It’s a grey day, which makes the weather forecast of warmth seem just a little unbelievable. It has been the driest Spring for decades and my driest of dry gardens is not enjoying life. The plants know that they’re not going to survive a hosepipe ban later in the year given that they’re already dependant on a weekly watering.
The hanging baskets which always suffer from my laziness when it comes to watering are already starting to look reproachful and they’ve only been out there a fortnight.
On the upside, the weather is great for tennis. Dry, with no wind to blow away the clouds means we had an entirely uninterrupted three hours thrashing on the tennis courts in our first match. And afterwards when the forensics begin, obviously the first comment is just “they were better than us” and the second is to question how many of their players “played down”.
In theory, people should play to their level in these little tournaments. Where a club gains a new player though, it might not be clear how good or otherwise they might be, so some wiggle room is left. A player can play at one level for two matches, to find their feet, before settling in that division. So where we play a bigger club with two or three teams across the various divisions, the early matches are always full of ringers from divisions much further up the tree.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that “Rose” turned out to be a regular playing in their first team last year, a team that plays two entire divisions higher than us. It’s a bit of a surprise that she was playing in pair 2 of 3, but, despite being against the spirit of the thing, it was certainly well within the legal rules.
Our next match is with a small club, like us able to pull together just a single team, so will probably play out a bit differently.
Obviously if you play a competitive game, you have to be prepared to lose with as much grace as you win.
Let’s hope we thrash them.