Lawn Bowls, an Addiction

Lawn Bowls, an addiction.

No burning of bitches, no sex and no seriousness at all

I moved to mid-Wales to retire; I also wanted to break an unhealthy circle. My wife, who died six years ago, had a circle of friends who all felt duty-bound to try to look after me as my Barbara did. I got non refuseable offers of dinner four or five nights a week.

I was well off, had a good pension, and then, to cap it all, I had a good win on the national lottery. Not millions, but enough to let me dip a cowardly toe in the water. I kept it completely to myself; my life was styfling, and I needed to change it.

So I bought a house with my winnings and had enough left to "do it up". It is on the outskirts of the pretty little Welsh town of Machynlleth. It's where my maternal grandma, "Nian" came from. I wish she could see my house; it's a picture inside a picturesque village.

The house was previously owned by some poor guy who had a very bad end; he died from the effects of early-onset senile dementia. The house hadn't been cleared by flocks of scavenging relatives because the poor old boy was on his own. He had relatives, but as they had ignored him for years, he ignored them until his death. The house was sold with all its contents; the money was added to his bank balance and given to the board of trustees of the town sports hub. When I bought his house, I bought everything. It is quite a big house. I now have five bedrooms and two bathrooms, plus the en-suite to my main bedroom. I'm very much looking forward to my daughter and my grandkids visiting.

One of the bedrooms was a loft conversion and had been used as a hobby room when I bought it; it has a huge train set in it. I was going to sell it on eBay, but the guy couldn't collect immediately. He then wanted to argue about the price, and now six months later, he has just left it here. Thinking I would relist it, I packed it all away. My daughter now tells me my youngest grandson has a huge fascination with trains, so grandpa is keeping it.

However, I now had a door I didn't know I had. A board had been lent against it. The estate agent was surprised when I told her there was another room; her reaction was funny. I was a bit miffed with the surveyor I had paid a small fortune to. He had missed it as well.

When I opened the door, I found inside a mass of records, record decks, CDs, CD players, and a laptop computer. The laptop looked as though it must have been new when I bought the house. It wasn't password-protected, and there was only one programme on it. A DJ program. Now, I'm a rock and roll fan, and I've seen this programme before. A friend of mine from Surrey who was a specialist R&R DJ used it for his dances. I gave him a call.

When he talked me through it, there were thousands upon thousands of old and modern rock and roll tracks. Plus loads of other 60s, 70s, and 80s music on this computer. There was a separate mass storage unit that had a 5-terabyte capacity. It was very nearly full of music. This held a lot more interest for me than a train set.

I also had amps, speakers, lights, and a DJ controller unit, none of which I knew much about. Within a few weeks, I was fairly comfortable using the gear. I love most kinds of music; this was a very good find for me and gave me much-needed interest.

Gywenneth is my next-door neighbour. Where our gardens meet, there are the remains of a fence that has been better described as a row of posts for years. She has the floweriest garden I've ever seen. It's not one of these gardens with not a blade of grass out of place. Gwynn has cultivated wild flowers, flowers from seed, swaps with neighbours, and quite a few plants from my garden. She pinched them; between the last owner and me, the estate agent had sent in a bloke with a strimmer to keep it under control. Gwyn told me she cried when he massacred the garden with that horrible machine. So she did a daring midnight raid and saved as many plants as she could.

Gwynn loves me; I made her very happy; she does my garden for me, her way. I love it, she loves it, and I don't have that horrible feeling that I've left all the weeds and pulled up the undeveloped flowers. She won't take a penny from me, though, and if I take her for a meal at our superb local, she insists on buying it next time. She does let me drive her to the shops when I go on my weekly pilgrimage to Tesco to buy stuff that rots in the fridge, then I go into town and eat at the pub or from the chippy.

On one of our shopping trips, she told me the village bowls club wanted to put on a dance after a local derby against Carno. "What music do they play?" I asked. "Oh, we have a problem, Mike. Your predecessor next door used to play lots of good old stuff for us. The last dance we had was terrible, too, loud and too noisy, and the DJ was too young by far." She went on, "We always have a dance after the Carno game, but we must find someone more suited. I'd have slapped him just for his hair cut." Then she laughed with a wonderfully full, musical laugh.

I've never bowled in my life--well, not the sort they do here. I may be of Irish/Welsh decent, but I was brought up in the East Riding of Yorkshire. My old man was a Crown Green bowler. My god, that is a boring game. But my idea of bowls down south was worse. Old men in blazers, white shirts, club ties, and flannels Complaining about everything from the grass being half a millimetre too long to the shortening length of lady bowlers skirts. Drinking pints of warm flat beer out of tins and standing in the absolute correct order around a lawn, you had to know the password just to stand on.

Gwynn had asked me to come and bowl with them, but being a world-renown expert on swerving ladies of a certain age, I'd managed to avoid it. So feeling completely in debt regarding the huge number of hours she spent on her knees in my garden, I said, hesitatingly. "I've got all his gear."

"Pardon!" exclaimed Gwynn.

"Mike, my predecessor, I have all his gear. It came with the house; my solicitor tells me it was his wish; it went with the house."

"Have you really?" said Gwynn.

"Yes, every bit, I think". I said.

"Do you know how to use it?"

"Yes, it's quite simple, actually." I replied.

