The ‘twilight’
zone continues here, as last week I found myself playing in the semi-finals of
the Men’s Doubles in the village tennis tournament! This was surprising for several reasons:
firstly, I never signed up to play – apparently there was a meeting at the
tennis club one evening when I was back in the UK for a weekend and when I
returned my ‘boys (the 70 year old men I play with) proudly announced that they
had signed me up for the competition and that I would be playing with somebody
called Dominique. I was amazed that they
had found another woman in the village who played tennis but ‘Dominique’ turned
out to be the man who runs the local wine shop!
We won the first round without playing as luckily (for us) one of the
opposition team had broken an ankle, so on the Thursday night we played our
first match. We lost 6-1 6-0, partly due
to the fact that Dominique had been drinking wine all day, partly because it
was the first time we had played as a ‘team’ so either both of us ran for the
ball or neither of us did, partly because our opponents Romeo and Giles had
hair-styles like plastic Lego figures so I coudn’t keep a straight face , but
mainly because they were much better than us.
At the end of the match (and I use that term loosely) Dominique turned
to me and asked if I was free to play the next evening as we were now in the
semi-finals. It turned out that Romeo
had stood in for somebody at the last minute and was already due to play in the
next round which meant that if he won again, he would be playing in the final
against himself!
The
semi-final match was even more of a débacle.
We were playing against 2 of my ‘boys’, Francis and Jean-Jacques, and I
had a slight hope that they might be a bit kind to me but absolutely not, they were out to win, although they still couldn’t resist shouting ‘leave
it’ whenever I looked as if I was going to hit a ball that was going out
(apparently one of my many faults in tennis!).
We were beaten 6-1 6-0 and my only comfort is that they went on to win
the final so we obviously stood no chance!
There
were no surprise invitations to play in the Finals on Sunday but in the evening
we went to the presentation ceremony (all competitors were given a first-aid
kit emblazoned with the logo of the Conseil Générale) and this was followed by
drinks (served by Dominique, naturally) and a ‘Grillade’. Trestle tables and chairs were laid out and
about 20 of us sat and shared a good meal.
All of this took place on the car park beside the tennis court but
despite the fact that we were surrounded by broken glass, litter and graffiti
it was a convivial evening – and lovely to meet the various wives and partners
of my tennis friends who were equally interested to meet L'Anglaise who plays men's doubles!
