Tuesday 17 July 2012

It must be love - Part 5

I've recently come back from a holiday in Croatia, and one of the things you notice is how many tennis courts there are. I don't know if they are all public, but they looked as if they might be. Here, we seem to have private clubs which can be rather intimidating. I think our club's pretty friendly, but Yummy Eileen's friend, There's Only One Monique, was once told off for showing off too much flesh when sunbathing. To be fair, our's is a country club, with swimming pool, gym, restaurant and plenty of families. Anyway, I can trump that. I was told off at a tennis club.......for playing tennis. YE belongs to two clubs, the second of which is just a tennis club. She'd been telling me how friendly everyone was there, so I was looking forward to it when she invited me to a lunch there. I made a special effort top dress up in my smartest smart casual. My initial impression was that it was a friendly club. I got chatting to a nice couple who turned out to be the aforementioned TOOM, her husband Delvis (plays in a band) and their young daughter. Most of the members were out on court at various times, so the daughter was left on her own looking rather bored. I took pity on her and suggested we had a little knock-up on a free court. We found rackets and were just tapping the ball over the net to each other when YE came over to say that a committee member told her we had to stop because I wasn't wearing proper tennis shoes. It had been a long time since I'd been told off - as an adult you don't really expect it. I was feeling pretty embarrassed when I came back into the clubhouse, and since no one spoke to me I left as soon as possible. So much for a friendly club. And now there's someone at this club who's really horrible to YE because she plays in the team for our club (which she's done for years) and not for hers. It's just the kind of pettiness that puts people off joining a tennis club, and maybe even be part of the reason why we don't produce as many top tennis players as we should. David Donner

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