Tennis!

A weekend of sport.....it will make a change from politics! 

I always watched tennis in the old days when I was young.   Having given birth to my first baby in the middle of June I got hooked on tennis by a very keen health visitor.  Sitting with me, watching me feeding my son she said one day, "Would you mind having the tennis on whilst we sit? " 

I didn’t mind and this started a long series of games watched with a very keen tennis fan. During this period , sitting with a baby at my breast in company with someone prepared to share not only the secrets of successfully rearing my first born but also all the small,details of Wimbledon started a habit. 

By the end of that years tennis I was hooked.  Every year after I watched. The health visitor often dropped in and we became friends...after she’d retired I I would visit her in her new home in Scotland where we still watched the tennis together.   

For years I have continued this passion...until this year.   Somehow I just never got hooked...I suppose there wasn’t time with all my visitors since it started...I was still interested but haven’t sat glued to it as in previous years. 

This weekend I may well watch some of the final matches , I do still enjoy tennis   but inevitably it reminds me of why I stopped playing. 

I was never very good but I did play in my teens before going to college. It was when I had a game with the man who became my husband that I stopped playing completely. He was good, an Oxford blue no less. On our first tennis confrontation he had deftly placed the ball out of reach on both sides of the court. I had to run between shots whilst he more or less stood in the same place all the time. At the end of the first game he smiled at me

"You should have told me you were a rabbit."  

End of my playing tennis for ever..but I still enjoy watching others..from the comfort of my sofa....  Good memories of my early days of new motherhood mixed with admiring young people’s skill.    .I will watch at least one match this weekend.   Unless any more visitors arrive!