What a gorgeous day: Californian weather. We played Brynmawr at home. We were meant to be at their place but they had a clash of fixtures and they asked for a swap. Which was a bit of a shame because you don’t get Californian weather in Brynmawr that often. To be fair, the green is about 1,200 feet above sea level.

The green was a shock. As soon as I stepped on to the green my number-two sidled up to me and with a whispered remark behind the back of his hand, a knowing raise of the eyebrows and just the merest hint of a conspiratorial wink, warned me that it was running fast (after all, we can’t have the enemy finding out that we are as surprised as they are to find the green shockingly quick and curly, can we?). The “trial ends” had already started and my third was up the other end (where I should have been and where the jack is) supervising affairs. I don’t live far from the green and, as is often the case with those who live closest, I am often the last to arrive. I’m never late (official kick-off is 3 o’clock) but everyone else, more or less, is well into retirement and so has the habit of arriving at engagements very, very early. To pass the time they chat idly – mostly very idly – and then they get bored and agitate to get going with the two “trial ends” which precede the start proper. Usually, as soon as my third sees me sauntering through the park he caves in and lets them start – he knows I don’t take long to get changed.

By the time I had got the dope from my subaltern it was my turn to throw a “practice” wood. I thanked him, of course, and thought to myself that it was very kind but surely he must realise that a player of my experience would have already clocked the colour of the surface, the length of the blade, the prevailing weather over the past few days and processed the information to enough of an extent to prevent embarrassing himself by firing a practice wood past the lonesome practice jack into the far ditch. I bent down, lazily launched my latest masterpiece of finely tuned power, designed specifically to awe the opposition with the inevitably of its attraction to the jack and watched it, with furrowed brow, thud into the far ditch. A tilt of the head from my second was the sort of precise response I have come to expect from this ex-army doctor.

Exactly seven days earlier, I had stepped forward to deliver my first practice wood at Pontymister Welfare Bowling Club and had to abort the delivery as a fierce gust of wind dumped the remnants of a summer squall right in my face and blew the hood of my white waterproof down over my eyes. I stepped back on to the mat, wiped my face, adjusted my protective apparel and thought to myself: “we must be crackers.” It carried on gusting and squalling in similar fashion all afternoon. One player from the opposition was blown over on to the seat of his pants and scoreboards had to be tethered. Why were we playing? Well, in order to play a game of bowls you need a group of players and an area of manicured lawn. If neither the lawn nor the humans fail to fulfil their prescribed function then there is no real reason to stop playing. The wind was strong enough to affect the roll of the woods but only occasionally; the rain was heavy enough to force momentary suspensions of play, but not heavy enough for long enough to make the green unplayable. The result is that a group of old, heavily waterproofed men wandered up and down a sodden piece of turf in the middle of a housing estate, rolling elliptically shaped pieces of dense plastic at a small white ball for about 3 hours in appalling weather. I’m not someone who often indulges in stereotypes but I have to say that it felt quintessentially British to be there.

Getting there was also interesting. I had been there once before not long after I had joined the bowls club. My abiding memory of it was that it was a difficult place to find. A few years later I had played at the other green in the village – Pontymister Athletic – and so had a vague idea of their juxtaposition. When I was told that it was definitely “The Welfare” that we were playing, I resolved to find the green on Google maps. I quite enjoy the puzzle aspect of finding places on Google maps when I have a reasonable but fairly vague idea where they are. I found the green after a little while and saw the reason it had been difficult to find the first time – on foot, as it were. The green is located at the edge of a large recreation ground, and it has been surrounded on three sides by housing. Considerately, a path to the green has been preserved between the houses and this is the most convenient path to take because it obviates the need to traverse the recreation ground from the main gate. I parked up in the housing estate and it took me a minute or so to find the entrance to the path because it is unmarked and unremarkable. As I walked along this nondescript piece of tarmac towards some uninviting corrugated sheeting painted green it struck me that Google maps has been “invented” and become part of our lives since I last visited Pontymister Welfare Bowls Club. Wow!

I played at Pontymister without my usual 3rd. The stand-in is new to bowls but is a natural competitor and has played games all his life. As a squad we played really well given that we were on an unfamiliar green in poor conditions. Also, apart from me, they are all relative beginners. The key to our victory was that we never had an end were we all failed. This makes such a difference because the opposition never get that far in front if they are only picking up ones and twos. I played really well, with my Bubba-inspired confidence swatting away the occasional poor delivery.

Back at home in the Californian sunshine my usual 3rd was back in harness. We won again but this time it was almost wholly owing to the 3rd’s superlative play. Once he found his “happy place”, he rolled perfect wood after perfect wood up to the jack. It was a game that highlighted in contrasting ways the role of the “skip”. For me, I didn’t have to do much until there was an emergency, but then it was imperative that I made my woods count to keep the competitive momentum in our favour. For my oppo, he was constantly attempting to rescue the end after my 3rd had wreaked his gently delivered havoc. My ‘oppo’ had straight woods. These are bowls that have little difference in weight between their two edges, therefore they swing, or curve, a lot less than normal woods. They are perfectly legal – a set of woods are simply required to have the same degree of swing as each other – but for some reason they are very annoying to play against. They are one of the few things in life that have the effect of making me sulk but like a proper little boy. I just want to shout; “Mam, they’re not fair!!!” I think the problem is that when you are considering the end in play you are weighing up your own chances and the chances of your ‘oppo’. This impression is based on where the woods are lying and which team the woods belong to because that determines the channels that are available and the choice of shots. Sometimes I will choose a shot because it gives me the opportunity to restrict still further the options available to the other side. If, after all this analysis, the guy simply bungs it up the middle with his straight wood and splatters the lot of them, it sort of spoils the fun. To be fair to my ‘oppo’ he was a decent player and pulled off some really good shots but it never seems quite “right” to me. Ironically, towards the end of the match there were a couple of ends where he would have sold his granny to have a normal curvy wood in his hand. I think I’m going to have to get over my “straight woods” pouting.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – May 18th 2014 first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

