There was a crown green bowls match underway as I walked past Salts Sports Club the other day. You get a bird's eye view from the canal towpath. From my observations, the senior people who play bowls seem generally to be quite fit and lively well into old age. Whether that is cause or effect, I'm not sure.
When I moved house, I briefly toyed with the idea of learning to play. There is a bowling club very close to where I now live. I went along to an open day and had a go... but soon remembered that all my life I've had zero hand-to-eye co-ordination. They kept telling me to 'bowl towards that shrub or to that mark on the boundary' and I'd try really hard but invariably the ball would go in a completely different direction from what I intended! Crown green bowls are weighted and slew round anyway, and the green is convex, rising slightly to the 'crown' in the centre. So you have to learn the trajectories that occur. I concluded that I showed very little promise as a player and have really not the patience to show up week after week and just be awful. I'll stick to what I know I'm reasonably good at and keep seeking to improve in those directions!
I've never even watched bowling on a green. Now in my youth you could find me on Saturdays in a bowling ally, with my father (who drove us to and fro) sitting behind reading his newspaper...bored, poor man. My teen friends and I tried our hands (and feet) at hitting the pins. I think as a young married woman I may have joined a team at church one year...and quit quite soon. No way would my arthritic hands put fingers in a ball again these days!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds rather difficult.
ReplyDeleteYou make up for it with your clever photography.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I have no hand-eye-coordination worth mentioning!
ReplyDeleteAt the Ripon Spa gardens, I like to watch a while when the senior folks play on the bowling green. As you say, they all look fit and lively, and it is nice to see that they have a good time, probably some of them having been friends for a long time.