 December), five have ended undecided as 5-5 draws. Until today the completed sets sat at 1-1. Today I managed to win the set, but was down in the second set when we agreed we’d had enough.
Picture from Nemu in Japan last month – imagine that racket spped
Janie is playing powerfully these days and is also mixing up her play to put me off my rhythm.
And talking of powerful women…
…our traditional Curzon film fest over Twixtmas has been a veritable powerful women fest.
Yayoi Kusama’s story really is fascinating, as is her art. The more perceptive Ogblog readers might have observed a sample of her infinity work taking over the look of Ogblog in the past week or so.
Actually we were glad to have the DVD rather than a cinema viewing of this one – as the subtitles were a bit difficult to read at times and tended to move on ridiculously quickly on some occasions, so we were grateful for the chance to scroll back and make sure we had assimilated the wise words.
Here is the official trailer for that movie:
The DVD is still available (just not from Victoria Miro) – e.g. from Amazon.
28th December we went, after work, to the Curzon Bloomsbury to see Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. Frankly, we hadn’t heard of rapper and activist Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A. but thought her story and the description of the movie sounded fascinating.
Here is the official trailer for that movie:
It is a fascinating movie. Elements of the film go to the heart of debates about activism around complex causes. Other elements are almost comedic documentary, such as the apparently infamous incident where M.I.A. “gives the finger” to camera when performing for the Superbowl and kicks off a massive controversy – that bit reminded me more of Spinal Tap than Joan Baez or Pussy Riot.
Slightly strange mix of audience at the Curzon too. Mostly younger people who clearly have an affinity with M.I.A. as a contemporary singer, with a smattering of (how do I put this politely?) somewhat older-looking folk, like ourselves, who were probably there for the human rights more than the music. The fussy white-haired lady on our row of the Dochouse seemed to have come straight from “human-rights-activist central casting”.
The movie was well worth seeing.
30 December we returned to the Curzon Bloomsbury to see the movie about Hedy Lamarr.
Here is the official trailer of Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story:
I had read quite a lot about this one and it is a fascinating tale. Not only her achievements as an inventor of information & communications technology but also the way she completely changed (some would say reinvented) her life after escaping from Austria in the troubled 1930s. I had previously read about her scientific inventions but, before seeing the movie, I had no idea that she was born and raised Jewish nor that her first marriage was to an Austrian armaments manufacturer who had sold weapons to Hitler.
As with all three of these movies, I couldn’t completely buy in to the “powerful woman who have been denied their rightful credit” story. All three of these women are, unquestionably, to some extent, victims of injustice. Hedy Lamarr by all accounts should have benefited from her patent on frequency-hopping (or spread spectrum) telecommunications. But then, so should her co-inventor, George Antheil – he remains even less remembered for the invention that Hedy Lamarr. It is also a huge stretch to attribute all of the value in GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi to the technology in that patent.
In truth, all three of the powerful women in these movies have benefited from their beauty and charisma, while also being held back from some of the credit that might have accrued to their efforts had they been men or had they arrived at their achievements from more conventional routes.
But then, even Janie’s powerful tennis comes from an unusual source these days…
…anyway, my excuse is that it is difficult to concentrate on getting the ball back time and time again, when you know that the power and balance in Janie’s shots is being cultivated by such unconventional tennis preparation:
Making my head spin…
This will be my last posting for 2018 – happy new year to those Ogblog readers who follow Ogblog contemporarily.
To some extent I was still basking in the glory of last night’s real tennis match, in which I had played a small but decisive part in the MCC’s recovery from near defeat to eventual victory against Middlesex University by three rubbers to two. In truth it was the incredibly exciting fourth rubber which turned the contest – our pair had some five match points against them in their rubber before turning it around. I played in the deciding fifth rubber.
The original plan for this SJSS lunchtime concert had been to go with John Random, but he had to pull out of this one. So I even considered missing out myself.
Wild Gypsy fiddling, Jewish and Greek music, and tango, alongside interpretations of Japanese, Polish and Sephardic songs…
…was just what I needed before going to the office on a Thursday afternoon. Not least because we have just returned from Japan, where we came across very little actual Japanese music…
Anyway, I’m very glad I made the decision to go to SJSS that lunchtime and see the Kosmos Ensemble perform.
They are three very talented young musicians who met while studying at the Royal Academy of Music and formed this ensemble as a vehicle for their shared interest in world music.
Actually I don’t think we got any “Sephardic Songs” as promised, but we did instead get a Serbian lament and some Scandinavian music, plus even some Scottish and English themed music.
Some pieces worked better to my ears than others – one or two of the pieces inserted phrases from well-known works at a level of subtlety that might even make PDQ Bach blush. I sense that all three of them are most at home with Eastern-European melodies and rhythms – but their virtuosity and curiosity help compensate for those elements of the programme that were not quite to my taste – I pretty much enjoyed the whole set.
For me the highlights were:
the Japanese-style piece Sakura (Cherry Blossom):
a version of Piazolla’s Libertango with a sort-of Klezmer cadenza at the end, which they have nicknamed “Liberklezmango”:
All three of the musicians: Harriet Mackenzie, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton and Miloš Milivojević are clearly embarking on highly successful careers and I wish them well individually and as an ensemble.
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