YELLOW BALLS

I played tennis yoday, for three hours in the searing heat. Serving into the sun from one end, all you saw were brilliant yellow streaks before your eyes. I managed to get my partner to serve from that end whilst I plied my trade from the other. I had no juice, so had to make do with water from a plastic bottle. By the time my bottle had been exposed to the sun for an hour, the water was warm and brackish, and I spat most of it out. That led to me being dehydrated, and on the point of collapse by the end. I had to sit on one of those hard polycarbonate chairs with metal legs which we bring out for those too shattered to carry on. The sun had melted the tarmac and me, being a large man, sank three inches into the ground. The balls were worn, because the asphalt courts are clapped out and they tear the balls to bits, as well as dealing as effectively with your tennis shoes as a shredder does with confidential information. I kept lobbing into the sun, hitting the back line and watching the worn ball bounce twelve feet in the air and out over the wire fence onto the skateboard rink, with no-one able to get anywhere near it. That made me unpopular with all of my colleagues. 'I didn't come here to win a popularity contest,' I retorted: 'I came here to win.' Strange words indeed from a man whose shoulder is so damaged and worn that after three hours of tennis he cannot take his shirt off over his head, and who serves these days like an elderly waiter dealing soup from a particularly heavy ladle, but the competitive spirit is with me still. I wore my usual knee bandages, because my knees click like the knitting needles of a demented spinster, but the bandages, like the knees, have seen better days, and by the end they had slipped down to my ankles and I had to keep pulling them up, like socks. I walked home with my friend 'Teaser' Tweeddale. I had told him that I was going away tomorrow, and I wouldn't be around to sample the beautiful joint my wife would typically prepare. 'Never mind,' said Teaser, 'You can always smoke it on Monday.'