It was Bubba what done it; well, Bubba and a “happy place”. The “happy place” belonged to my 3rd who mentioned it when I had a chance to talk to him about the season ahead. I had sort of planned a speech about how his despondency last season – when he was playing poorly, or when we were losing – was having an adverse affect on my own form, and was probably de-motivating the 1st and 2nd. I was going to ask him to stop moaning about his own team-mates (especially in front of the opposition) and to try to be more cheerful in general when we were playing. I wanted to acknowledge his competitiveness but also wanted him to recognise the essentially “amateur past-time” nature of our hobby without seeming to dilute in his eyes my own attitude to playing and winning. The trouble was that every time I went through it in my head it sounded like terribly complicated psycho-babble, and it also sounded very much like I was blaming him. I had to speak to him but I was dreading it.

I was dreading it partly because behind the psycho-babble was the logical, if somewhat brutal, conclusion of my overall theory of hitting and throwing: that unhappy people can’t swing their limbs pendulumically. For one thing their unhappiness tenses their muscles and for another their unhappiness clouds their imagination and prevents sharp images of perfect woods forming – and so unhappy people were less likely to throw good woods and win bowls matches. Of course, in the realm of a generous and kind hearted attitude for my fellow man – for which I am generally loved and respected – I also wanted my 3rd just to be happy. The problem is expressing that genuine sentiment when you know that it is not the only sentiment

Interestingly, however, under the pressure of having to talk about our “form” face to face, I came up with some words that had it that I needed him to be upbeat and bright because it helped to relax me. He immediately said that I was not to worry because he himself had decided that he was going to start to live in a “happy place”. I assumed he meant during our games of bowls but I suppose he could have meant his whole life! What a relief and what a brilliant start to the season.

For his part, Bubba won the Masters just before we had our first match of the season. As a result of his victory I came across a number of quotes and opinions about him and more particularly about his attitude towards “technique”. Since his last victory in the Masters, I had become aware that he had a somewhat unique approach to hitting golf balls but I hadn’t taken much notice because I had written him off as simply a long hitter of the sort so irritatingly beloved of the American commentators on their golf channels. After his second victory at Augusta I took a bit more notice and started to warm to him. I read that his philosophy on playing golf could be summed up in the slogan “think shot not swing”. The slogan fitted in with my own philosophy on playing and I thought a lot about it as our first match approached. I also re-read last season’s peregrinations as posted on this blog, and as a result I decided I was going to have to change how I thought of myself as a player.

Up to now I have thought of myself as a natural “non-timer” who, through the application of my theory of hitting and throwing, occasionally rises to the delightful heights of being a non-natural “timer”. Reading again of my travails last year, and thinking about Bubba’s imprecation to think “shot not swing”, it came to me that maybe it was time that I thought of myself as a non-natural “timer, and that I dumped the image of myself as a hopeless hacker struggling against the yoke of genetically imprinted ineptitude.

If I could think of myself as a “timer” who occasionally mislaid the genie of “timing”, I would be able to forget about the physics of the swing and assume that, after all these years, my muscle memory would default to swinging pendulumically, and instead concentrate on thinking “shot not swing”.

It also occurred to me that if I took my pendulumic swing for granted and thought of myself as a non-natural “timer” then it would be easier for me to adopt the confident, ever so slightly cocky mien that so suited playing a sport that depended wholly on being able to swing a relaxed arm under severe pressure. “Shot not swing” – I liked it, it suited me.

And so to the game. Well, games, actually, because at the time of writing we have played three matches – and we have won them all! Of course, there have been wobbles but, true to his word, my 3rd has found his “happy place” and seems determined to stay in residence despite provocations. As predicted the rest of us have benefitted and we are going well. My new identity has enabled me to find a really good rhythm and the woods are behaving beautifully. “Shot not swing” is the mantra; inwardly cocky is the pose; beautifully relaxed swinging arm is the result; and a big fat happy place is where we are all living. For now.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – May 8th 2014 first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

On Wednesday we played at home again, my “third” was back and it was a fine evening for bowls. As it turned out we had all our players available for selection (16) and for the first time in years we had to ask some people not to play. This is a developing issue for the team, and the question that needs answering goes like this: “Mr Johnson takes up bowls late in life. He has never really been interested in sport but his new neighbour invites him to play. He enjoys the company, the team is desperate for players, and it is a pleasant enough diversion on a Saturday afternoon. A couple of seasons later and Mr Johnson is barely any more proficient than when he started. But he’s reliable and good company. A young lad starts playing and is immediately proficient and keen. At what point do you have to say to Mr Johnson: “Um, about next week’s game, you see we’ve got too many players available, and although we feel that loyalty should count for something, and in a way you’ve enabled us to keep going through the dark times, well, this is a sporting club after all, and . . “

And then George is not available because his wife’s sister has come to stay and they want George to take them shopping, Arnold has gone on his annual 5-week cruise around the South China Seas, Bill has a touch of sciatica and Derek has gone to his daughter’s in Cheam. In the blink of an eye Mr Johnson needs to be approached about turning out for the team. Not easy, is it?

Or another scenario that is ever-present concerns the happiness of the other club in the town. Rumours circulate constantly that there is unrest, disruptive influences etc. What would we do if any of their players asked to join us? According to our constitution we could “vet” their application, but in reality we would find it very difficult to refuse an approach. The potential for disruption is huge, and at any moment the trouble could pass and they would return to their old club leaving us with lots of noses out of joint.

