May 18th 2014
What a gorgeous day: Californian weather. We played Brynmawr at home. We were meant to be at their place but they had a clash of fixtures and they asked for a swap. Which was a bit of a shame because you don’t get Californian weather in Brynmawr that often. To be fair, the green is about 1,200 feet above sea level.
The green was a shock. As soon as I stepped on to the green my number-two sidled up to me and with a whispered remark behind the back of his hand, a knowing raise of the eyebrows and just the merest hint of a conspiratorial wink, warned me that it was running fast (after all, we can’t have the enemy finding out that we are as surprised as they are to find the green shockingly quick and curly, can we?). The “trial ends” had already started and my third was up the other end (where I should have been and where the jack is) supervising affairs. I don’t live far from the green and, as is often the case with those who live closest, I am often the last to arrive. I’m never late (official kick-off is 3 o’clock) but everyone else, more or less, is well into retirement and so has the habit of arriving at engagements very, very early. To pass the time they chat idly – mostly very idly – and then they get bored and agitate to get going with the two “trial ends” which precede the start proper. Usually, as soon as my third sees me sauntering through the park he caves in and lets them start – he knows I don’t take long to get changed.
By the time I had got the dope from my subaltern it was my turn to throw a “practice” wood. I thanked him, of course, and thought to myself that it was very kind but surely he must realise that a player of my experience would have already clocked the colour of the surface, the length of the blade, the prevailing weather over the past few days and processed the information to enough of an extent to prevent embarrassing himself by firing a practice wood past the lonesome practice jack into the far ditch. I bent down, lazily launched my latest masterpiece of finely tuned power, designed specifically to awe the opposition with the inevitably of its attraction to the jack and watched it, with furrowed brow, thud into the far ditch. A tilt of the head from my second was the sort of precise response I have come to expect from this ex-army doctor.
Exactly seven days earlier, I had stepped forward to deliver my first practice wood at Pontymister Welfare Bowling Club and had to abort the delivery as a fierce gust of wind dumped the remnants of a summer squall right in my face and blew the hood of my white waterproof down over my eyes. I stepped back on to the mat, wiped my face, adjusted my protective apparel and thought to myself: “we must be crackers.” It carried on gusting and squalling in similar fashion all afternoon. One player from the opposition was blown over on to the seat of his pants and scoreboards had to be tethered. Why were we playing? Well, in order to play a game of bowls you need a group of players and an area of manicured lawn. If neither the lawn nor the humans fail to fulfil their prescribed function then there is no real reason to stop playing. The wind was strong enough to affect the roll of the woods but only occasionally; the rain was heavy enough to force momentary suspensions of play, but not heavy enough for long enough to make the green unplayable. The result is that a group of old, heavily waterproofed men wandered up and down a sodden piece of turf in the middle of a housing estate, rolling elliptically shaped pieces of dense plastic at a small white ball for about 3 hours in appalling weather. I’m not someone who often indulges in stereotypes but I have to say that it felt quintessentially British to be there.
Getting there was also interesting. I had been there once before not long after I had joined the bowls club. My abiding memory of it was that it was a difficult place to find. A few years later I had played at the other green in the village – Pontymister Athletic – and so had a vague idea of their juxtaposition. When I was told that it was definitely “The Welfare” that we were playing, I resolved to find the green on Google maps. I quite enjoy the puzzle aspect of finding places on Google maps when I have a reasonable but fairly vague idea where they are. I found the green after a little while and saw the reason it had been difficult to find the first time – on foot, as it were. The green is located at the edge of a large recreation ground, and it has been surrounded on three sides by housing. Considerately, a path to the green has been preserved between the houses and this is the most convenient path to take because it obviates the need to traverse the recreation ground from the main gate. I parked up in the housing estate and it took me a minute or so to find the entrance to the path because it is unmarked and unremarkable. As I walked along this nondescript piece of tarmac towards some uninviting corrugated sheeting painted green it struck me that Google maps has been “invented” and become part of our lives since I last visited Pontymister Welfare Bowls Club. Wow!
I played at Pontymister without my usual 3rd. The stand-in is new to bowls but is a natural competitor and has played games all his life. As a squad we played really well given that we were on an unfamiliar green in poor conditions. Also, apart from me, they are all relative beginners. The key to our victory was that we never had an end were we all failed. This makes such a difference because the opposition never get that far in front if they are only picking up ones and twos. I played really well, with my Bubba-inspired confidence swatting away the occasional poor delivery.
Back at home in the Californian sunshine my usual 3rd was back in harness. We won again but this time it was almost wholly owing to the 3rd’s superlative play. Once he found his “happy place”, he rolled perfect wood after perfect wood up to the jack. It was a game that highlighted in contrasting ways the role of the “skip”. For me, I didn’t have to do much until there was an emergency, but then it was imperative that I made my woods count to keep the competitive momentum in our favour. For my oppo, he was constantly attempting to rescue the end after my 3rd had wreaked his gently delivered havoc. My ‘oppo’ had straight woods. These are bowls that have little difference in weight between their two edges, therefore they swing, or curve, a lot less than normal woods. They are perfectly legal – a set of woods are simply required to have the same degree of swing as each other – but for some reason they are very annoying to play against. They are one of the few things in life that have the effect of making me sulk but like a proper little boy. I just want to shout; “Mam, they’re not fair!!!” I think the problem is that when you are considering the end in play you are weighing up your own chances and the chances of your ‘oppo’. This impression is based on where the woods are lying and which team the woods belong to because that determines the channels that are available and the choice of shots. Sometimes I will choose a shot because it gives me the opportunity to restrict still further the options available to the other side. If, after all this analysis, the guy simply bungs it up the middle with his straight wood and splatters the lot of them, it sort of spoils the fun. To be fair to my ‘oppo’ he was a decent player and pulled off some really good shots but it never seems quite “right” to me. Ironically, towards the end of the match there were a couple of ends where he would have sold his granny to have a normal curvy wood in his hand. I think I’m going to have to get over my “straight woods” pouting.
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