Thankful Thursday

I'm all croqueted out.  Six days of 9 hours on the lawns in weather ranging from very hot (late 20s Celsius) to cold (mid teens Celsius).  Sometimes with the heat has come humidity.  Almost the whole time has been windy ranging from just plain windy to gales.  Sometimes we've had blue skies and sometimes overcast and cloudy.  On the plus side we've had no rain.  The worst thing has been the gales.  Not only is it hard to play accurately in gales but it's also saps your physical and mental energy hour after hour.

I'm writing this during a bye when I don't have to play for three hours.  It's cold and gale force winds are blowing.  When the three hours is up my travelling companions and I will be wending our way back from Palmerston North to our homes in Napier: about 180k/111m and nearly three hours driving for Judy in whose car we came.

It's a lovely tournament and overall I think there were about 80 entrants playing in various events.  I've met some new people and played some very good croquet.  I've also played some very bad croquet.

Overall view of 6 of the 9 lawns being used for the tournament (there's actually more people playing than you can see!)

Doug Van Belle who won the tournament in the game against me playing a hampered shot being watched by a referee

A not-so-warm afternoon

So tonight I shall be in my own bed.  I won't have to be up at 6am tomorrow.  I can have a relaxed day tomorrow recovering and taking stock.  The Family will come down to The Cottage for dinner as is usual on a Friday.  Life will return to what passes for normal.

For these simple things I am very, very thankful today.

The Riotous Oldies

It’s 1030 pm.  This, you understand is New Zealand 10.30 pm.  All self respecting 60+s are in bed and asleep.  I’m in a motel unit with three croquet ladies.  The next but one unit is occupied by another 4 croquet ladies.  This is the Veterans Tournament so all are over 60 and anyone in their 60s is probably on the young side.  But these are fit people able to play for 8 and 9 hours a day on their feet concentrating and walking many many kilometres during the day.

And in the evening they ‘relax’.  A small libation may be taken…..many times. A large libation or two as well perhaps.

So picture the scene.  A group of six or so an hour after everyone’s usual bedtime sitting in a unit making enough noise to keep the rest of the smart motel awake.  Croquet person turns up from another motel.  It’s his first ever croquet tournament tomorrow.  He’s forgotten his handicap card (golfers will understand). He’s come to see what he should do.  As if anyone can sort the problem at this hour of the evening.  But... he’s taken a sleeping tablet and is half asleep already.  It’s decided that he should be taken back to his motel.  He’s a teetotal, good-living retired methodist minister and he’s being shepherded down the hight street by an extremely ‘happy’ gang of veteran ladies (some in their night attire). 

Who says the over-sixties are dull.

Oh and by the way I retained my Veteran's  Association Croquet Handicap Singles title.  So I'm happy too.

Still Here

I woke this morning around 0500 after a horrible nightmare.  I walked around for a bit and then went back to bed only to have an even worse nightmare.  The odd thing is that I can't remember a single thing about the earlier one but I managed to reduce the later one to words and I can recall it even now.  Instead of getting up at 0600 as I would usually have done once I was properly awake I lay for a while thinking about all the emails and blog posts (I've lots planned) and readings and so on I was going to do today having been involved in a tournament and up to 10 hours play a day for the last week or more.

For reasons I won't bore you with I wasn't able to do any of those things and so late this evening I am writing this before a relatively early night and an early start in the morning.  I am off to Northland and my annual pilgrimage with Pauline. I will not be taking my laptop just my iPad and iPhone so there may not be any posts until next week after I get back.

I will leave you with a few photos from the tournament.  They are strange folk these croquet people.

A Weekend Away

It's Tuesday.  The weather is absolutely wonderful.  The sun is shining.  There is a slight cooling breeze.  It's perfect.  We were away for the weekend at a golf croquet tournament in Wanganui.  The weather excelled itself which is more than I can say for my play. There were flashes of my old self with some wonderful wins and there were some flashes of utter mediocrity too.  However my partner and I did manage to come runners up in the handicap doubles which was a reasonable result.  I'd never played with Clair before.  In fact I'd never met her before.  We did, however, have something in common.  We both drive Mazda MX5s.  Hers is called Rossee.  Unlike mine, Rossee races in the New Zealand Targa Rally.

 

I hadn't played at Wanganui for a couple of years.  It's a lovely club with a lot of lawns and a wonderful location up on a hill overlooking the (not-so-beautiful-from-this-angle) city. 

The Club's notice board amused me:

PS It's Wednesday now.  I started this on Tuesday but it was that sort of a day!

Palmerston Clubs A C Tournament

I don't usually post specifically about a tournament.  Bearing in mind the way this tournament went and that this blog is partly a sort of diary and there are a few interesting bits (including one for Adrian) I've decided to give it a post of its own.

The Palmerston Clubs tournament is one of the most enjoyable of the many I play in each year and one at which I have always had a memorable and enjoyable time.  The other thing about it is that there has always been a huge variation in the weather over the six days.  We played in the sun and high 20s and in Feilding (see the article and photo below) in the teens and pouring rain.  In the very last game of the tournament for me at Takaro (which was also my best game) we also played in torrential rain and strong wind where I was so desperate not to lose my concentration (it is well known that I would not insult a gnat by claiming to have its attention span) that I played on and was soaked right through to the skin at the end of the game.

I should add that we are not wimps in the croquet world and only stop tournament play when the lawns become unplayable which generally means that they have to be under water.

In short I played the best association croquet I have ever played.  It's still not first class play but for my handicap level it was very satisfying and I managed to be the runner up in the two singles events in which I played and reduced my AC handicap from a 6 to a 5.  Still a way to go to get down to my GC handicap of 2 though.