It is of some intellectual fascination to me how fragile voluntary institutions are, although from the outside they can look immensely stable and unchanging. We are fine at the moment and, if anything, slightly thriving – if that’s not oxymoronic. But at any moment we could be blown apart by circumstances completely outside our control or influence. It’s “300 robins” again.

My “third” was back and I had the same front two: the old gentleman and the 12 year old. They played the same as they had done on Saturday, but that ended up being a problem for me. The opposition played really well, particularly the lead and second, which is quite unusual at this level. Their second, in particular, was outstanding.

The problem was to do with my “third”: he gets irrational when he is losing, particularly when he is losing and playing well. He was playing really well and I wasn’t. The opposition were playing really well – and winning easily – and my front two were playing as well as can be expected. His irrationality first turned on the front two and then, embarrassingly, on the opposition. I wanted to defend the front two for their efforts but this wasn’t the time or place. I felt bad for the opposition but they’re all adults and can defend themselves. I knew from experience that if I could only play well and win a few ends then he would calm down and shut up. But the harder I tried the worse I got and the more and more improbable grew his mutterings. It was all made worse by the fact that the next door rink was also losing heavily and so the team was in danger of a thrashing at home.

About 5 ends from the finish, we were down about 16 shots and facing another long jack. Their lead put up a couple of decent woods but both were beaten by our lead’s two. For the first time in the match their “second” couldn’t make his count. My “third” put one in and one behind so that when it came to my turn we were holding three. My oppo went first and bowled to disrupt the head but missed the line. I put in a good one – phew! Last wood for them, last chance to save the head and he hit the lines spot on. But he was playing with a bit of pace and so I couldn’t be certain where it was going to go. Sure enough it hit a delicious gap and sped to the ditch. Deep breath, onto the mat, easy swing, let the arm swing through, it will go, don’t worry. And it did, for a 5.

My lead was so surprised to be bowling the jack that he bowled it yards short of where I had indicated and it proved to be a masterstroke as we put in four crackers to pick up nine shots on two ends.

I looked across the scoreboards and calculated that, amazingly, we were slightly ahead in the match. The jolt of “five” followed by a “four” knocked them out of their stride and we won the last few ends to lose by just eight. The end rink won by over 25 shots in the end and so we won the match 8-4.

At the end of a midweek match we put on tea and biscuits in the pavilion. We follow the usual formalities of a raffle and thank you speeches. At the end of my speech I announced the result of the singles final and asked the boy to stand to take his applause. In the kitchen afterwards, he came in and thanked me for the tribute. It was a nice moment.

Before I left, I was shown a piece of A4 on which was a matrix of names and numbers – a league table! Although it was in the upper half, I picked up our name straight away. It looked out of place just below the leaders. The man with the list said it was about three matches out of date. We had won our last three matches comfortably, one against the league leaders. As the excited chat swirled around the room, I slowly became aware that we were indeed in danger of being promoted. Now that was a de-stabilising scenario I had never considered.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – August 13th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

I arrive at the green (we’re away) and I’m in a confident, dare I say, cocky mood following yesterday’s win. Ridiculously, I get a bit uppity because they have started the preliminaries even though there’s 10 minutes to go before kick-off.

This is a throwback to the days when I had to take my kids to the bowls, which would sometimes mean that I would cut it fine getting to the green on time, and then I’d get “looks” from blokes whose chief task that morning had been to decide whether it was going to be warm enough to go without a vest, and even then would have probably asked their devoted spouse: “Do you think I need to wear a vest, dear?”. Of course, they were just a little anxious that I wouldn’t turn up at all, and my guilt-ridden interpretation did them all an injustice. I don’t know why I got uppity this time. I need to drop it.

When we got under way, I was in the same form as the night before: I played the first few ends with control, verve and complete confidence. It was fortunate for us that I had found my form at last because my front two were dire – again!

On the 5th end I could feel myself start to wobble. My front two still hadn’t managed a half decent wood between them; my “third” was starting to mutter about them discontentedly, and his own form was suffering; and, worst of all, the bits of luck that are always floating around had chosen that moment to randomly collect on their shore. I bowled my first bad wood.

I’m not going to write about the rest of the game because it was too tortuously awful an experience – relatively speaking, of course. Suffice to say that we lost, and that my lovely, lovely form deserted me, leaving me feeling abandoned and bereft.

These are strong words, I know, but I think they accurately describe how I felt after the match and for a couple more days. Not for the first time I was intrigued at the strength of the emotional response I can have after undertaking what to all intents and purposes is a fairly gentle pastime.
On Tuesday I had a call from my golf pupil and so took the opportunity to ask if he felt similarly strong emotions after losing. Between us we managed to distinguish between losing, and losing and playing badly. We agreed that the trigger for the emotions to do with “loss” was not, ironically, losing but playing badly.

So why does playing badly trigger these particular emotions? I think it starts with the fact that competition tests your nerve, your courage, your reaction to pressure. And when you play badly, it is your nerve that has failed; the little boy in you has failed to be “brave”, and you have cracked under pressure.

Why this sense of failure should trigger feelings of abandonment and bereftness is more difficult to understand. For me, the phrase: “you have let yourself down” is helpful if you consider that the “you” and the “yourself” are separate. “Yourself” is the person the world gets to see via your deeds and words. “You” is the inner person who is responsible for choosing and then delivering those words and deeds. When you play badly, the outer person has to take the humiliation but it’s the inner person’s “fault”, so to speak. So you feel let down, abandoned and bereft.
Notwithstanding this psycho-babble explanation, all I really know is that they are strong emotions and that they go deep, to somewhere fundamental.

