My friends seemed to keep a calendar of what sport suited the time of year. Football; cricket; tennis, Football, cricket etc....I had only two categories: the football season, and the rest of the year when I would refuse to play cricket, because it didn't interest me. Tennis I could play anytime. I was a schools doubles finalist in the second year, thanks largely to Derek. He was shit hot. I was shit, but I'd been whacking the ball around for a few summers now. Usually into other people's courts. We played 'til sunstroke and a yob would break the drinking fountain. I'd joined a club the previous summer as an opportunity to play table tennis and hear Punk on the record player. Practically nobody talked to me so I had no incentive to improve my game. Cliquishness originated in tennis clubs. However, Rumpkin Simpson had recently deserted Derek for Heather Lacquer, so his choice of doubles partner was limited. I think he actually picked me to start arguments with opponents. He knew I had a shaky grasp of the rules and would argue interminably over a 'foot fault'. I also suspected that everybody who played tennis was middle class and looking for ways to cheat me. I also had incidentally (on a good day) a serve.
We made it to the final by winning a couple of matches and our opponents defaulting on about three more. To be a winner didn't come easily and I found myself regarding the Hornets with increased resentment. This quickly passed. At Shrapnel, we touched the hem of school privilege for the first time; nodded at vaguely by teachers in corridors and receiving a mention in Assembly on the morning of the final. That Friday, we were allowed to leave school after the first lesson and walked through the playground to Whiskey-Gommorah's waiting Rover. Barbara Kent and Susan Stacey were inside. They'd made it to the girls' final. I squeezed in beside Barbara, my leg hair bristling as it brushed against her thigh. Whiskey revved the engine and my heart began to pound. Shrapnel was having a good year. Our football team had won the Schools Cup 7-0 (King and Kane covering themselves in glory) but Doubles was more my thing. Derek and Susan maybe. Me and Barbara. I breathed deep and got drunk on nervousness. Fifteen minutes later, the sun baked like clay on my face, we pulled into Beaufort's Grove. I stared at a dream-like scene. A warm summer haze. The grass hot and perfect, and the whole institution cordoned off by trees as a haven of English gentrification. Our opponents hadn't turned up yet so Whiskey-Gommorah waved us in the direction of the practice court.
"Why don't you have a bit of a knockabout, eh boys?"
Likeable, unconventional, shell-shocked Whiskey.
We wandered onto a delicious choc-mint 'Dalek Death Ray' lolly court, the likes of which were familiar only from TV. Middle-aged people parted at my mildest behest. Our game took flight that first half hour and I matched Derek stroke for stroke. After 45 minutes, I admit our standard had started to drop a bit. After an hour, it was time to stop. Immediately. Give up now. Derek was flagging, but I had gone completely to pot.
We sat against the fence, suddenly aware at the enormity of what we'd done. Those fucking swots had known we wouldn't be used to this luxury and had deliberately let us play ourselves out. And look, here they finally were. They asked for a fifteen minute warm-up and we weren't going to argue. Every extra minute of recovery time for us was essential. The fact that they would then be at their peak was immaterial. Right now, I couldn't have beaten an egg.
Our two enemies sauntered onto the court and started unveiling their expensive clothes and equipment. The taller of our opponents had a large racket and put a strange spin on his service that didn't seem to have much effect. Their kit belied their ability. This was their tactic: intimidation. Ours was unconventionality: uncoordinated kit and tactical improvisation. All the other matches were entering their final phases, if not already completed. But our ordeal was still to come. Whereas nervous energy would normally now auto-pilot us to triumph, all I felt was numb. All my natural adrenaline had evaporated and I could barely get the ball over the net.
Derek dug deep into his resources. Somehow we went 3-0 up. The match went on. By sheer concentration, I was remembering how to play. Then we lost six games in succession. One set to love to the Slazenger boys. The second set began. We were playing so badly and they were so talented yet they were only just beating us. As a counter to indulging in an elitist pastime, both Derek and I would hang around at the back of the court rather than follow the 'one back' 'one at the net' formula. At this level it didn't do much harm as Derek in particular would simply fire his smashes at whoever was unlucky enough to be up front, which would usually hit them, or force them to play a stroke of self-defence which never went anywhere. I've not seen this tactic used in the professional game and perhaps it's considered bad sportsmanship, like Bodyline bowling, but it was certainly effective, at least if there was enough power in the stroke. As my serve made a comeback, we went 3-0 up again. Then they won the next six games and we'd lost the final. I remember the last point as if it was yesterday. I ran further than I imagined possible to return a ball that was autographed match point. I got it as far as the net. And flash ponce was waiting to tap in the winner. I was flummoxed. I felt cheated. I knew that if we hadn't had that sixty minute practice before the match, I wouldn't have played so badly. I threw a Mcenroesque tantrum in the changing room and swiped my badge from the sympathetic official. I felt like smashing his court up, beaten by those posh cheats...Next year, I teamed up with Ferdie Parr as Derek had wisely got himself a new partner. Yet to no avail. The managed to lose even before we did. Whereas with Derek, I'd had no coaching and no style; over the following months, I had developed some style (with no coaching). Ferdie though, was as bad as I'd been the previous year. We scraped through to the quarter finals where our by now generously over-stretched luck ran out. The competition ended the following year so I confined myself to occasional matches for the school, with indifferent results.
As one sports obsession was wilting on the baseline, another was hitting a brick wall. James Hunt's season of glory, and it was a remarkable year by any standards, had managed to almost completely pass me by. It was only by chance that Hornets changing room banter alerted me to the possibility of the Marlboro McClaren Man becoming World Champion that afternoon. Like the proverbial magic lantern given a Castrol GTX polish, the whole Formula One circus was suddenly illuminated. The cars were going through an incredibly colourful and weirdly shaped few years: Black and gold cigarette packet-style Lotuses; Patriotically panel-marked blue white and red Brabham-Fords; Bug-like, six wheeler Tyrells. I was knocked completely off my feet. Hunt inhabited an alternative universe to my own, and just like Luke and Obe Wanker in the Milleinium Falcon, his latest escapade was running into trouble. Hunt had got his nicotine-stained fingers on the prize amidst the monsoons and track spray of Mount Fuji the previous year, but now he was trapped in a technologically redundant vehicle, outpaced by the visor-screened, hideously deformed figure of Nicki Lauda. I concentrated on directing the force of my nervous energy towards him from the sanctuary of my living room on Sunday afternoons. It seemed as real as lending support in the flesh at Silverstone amongst all those flag-waving idiots. You could buy beautiful Matchbox miniatures and race them round the lounge, mirroring Hunt's heroic slides back through the field while watching the sun sink below the horizon and fretting over homework still undone. I felt for him a couple of years later when he finally ran out of competitive resources. He'd struggled against mechanical failures and the bigotry of the English sporting press for too long. But he was still an idol in my eyes. Much more so then when shacking up with Jane Birkin or being patronised by Morecambe and Wise in his championship summer. Within three editions of its launch, his monthly magazine was impossible to find. Few seemed to care as he walked away from the track that final time. The millionaire playboy who'd risked his life to save that of fellow driver, Ronnie Peterson. And his decline afterwards drew something akin to mockery. But I admired him tremendously.
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