"Will you please do it for us? It's next Saturday."

My last hope was dashed. I'd nothing on, and I just couldn't lie to Gwynn.

"I'll talk to Jenny and Betty," she said. We will sort the food and get a few last-minute posters up.

"I thought Dai, who drinks in the waggon and horses, was the captain."

"Don't be silly; we don't let the men organise anything social; it would end up being a beer at the bar and a pork pie if we were lucky.

I was struggling to see the problem with that.

So next Saturday morning, I ferried all the gear down to the club. As I was plugging leads, booting the computer, and sliding sliders, guys who I knew from the three local pubs were pressing pints into my hand. I had to ask them to slow the supply down, or I wouldn't make it to the end of the game.

I got my gear ready before the game started--in fact, before any of the bowlers arrived. There were two football teams milling around, and I wondered where they played. Then Gwyn turned up with a huge fruit cake. Something was very wrong here. "Gwyn, why are you wearing a football kit?" I was just a bit confused.

"Don't be silly, Kevin; this is our club bowling uniform."

"But I thought you ladies wore skirts down to your ankles, bonnets, and funny cravats."

"Yes. About a hundred years ago. Look, we have a problem." A woman I didn't know walked past with a plate of enough ham sandwiches to feed both armies at the battle of the Somme. "Linda Price has had to go to her daughters. So we are a player short, said Gwyn!" and gave me her best. The future of the entire world is resting on your shoulders look.

"You are joking, aren't you, Gwynn?"

No, I'm not; you will be just fine."

I'll be hopeless; it will be embarrassing."

"That doesn't matter; this is the most important friend of the year, Kevin."

"It won't matter too much if it's only friendly, I said."

"Bowls friendlies are not friendly. especially if they are between rival villages." I was winning this. I could see light at the end of the tunnel.

Then Dai, who had joined in the lynch mob now surrounding me, hit me with a blow so low that I thought he had broken my kneecap. "It's for the valse," he said.

"What Valse.

"Just the Valse. If we play a rink one bowler short, we lose 25% of the shots on that rink. The village cannot afford that.

This has been a tradition for a hundred years or more."

Then he lowered his voice to admit a shameful secret. "Carno have won for the last three years." As low blows come, it was so low it just missed my ankles! I stiffened my upper lip, drew myself to my full height, and tried my last excuse.

"But I haven't got any balls, I whined."

As soon as I said it and saw the look on Gwyn's face, I knew I'd lost. That's not a problem at all, said Dai. We have dozens of club sets in the equipment shed. "By the way, Kevin, they are bowls, or wood, not balls. Come on, I'll find you a set to use that suits your hand.

When I bowled my first bowl, I bowled with the wrong hand, and my "wood" ended up on the next rink. with my next effort, I picked up one of Dai's woods and bowled so hard it went in the ditch. I was looking for a means of escape as we changed ends. "Don't worry, man," said Dai. The first two ends are trial ends; there is no scoring on these ends. Just relax, have a pint, and have a bit of fun. Bowling on the second trial end wasn't quite as embarrassing; both my woods were three yards from the Jack, but they both stayed on our rink.

Then something magical happened: my next bowl hit Jack. When I stood on the mat, I could see in my mind's eye the path my wood was going to take. This time, with my second, Dai informed me I was "a wood behind". I played the rest of the game in a similar fashion, maybe not quite as good as the third end, but I had a few scoring shots. We won our rink convincingly. The result was a winning draw! Only in bowls can you get a winning draw. We took the Valse on the overall points difference. I was very disappointed to discover there is no valse. It was broken in a scuffle involving torn blazers and missing shirt buttons years ago. No one alive has ever seen it, and there are no surviving photos.

The party lasted until the early hours. Much beer and wine was drunk. Not one crossword was heard. That night, after finding out the beer was 15p per pint cheaper than at the pub, I joined the club. I put my name down for the next friendly, and two weeks later I splashed over three hundred and fifty quid on a set of bowls that looked like Jackson Pollock painted them.

I woke up in the wrong bed; not only was I in the wrong bed, I was in the wrong house. I could hear singing from the Kitchen; I could smell bacon from downstairs; toast and the wonderfull aroma of rich strong italian coffee. I was begining to think this woman was perfect. That evening I sat down to dinner at Gywenneth's table. Beef stew, with dumplings and apple and blackberry crumble for pudding--now I knew she was perfect.

Five months later, I saw myself getting ready to do my fifth disco at the club. That afternoon, I played in the last league game of the season. The fifth disco was a joint celebration. We played Carno in the last league game of the season. League positions are: Carno and Machynlleth are in joint first place with 198 points each. No one else can catch us. The winner of that afternoon's game would win the league. There is a miniscule chance of an even draw, but everyone knows that is very unlikely. It did nealy happen; we won by one point. For half an hour, the carno lads were in tears. The cheep beer and just because they are a fantastic bunch of lads soon had them smiling and dancing with the women they brought with them.

The other part of the joint celebration is a wedding party. Yesterday, Gywenneth became my wife. I thought my life was perfect; how wrong can you be?

That was a year ago; we are still married. but she is an unfaithful bitch. If it wasn't for the apple and blackberry crumble, I'd divorce the bitch. She still plays mixed doubles with Dai.