We had a match on the Wednesday against our local rivals and I was determined to use my ponderings on emotions to my advantage. I decided that I would remind myself continually through the game that I was good at this, that I loved being good, that I loved playing with a bit of swagger, and that I loved it most when I was playing well and the chips were down and I had the opportunity to be heroic. I tried to enrol my “third” in my scheme by requesting that he also played with a sense of fun and adventure. He nodded in agreement but looked a little puzzled and unconvinced.
For the first time this season my front two played well (a slight change of personnel helped) and we ended up easy winners.

The following Saturday we were again at home to the division’s top team and we thrashed them. I played like a dream and still haven’t stopped smiling.

The following Wednesday, I played a singles against my “third”. That’s for next time.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – July 27th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

It’s 20 across and I’m one down. In my hand I’m holding the last wood that is going to be bowled in the match. I’m playing in the next round of the two-wood singles. It’s a Friday evening.

It is for these moments that I bothered in the first place. Bothered, that is, to have hurled, for most of my post adolescent life, my lateral thinking, problem-solving intelligence at the mystery of “timing”.

It is for these moments that I have sought to furnish myself with a precise modus operandi for giving myself the best chance of locating my “timing”, so that when I need it most, at least I have got something to hang on to, something that is rational, logical and – most of the time – works.

And it is at these moments that my triumph over my past is most poignant, because in the fleeting moment that it takes to deliver this bowl, I will re-live my long and agonising journey from natural incompetence to unnatural competence. And in that moment, whether the outcome is favourable or not, I will feel the exquisite satisfaction of the creative process. For it is deep in my soul that this is my process, I made it up, I “discovered” it. As the wood follows its curve, trundling to its destination, it is my “genius” at work.

I had played well in the match but my opponent had played surprisingly well, continuing the theme of the competition thus far. Actually, I had played well inasmuch as I hadn’t failed to take any chances offered to me by my opponent. If he played a poor-ish one, I would beat it; if he played two poor-ish ones, I’d beat them both, twice. But what I hadn’t been able to do is beat any of his good ones. I know from experience that when I am playing really well, I relish the chance to beat a good one because of the opportunity to inflict a crushing psychological blow. This time, if he bowled a good one, there was no relish in me; it wasn’t quite dread but it was definitely a resigned acceptance. He had gone on a run of starting ends with an exceptionally good wood, which had hauled his score back to 19-20. At the next end, his first wood nestled –once again! – against the jack. My first wood whistled past. His second wood was decent and I was facing defeat. I bowled a really good second wood to beat his decent second wood and stopped him taking the match.

We shook hands before he bowled the jack on the last end. I counted on him being a little nervous and would have been sunk if he had put up yet another close one. He bowled up the left hand side and left it short. I had wanted to go up the left hand side and now had to weigh up the risk of clattering into his short one. I decided to go up the same side. I hit the line I wanted but knew it was too fast. It was only a little too fast but it ended up far enough away to give him hope: it wasn’t the spirit sapping wood I had been hoping for.

He bowled. I could tell it was on the right line and only a little fast. As it passed his first short wood, I saw that it was travelling faster than I thought and for a moment glimpsed the delicious possibility of not having to bowl my last wood to win the match. But it grazed the jack just enough to divert it towards my wood. It hit my wood full in the face and stopped. It wasn’t lucky so much as a little bit fortunate, if you know what I mean.
So, on to the mat I step needing a close wood to win the game. I looked at going up the right hand side because the short wood was still a threat and the two close woods were on that side thus providing a little bit of potential insurance if I was slightly off with line and pace. But the lines on the left hand side were so much more familiar that, despite the short wood, I just had to go that way.

The decision made, I looked down the line I wanted, and then that amazing thing happened that makes playing games worthwhile: the “wood” I wanted “came into my arm”. I realise that that is an odd thing to say, and I’m not entirely sure I understand the phenomenon or that I am going to be able to get across what I mean. It is a physical sense, located in the arm but involving the whole body, of what the perfect wood you need would feel like to bowl. It is an extraordinary feeling, and when it happens you know you are in some sort of sensory bubble or zone, where the conscious, subconscious, imagination and nervous system are working as one to execute a highly specific, clearly identified physical task. You also know that for the task to be executed it is simply a matter of letting it happen, that one’s only task is to unbolt the door, there is nothing more to consider, the die is cast. You also get a sense that it is very important to just let it happen, to not interfere, to accept the role of simply unbolting the door.

I unbolted the door and was able to glory in the experience of feeling my body execute the precise sequence of movements I had just experienced as a sort of sensory foreshadowing. Because the actual replicated the imaginary, I knew instantly that this was going to be the perfect wood I needed to win the match. The visual evidence of its line and speed provided a continuous stream of immensely satisfying confirmation of the fact that I had delivered the perfect wood. It rolled up to the short wood, glided past, curled a little and eased to a stop a few inches from the jack.

We shook hands again, said “well played” to each other, picked up the paraphernalia you need to play flat green bowls and wandered to the pavilion. I bade my farewells and walked home. The sense of satisfaction was profound. It came from knowing that that last wood was a culmination, a culmination that I am able to repeat, but a culmination nonetheless. I do feel a little guilty about how ridiculously happy it makes me feel. But I can put up with that.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – July 26th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

Wow, it was hot! We lost. You need to know that straight away so that you can judge my comments in their correct context. We snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by dropping a pathetic “5” on the last end. Luckily, I had a valid excuse to leave early and forgo the post-match jollifications. I don’t think my temper would have subsided in time for my speech and it would have adversely affected the comic timing I can usually rely when I deliver my habitual post-prandial joke.

It is unusual for me to drop a “5” on the last end. When the chips are down I can usually put one close, somehow; but this time both my woods rolled serenely passed the jack and into bowling oblivion. They were decent enough deliveries, just a bit too long. The “decentness” took the edge off my temper and shortened the recovery period, so that I was more or less over it by Monday lunchtime.

