All very genteel and English, and very different with some of the street drinking and drug dealing that goes on the other side of the fence on some days.
I've never played, never. Not proper bowls on proper greens, with thoking great woods the size of cannoballs. Oh I've bouled on beaches, and petanqued clankily, and played in a friend's garden with carpet bowls, but I haven't done the real thing.
Nor will I ever. I'd feel like I was admitting I was old.
I do remember a time when it seemed very important to me however, and that is when I was a young child in Scotland, watching from the window of the house on Kilndale Terrace overlooking the bowls club where mum and I lived with granny and old Auntie Queen. Summers evenings I'd never be allowed to go out and play after a certain time, but the bowlers would appear as the evening went on, and play on seemingly till 11pm in the endless twilight of the Scottish summer.
I'd watch with my face pressed to the glass.
Only once did I ever go in the club, on some function night, and sat eating pea and pie next to their hallowed green as the folk went in and out of the pavilion - NO CHILDREN ALLOWED - chinking their glasses.
I wonder why I was there. I really can't remember at all. But seeing folk playing bowls always reminds me of this time of my life.
Si
All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 12.07.16
My father was a serious bowls player and as a child my mother and I would walk the mile or so to the bowling green almost every night in the summer. I always found it rather boring - mum would chat to other wives, I would read my book.
ReplyDeleteWhat a game.
ReplyDeleteMany years ago I played in a bowls team. Not just for wrinklies though most seem to be.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by! Weather never seems to stop them, they just put on big see through ponchos.
ReplyDelete