Tales from the tramlines. Real club players, real shanked volleys, real WhatsApp groups that got out of hand.
I turned up for Monday juniors and there were new lines on court six.
Blue ones. Inside my tennis lines. Like someone had drawn a smaller, worse tennis court inside the real tennis court and hoped nobody would notice.
I noticed.
Nineteen. I have sat through nineteen committee meetings about club software. My wife keeps count. I have spent less time at my own children's weddings.
And after nineteen meetings, the system we chose still cannot tell me who wants a game.
Forty-six. That's how many times I said sorry at Tuesday's mixer. I counted. I count things when I'm nervous, it's a whole thing.
46 sorries in two hours. That's one every two and a half minutes.
March committee meeting. Any Other Business. Sue announces she is moving to Norfolk and somebody will need to take on Sunday mornings.
Long silence. Somebody coughs. The treasurer studies the biscuits with great intensity.
And I hear my own voice say: "Well. How hard can it be?"
AGM, last October. Someone says "we should have a ladder". I say, and I remember the exact words, "I can do that, it's just a spreadsheet".
It was not just a spreadsheet.
Three people from other clubs have now asked me "how do you run your mixer" so here's my answer and it's going to disappoint you because it's one thing.
Spread the good players out.
Bev has asked me about six times to write this so here it is. Short version: I tried to fix one evening of tennis and it got out of hand.
"Anyone fancy social tennis Thursday 7pm? Courts 3 and 4. First 8 to reply."
That message, or one like it, went out every week at our club for years. And then the noticeboard. Look at the noticeboard.
Six of us was lovely. Eight was fine. Ten was fine-ish. Twelve I was coping.
Thirteen people turned up on a Thursday in March and I had a clipboard, a biro that didn't work, and absolutely no idea what I was doing.
That's it. That's the post. I just want a game on Saturday.
Not a lesson. Not a league. Not a "social" where I play a 6-0 against a lovely lady who started in March and then get told off by the organiser for "not easing off" (I was easing off, Bev). Just one game, one hour, someone about my level, Saturday morning.
It's twenty to ten on a Wednesday and I'm stood at the hob counting to fourteen.
Twelve yeses, one "probably", and Keith. Keith has replied with a thumbs up. After five years I know a Keith thumbs up means yes unless it rains, or his knee goes, or there's something good on BBC Four. So that's thirteen and a Keith. Which is either three courts or three courts and a sit-out and I won't know which until about 6.55 tomorrow.