I had walked to the green in confident mood having bowled beautifully on the Wednesday evening and really looking forward to the game. On reaching the changing facility (shed), I was met by the news that the “captains” had agreed to shorten the match to 18 ends (from 21) because of the “adverse weather conditions”: that is, hot and sunny. I was instantly cross because I look forward so much to playing, and we only play once a week, and the season is short enough as it is without artificially shortening the games.

I was tying the laces on my foam bottomed, brown bowling shoes, and muttering discontentedly when the brain fog of annoyance cleared just long enough for a penny to drop, and thus a blurt to be blurted: “… but I’m the bloody captain!?”.

The agreement had in fact been negotiated between their captain and our Treasurer who does a lot of the “captainy” bits because he likes doing them but doesn’t like to be the official “Captain”. I sought him out and told him that it was to be 21 ends. He demurred because he had the welfare of the players at heart and it was, in his words, “bloody hot”. I agreed that it was “bloody hot” but that bowls is after all a summer game wholly designed to be played in just these sort of weather conditions (it’s why we have to wear “whites”, after all). Granted conditions such as they were don’t often occur in our part of the world but they are hardly “adverse”. He pouted for a few seconds; I held my gaze; I smiled; he removed his pout and said: “You’d better find Bob and tell him”. I nodded minutely and strode off to find “Bob”.

Bob turned out to be the bloke I had had a little difficulty with when we had played them at their place; and as I approached him he eyed me warily. “Hi, Bob”, I said, “I’m Colin . . . the Captain”. He turned away from me and broadcast a hurt and confused look to his team-mates. I think he was expecting a change of plan, and he wanted the “boys” to know that if there was to be a change of plan then it wasn’t his fault, it was wholly the fault of this nutty club who seem to have a multitude of interchangeable officials. The boys took no interest whatsoever because they had already begun the all-consuming pre-match ritual of swapping Christian names – “Hi, Ron it is. Have a good game.” – and shaking hands, and getting the names confused, and then forgetting some of the names, and then wishing it was a rule that everyone had their name stitched on their jumper. [At home, I’ve got into the habit of demanding everyone’s attention by bellowing a welcome message and then announcing who has won the toss and will therefore bowl the first jack. It sort of works; but because it nearly always come after the name swapping then I am conscious of the fact that I am bellowing at a couple of dozen brains already addled by having to match four names to four humans, mostly without the aid of helpful stitching. Add in a copious amount of deafness and it is no wonder that as I march off to the other end of the green, mat in hand, I can hear a small of chorus of “Whose jack did he say it was?”, answered by “I don’t know, I was asking Reg if he knew Don White who worked in the smelting plant.”]
When Bob finally turned back towards me, I fixed him with a stare, smiled coldly and said “It’s 21 ends”. He made as if to argue, muttered something about the weather and prior agreements and whatnot, and so, tilting ever so slightly towards him, I said: “It’s a league match, we play 21 ends”. He muttered on, inaudibly now, so I finished him off with “I’m the Home captain – it’s my decision.”, and with that turned triumphantly and went off to find my rink.

But, of course, the whole episode rattled me and I played like a drain for the first third of the game. That annoyed me even more and so by the time my daughters turned up to not watch me I was in a right old stew. Seeing them being blithely unaware of my silly old temper brought me instantly back to my senses and I immediately started to smile and to put the bowls close. And now something more interesting happened: I started to get annoyed with my front two and the opposition because my front two were abysmal and the opposition were just annoying.

Having been snapped back to a state of happy perspective by my indifferent family, I found that being annoyed by the opposition had the opposite effect to the effect of being annoyed with myself for playing badly and then blaming it on the pre-match 18-ends “incident”. Rather than make me play worse it heightened my desire to play well and win, which in turn heightened my sense of the all important rhythm and line. The result was a sequence of quite stunning woods. This success then led to me being infected with a sort of insouciance, which seemed to further relax me while at the same time heightening again my sense of rhythm and line. The whole deal lasted about eight or nine ends but was on the wane by the time we reached the last end, helped on its way by some surfacing external worries.

However, it made me consider “insouciance” as an aid to better bowling. In another context it would be called “confidence”, but this is a rather hackneyed term and so I prefer insouciance. Whilst practising, I found that I could adopt an insouciant attitude as I was considering the line and rhythm of the shot to be played. It occurred as a sort of “cocky-ness”, that actually this was going to be a snorter of a wood, that there was absolutely nothing to fear, that I would “show ‘em”. It was the sort of attitude that would have you grinning rather than smiling.

I knew a darts player once who created a whole alter-ego to use when he was playing. The alter-ego was arrogant and showy, and would easily laugh off the occasional stray dart, and would take out big scores like it was his right. He even created a name for his “character” and gave him a physical motto which wasn’t unlike Usain Bolt’s “archer” pose. Unfortunately, the alter-ego got more and more difficult to locate without recourse to more and more alcohol.

I think the trick to insouciance is to not give a stuff when the shots don’t come off; so that when it’s time for the next shot the belief is fully intact despite recent evidence casting doubt. I’m going to try it on Wednesday when I play my first singles game for years. Of course, my opponent will be wholly unaware and completely unaffected by the adopted arrogance crackling inside my consciousness; except, of course, for the external manifestation of a string of perfect and near-perfect woods.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – July 13th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

So, it’s a Wednesday. It’s six o’clock in the evening and it’s boiling. The green is fast, the sun is fierce and I’ve left my floppy hat at home. Bad start.

It’s my first game of singles for years. Singles is the format that dominates crown green bowls – the version of the game I grew up playing – but only gets played in flat green bowls in long drawn out tournaments that can take months to complete. The dominant format in flat green bowls is “rinks”. This is the format where a side is made up of four mini-teams of four players: each player having two woods each.