Ironically in the last game of the last event (the Open Handicap Singles) I played André again (see article below) and won 26:13.

The local press decided there was a story in the 'Scotsman playing in New Zealand' after hearing someone talk about The Godwit (my nickname in some fields given the traveling habits of the Godwit and that it's iconic to New Zealand in the way that the Swallow is in Europe).  Of course there are errors in the story - never believe all that you read in the papers but it gives the game some publicity.

Adrian would have been delighted with the photographer's Canon equipment.  He had two Canon lenses the size of houses one of which fitted the same description as Adrian's  new toy and which was out in the rain.  The photo below was taken from a long way off in very poor light (it has to be really bad if I'm not wearing sun glasses).

Okay this post has far to many uses of the first person singular but wotthehellarachiewotthehell I don't have very many occasions to be so delighted with anything I do so please just accept it on this occasion.

And now for bed.  Another day of underachievement and too many 'to dos' still on the list.

Thankful Thursday

It's just before midnight on Thursday here in New Zealand and I am back home in The Cottage and back on wifi and no longer reliant on my iPhone for internet access - not ideal for blogging!

I have various things to say from my time away - assuming that I can remember them all - but for now I shall simply say how thankful I am for the hospitality of croquet friends who housed, fed and watered us whilst I and a few others from our croquet club were away at the tournament.

The days have been long out on the lawns in weather ranging from very hot and sunny to (relatively) cold with pouring rain and gale force winds. We have walked for miles (according to my iPhone app I walked over 5 miles in two games today and we usually play three) and spent a great deal of time tiring the brain by concentrating.  The evenings (when we eventually managed to get home from the lawns) have been filled with friendship, good food (and the occasional red libation) and good humour.  The - all too few - sleeping hours have been sound and deep notwithstanding strange beds and surroundings (well actually my friends have very comfortable beds and surroundings but they are strange in the sense of being unusual to me).

Within the hour (by which time it will be tomorrow) I shall be gratefully fast asleep in my own bed with no need to be awake at 6am in the morning (which probably means that I'll be wide awake by then).

On the way home I saw the most unusual rainbow that I have ever seen.  It was taken through rainy car windows across the front of the driver at speed but is, I think, quite impressive.

So for all these things I am very thankful indeed.

The Vets

Yesterday I won the Veterans Association Croquet Handicap Singles.  I could have made that a Thankful Thursday post but for the fact that when we returned to the Motel we invited several lots of  croquet people staying at the motel to join us in our (very spacious) unit for a wee libation and  some nibbles and after that a croquet friend staying nearby in his campervan joined us for dinner and by the time he departed it was bedtime and I was far too tired to do as I am tonight and sit up and write a post.

This morning when Judy woke me with a cup of tea at 0545 I wondered how it was that I could have had all that sleep and still feel so tired.  

As I surveyed all the wine bottles I wondered what on earth the person cleaning the unit would have thought of us so I decided to write him/her a little note.  The motel owner said this evening that he's heard the story!  The cleaner just left us a little addendum to our note.

It's 10 o'clock in Dannevirke

I'm in Dannevirke.  It's 10pm on Tuesday which means that it's 10am in most of Continental Europe,  9am Tuesday in the UK, 5am Tuesday in Georgetown,  4am Tuesday in Sarnia/Toronto and 1am Tuesday in California.  How informative and how boring is all that?

The Girls are asleep and I'm tired and will soon be asleep too.  We will all be up at the crack of dawn for the start of the Veterans' Croquet Tournament at 8.30 in the morning.

It's been a strange day (so what's new?) starting with the expectation of ferrying a sick child to the Doc for a certificate to say that he couldn't attend school for an exam (he went to school anyway) and being the NZ call centre for dear friend Pat on Lewis whose computer had disengaged itself from the internet and her lifeline to the real world - er, cyberworld.  It's one of the few ways I can repay her for all that she does for me looking after my affairs in Scotland while I'm swanning away into the New Zealand sun (well that's the theory).

Bye for now.  More soon.

Be Careful What You Wish For

OK. I know it should be 'be careful for that which you wish' but somehow it doesn't sound quite so catchy.  In fact it sounds downright ponderous.

Today is the last day of the tournament.  Which made yesterday, oddly enough, the penultimate day.  I had quite a reasonable day and managed third in my group which put me into the final play-off between the top eight from the two groups.  Mike and I had won the doubles played over the previous two days.  So I was quite tired and, if I'm truly honest, lacking in enthusiasm for the final day even though I'm playing well at the moment.  I joked that I hoped I'd fall outside the top eight then I could avoid the flexible Swiss (don't ask, no-one understands the flexible Swiss) and have a rest-day.  Well fall I did: on a piece of wet muddy grass at the side of the lawn.  I managed to pull a muscle and hurt my arthritic knee and by the evening it was bound up and there was no way I could cope with a very full day (potentially 9 matches) today.  So I pulled out.   

Photo by Lester O'Brien

So now, at 0930, there are two lots of washing on the line (bad weather is forecast for the rest of the week) and the dishwasher is gently swishing away on the second load after the family came down for dinner last night and I've already had my mid-morning coffee.

The clocks went forward last night and we were in bed early as well so this morning instead of being tired and having a lie-in I was up before the lark.  Isn't it interesting how easy it is to get up when you don't have to?  And conversely how difficult it is when you do have to?   Of course the lighter morning is a help.

The photo is: Me, Colleen (President of the Hawkes Bay Croquet Association) and Mike.