I’m a skip. This means that I play last in my squad of four. When it is my turn to bowl there are at least 12 woods already around the jack. The art of skip bowling is to choose the right option from a considerable number and then execute that precise shot. Not often is the right option merely to bowl the wood close to the jack. Not often, actually, is bowling the wood close to the jack an available option anyway, when there can be up to 12 woods barring the way.

Singles in flat green bowling is usually played with four woods per player. The format chosen for our first club competition in the last 5 years at least, is a two-wood singles. So, I’m stood on the mat, in a searing heat, facing a bare jack on a fast green with only two woods to play. It’s enough to make me homesick, and a sense of being back in Llanrwst playing bowls on a lightning fast green wells up in me. Momentarily, I think of my Dad: he would have loved this.

It’s not the only memory to make its presence felt as I slip to a wholly unexpected 2-8 scoreline (the format is first to 21). My opponent is playing well – much better, in fact, than I have ever seen him play before. In the first few matches of this tournament, the standard of play of the team’s lesser lights (in what is there first ever game of singles) has quickly become a talking point: there’s something going on. Players who, in the rinks format in a Saturday league game, often perform hopelessly are playing heroically in a two-wood singles competition. I thought it would be the opposite. In fact, when I heard that there was a desire for some sort of singles competition, I feared the worst. I fully expected the beginners and lesser lights to feel exposed by the lack of hiding places in singles: I put their enthusiasm down to naivety.

How wrong I was. To a man they have loved every minute of the competition. So, what is going on?

1. Two-wood flat green singles is a less demanding game than crown green singles. This is because it is technically easier to get a wood close to a jack when you are bowling up and down the same strip of turf. The lines to the jack barely alter and the variations in length between jack and mat are limited.

2. Playing for yourself, as it were, is less demanding than playing for a team – especially when that team is part of a larger team. [One of the great lost opportunities of modern sport is that professional golf has evolved into an individual game with the strokeplay format dominant. Few, if any, of these tournaments can match the sustained interest and competitive intensity that has been witnessed at the Ryder Cup over the past couple of decades. For some reason professional golf has not evolved into a city/state based team game with national leagues. It’s a shame.]

3. They haven’t experienced the crippling humiliation of being thrashed at a game that only requires you to roll a bowl a few yards along a piece of manicured turf – and having no one else to blame.

Okay, I’m 8-2 down to this gentleman who is playing a lot better than I expected. My rhythm is good. My deliveries have been fine. My visualisation is starting to come together. I’m doing fine; it is just that his woods are ending up closer than mine.

His first one on the next end is another decent wood but beatable. I step on to the mat; I visualise . . . well I try to visualise, because what happens is that being 2-8 down to a player I know I am expected to beat easily, and playing singles on a fast green with only two woods, brings back a sense of all the humiliating defeats I had suffered as a player before I discovered the answer to “timing”. It is part of the nostalgic memory I mentioned earlier. My attempts at visualisation are thwarted by panic. The panic is distinctive; it is the notion that I am utterly unable to put this wood in my hand anywhere close enough to the jack to nip this humiliating experience of falling behind to a lesser player in the bud. The panic blocks all my attempts to visualise the rhythm etc. It also pushes me to throw the wood before I am ready, with inevitable consequences.

Encouraged by my dismal effort, my opponent bowls an even better second and is lying a decent two and looking at going 10-2 up. This is a crucial moment in the match. By the time it is my turn to occupy the mat, I have said “hello” to my panic, made myself smile at my own frailties, taken a very deep breath, searched for a very happy memory of my delicious rhythm, adopted a somewhat cocky pose and forced the panic to become my servant by using it to intensify the visualisation of the shot I need.

On the mat, I’m in a bubble and I execute a lovely, lovely rhythm. The wood hits the spots and curves away at that delicious pace that you just know is the right one. It rolls to within a few inches of the jack. My opponent nods and mutters acknowledgement; I nod back and say: “Thank you”.

He plays well for the rest of the game but I win 21-12. Another victory over the past.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – July 17th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

What a scorcher! And we haven’t got a game because the opposition couldn’t raise a team. The first really beautiful afternoon of the summer and we haven’t got a game. Bugger!

I could go on about the parlous state of the game when a club can’t raise a team in the middle of the summer, but to do so would be to give an impression of perspective, breadth of vision. Whereas the truth is that I’m gutted because I am just about to hit some form, I need “green-time”, and I can’t play next week either because I’m away for the day. It’s got the makings of a crisis.

We convene anyway in our shed of a clubhouse and somehow two trebles get organised. I say “somehow” because after announcing my arrival, I slide out and wait greenside with my crossword and Factor 50.

Although I am both Captain and Chairman, and therefore the natural person to do the organising, I deliberately take no part in the process. For reasons I am aware of but would struggle to explain, I have evolved a Tito-esque form of leadership at the Club. I occupy the important positions of responsibility and authority but I “do” next to nothing. I do “do” the stuff that nobody else wants to do – the post-prandial speeches and the AGM (and, very occasionally, I resolve a smouldering dispute before it catches fire), but I don’t “do” the stuff that normal captains and chairmen do. And it seems to work, but I’m not sure why. It wasn’t always thus, but now it is, and everything gets done, in a fashion, by all sorts of people, and there’s not a blazered official in sight.

Of course there are drawbacks. It would take me around 45 seconds to organise 12 names into four sets of 3 to play two matches of trebles. The presence of a tricky cryptic crossword and a tub of Factor 50 was no accident: they were borne out of experience.

When we eventually coalesced into our trebles, I found myself teamed up with my normal start-off man who is suffering a virtual collapse in form and the 12-year old who has only ever hurled a few woods in his short life. As I said, there are drawbacks.

The boy had with him his Dad’s bright red woods. In the week I had played a few ends with him and his Dad and he was playing with black woods. When the first wood went careering out of his hand at virtual right-angles, I became suspicious. I picked up the wood and realised that it was a size 7; that is, designed to fit the hand of a very large, fully grown male of the species; ie his Dad.

They were only practice ends and so I walked to his end and asked why he was playing with his Dad’s woods? “Jason told me to”, came his ready reply. Jason, his elder brother, looked at me with a wrinkled nose beneath a worried frown that said:       “Because you have taken the unusual step of walking to our end in the middle of an end, although it is only a practice end, I am now fully aware that the red woods were probably not a good idea; and I’m hoping that you are not going to ask me if I can remember why I ever thought they might be a good idea because I can only remember thinking that as an elder brother with 5 years experience of bowling I should maybe offer an idea to my little brother who has no experience of bowling. But I really have no idea what ideas are – especially good ones.”       I pursed, and dragged the little one off to the clubhouse to find something more suitable.

Against all the odds we had a decent game although my rhythm had not completely recovered from last week’s psychological mauling. The last wood of the match summed it up. The jack just a yard from the ditch, the scores level but they are holding shot with a close-ish wood. I have an open, swinging hand but miss the line with a perfectly weighted wood. Aaaarrrgh!!!

But it’s the performance of the 12 year old that gets me thinking. The fact is, hopeless as he is, it is obvious that he is a natural competitor. We are bowling 3 woods each, and most of the time his third wood is better than his second, which itself was better than his first. Granted, all three woods were, most of the time, fairly hopeless in the context of the match, but that mattered not a jot to him as he strove in his inexpert way to get better each time he was on the mat. His striving was unimpeded by the embarrassment of being hopeless, by the anxiety that comes with being part of a small team, by being amongst adults most of whom were strangers to him. He was just having fun trying to get that pesky bowl to land somewhere near that jack.

Two thoughts formed: 1. You can’t teach competitiveness            2. We should all have his attitude.

We’d finished by 5 o’clock and the sun was still blazing and so 8 of us played a game of rinks (4 against 4, two woods each). Thought number 2 was buzzing around my consciousness and so I had a good laugh at myself for my inveterate seriousness when it comes to throwing bowls at jacks. Immediately, the sense of being able to imagine the whole swing, that I had a fortnight ago, came back. And, surprise surprise, the woods started to hit the spots with that deliciously identifiable perfect pace.

The last wood of this little game was a perfect contrast to my afternoon’s other last wood. This time, I had very little room but knew from the other ends we had played in this direction that I could afford to be a little outside the line as long as I had an inch-perfect pace. I had to beat a wood that was barely nine inches from the jack from a distance of about 30 yards. My wood looked a little wide all the way down but curled beautifully at the end to nestle in right behind the jack. I got a clap.

It is the inevitability that stays with you. The inevitability of the wood doing what you want it to do when you have “timing” at your disposal. The addictiveness of that feeling of knowing that the shot is going to be perfect, even before you have played it, is what is at the heart of natural competitiveness. It is what makes us all go back, time and time again, to repeat ad nauseum the acts of shot-making that our chosen sport demands. It is what drives the pursuit of pointless perfection. The little boy’s got it. And the less he realises he’s got it the more innocent pleasure he will have from it.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – June 29th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

Today’s piece is about what can happen when you start a match already in a bad mood. Or, to be more accurate, the perils of starting a match when you’re already in a bad mood; or, the inadvisedness of starting a match etc etc.

I may as well tell you now that this piece does not include a stunning insight into how NOT to start a match in a bad mood. It won’t offer, either, a solution to curing a bad mood when said bad mood is having a deleterious effect on one’s performance. In fact, I might just as well end the piece now with the simple imprecation: “Don’t start a match in a bad mood”, and leave it at that. Except that my story may offer a little solace to those who have been, and will be, similarly afflicted.

So, I start the match in a bad mood. But, after last week, the rhythm and the swing thoughts are in perfect harmony and all is well for the first few ends. It is probably obvious to anyone in my vicinity that I am in a bad mood but it is not affecting my delivery and so, bowl by bowl, my mood incrementally lifts.

The first delay to the mood lifting process comes when my front two still haven’t put a wood near the jack and we are already on the fifth end. Me and my third are playing well enough to be comfortably ahead, but we’re not because the front two’s abject performance so far has meant that all our efforts have been towards rescuing ends or damage limitation. Normally, I would be able to easily rise above my frustration at their uselessness and offer gentle and courteous encouragement, but I’m in a bad mood and so smiles and soothing words fail me.

They, of course, are fully aware of their failings and interpret my dark looks as being caused by their poor play. This increases their anxiety, which tightens their muscles and they play even worse. I am only too aware of this connection between anxiety and performance, and I want to break the cycle before it’s too late but my pre-existing bad mood gets in the way, which makes my mood worse.

Just short of half way through we play an end where for the first time I come to the mat with an open hand and we are holding a few. I’m playing well anyway and can feel myself relax still further at the prospect of not having to perform heroics. For the first time this season I step forward in complete control and roll two beautiful woods right on to the jack. The first one has put pressure on my oppo and he has pulls his first one narrow. I’m standing behind him as he attempts to rescue the desperate situation and see immediately that he pulls his second one too, but worse this time. A couple of yards short of the head it clips an outlier and rolls into the count. My third walks back up the green holding just one digit aloft.

Now I am on the cusp of a really bad mood. My front two bowl a quartet of stinkers and I’m back in the role of rescuer-in-chief. The perfect rhythm of my last two woods is still in my arm and my first one goes close to avert disaster but still leaves them holding one. For my second I can see the perfect play. I step forward confidently and put a peach of a swing on it. It has gone maybe 10 feet when I realise I have put the bias on the wrong side: a fundamentally stupid error.

I’m off the cliff now and hurtling towards an all-encompassing downer. Just like in the cartoons when Wile E Fox runs off the edge of a cliff and has enough time to contemplate his situation and lack of options before inevitably plummeting, so I seem to be in complete control of my faculties and have perfect insight into the inherent dangers of letting misfortune upset my hard earned equilibrium. I know exactly what I need to do to rescue the situation: I’ve written about it often enough. I smile at my third, acknowledge my oppo’s sympathetic remarks, I assess the state of the game and the quality of the opposition, I bring back the very recent memory of bowling two perfect woods, I even take a few deep breaths. I look at the beautiful surroundings and note my immense good fortune to be living in a civilised place doing nice things with nice people, healthy in body and mind with a caring, loving family.

Then I plummet. And in plummeting I revert to type and start the inevitable process of dismantling. Having only last week re-remembered that dismantling the physical is a sure way to ruin, I set about dismantling the mental. The result is that instead of being a pregnant giraffe on stilts, I am a temporarily paralysed pregnant giraffe on stilts as I hazily remember that I mustn’t under any circumstances interfere with the physical. The rest of the game passes tortuously.

Being well brought up I am able to get through the post-match formalities with a glaze of civilised small-talk masking the ever-deepening interior gloom. Luckily, when I get back home, a serendipitous confluence of unlikely circumstance mean that I am not required to function as a member of a close-knit family for a good hour or so. I use this hour wisely: I sit stock still, head bowed staring blankly at the oatmeal carpet, the dirty oatmeal carpet.

I’m not often in a bad mood, and the experience of starting a match in a bad mood only reinforces my belief that clarity of purpose is a paramount goal for the games player. Mood fog is bad. It should be banned.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – June 22nd first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.

It’s back. OMG, what a relief! I love playing well. I love being a skip and playing well. I love it with the identical intensity that I hate being a skip and not playing well. And it is so easy. I’m always staring straight at it but it always takes a few games before I can see it. And then when I do see it I get mad because it feels as if I have needlessly suffered the anguish of playing badly and all the memories it dredges up.

It goes like this. First, you have to “get” the swing. For me it’s been years since I discovered the “timing” swing and so even after 6 months’ hibernation it comes back quite quickly. Next comes the visualising; that takes a bit longer to return. Initially, the anxiety about the swing gets in the way, and then you need a bit of meaningful competition – that is, the threat of humiliation – to get the imagination revved up. The result is that the visualisation comes back in fits and starts, which makes what happens next inevitable. And what happens next is the really annoying bit.

You see, the swing starts to function consistently quite quickly after the re-start to the season, and quite soon after that the visualisation makes occasional appearances. When they happen to coincide, that feeling of being in control of the bowl returns and it is exciting, and intoxicating, and can make a man dream. The dream is simple: it is that all the bowls you ever bowl are like that last one. So, naturally, thoughts turn to what exactly made that last bowl so perfect, and it is at this very juncture that my inglorious sporting past has its annual period of revenge over its conqueror. Because, season after season, just a few weeks in, my mind will go looking for a solution to the bad woods and it will by default concentrate initially on the physical because, I suppose, it is the physical I spent so long trying to solve. And as soon as I start looking at the physical for a solution I return very quickly to being the bowler I was before I solved “timing”: useless.

It is always stuff like “stand still”, “let your arm swing beneath your shoulder”, “hold the wood lightly”, “don’t allow too much flexion in the wrist”, “don’t forget to bowl on the out-breath” and on, and on, and on, until you get to the point that the only description that does any justice to how I’m feeling standing on a mat trying to get a bowl to go anywhere near where I want it to go is a pregnant giraffe on stilts.

It’s not as if I haven’t written at considerable length about the need to specifically NOT fiddle with the physical elements of the swing. It’s not as if I haven’t devoted a considerable portion of my intellectual problem-solving energy to disentangling the complex relationship between conscious and sub-conscious, just so that the player has a practical, unbreakable, intellectually rigourous modus operandi. And yet still, year after year, at that moment in time when the physical has flown in to its summer residence, and the mental has hologramatically re-formed, and the bowls are starting to hit the spots, and the perennial pursuit of pointless perfection is edging its way to the top of the dominating drives list – jostling with nourishment, parenting and future financial security – my brain latches on to some physical tic, some bodily gimmick as if this time it is definitely the “answer”, the new “swing Messiah”. Oh, it is so tiresome.

And all the time the real solution is staring me in the face. In fact, it is only when the humiliation of being useless is at its most exquisite, like the pain from an acne spot as your fingernail presses a divide-line down its middle, when the uselessness is so useless that it becomes comic, it is only then that I finally notice it. And then I’m overwhelmed with relief, and a sense of profound obtuseness.

So what is the “it”? The “it” is that at the moment when the swing is about to start its journey back to the target you have to resist every urge to consciously interfere by forcing a particular movement, and you have to resist by hanging on to the visualisation that you established moments earlier. In practice, at the moment when you most want to “do” something, you have to do nothing. Or, sloganising, “Don’t make it happen, LET it happen!”.

It’s not much of an “it”, and for the life of me I don’t know why it is so hard to remember. It’s not even that hard to do once you get addicted to the results it produces.

But, make no mistake, this “it” is it. It is the link between the physical and mental that defines sport as a human activity. It is where the intense personal pleasure that can be derived from sport resides. Of course, it is also where the anguish lives too.

“Don’t make it happen, LET it happen!”. Write it on your palm before you go out to play. It’s magic.

Provided by ViperChill.

The post Bowls – June 15th first appeared on itdontmeanathing.net.