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The kids got some tennis racquets for my birthday (not quite sure how that works out, but apparently the gift was that I didn’t have to go through the effort of buying them, which is quite a good gift). We went round to the in-laws for a barbecue and I spent a good portion of time playing tennis with Phoebe on the sloping lawn. It wasn’t quite the first time Phoebe had played - she remembered us playing on a court on holiday in Woolacombe with weeds growing through the surface, which must have been at least three years ago, so that’s an impressive memory for a 7 year old.
Today was mostly spent retrieving the ball, rather than having any rallies, but the surface was not ideal and Phoebe actually picked the basics up pretty quickly. I am not sure I am about to go all King Richard on her (though I do fancy slapping Chris Rock on prime time TV), but it is fun when the kids start to get to the age where you can play more challenging games with them. We will get to a point of equity in less than a couple of years, I’d guess, as her skills sharpen and mine decrease. So I will savour these times.
As so often with parenting, doing something with the kids is a mainly sweet bitter-sweet reminder of doing stuff with your own parents or in your own childhood. I was not as sporty as Phoebe seems to be, but I did get reasonably OK at tennis in my teens and recalled a match played against my mum on a holiday in France where I was able to give her a surprising run for her money (though she still beat me - my parents were pretty strong players and both sporty - a generation got skipped) and the hours I spent knocking a tennis ball against a wall in our garden (Me1 vs Me2 tennis) or the big board up at the tennis club. I did play against other kids too and having not been too great at most sports at school, I did enjoy the tennis matches we played at school when I was in the sixth form, though that might have been because the matches were mixed and I got to inexpertly and unsuccessfully flirt with the girls.
Phoebe is very strong minded and was not interested in my advice about how best to play. She seemed to favour backhand and I told her she might find it easier to go with forehand, but she wasn’t having it. To begin with we couldn’t get a rally of more than three shots going, but by the end of the afternoon we’d done one of over ten. The learning curve is exponential. And she hit it more often than she missed it and hard too, which is why it often didn’t come back.
Otherwise I spent the afternoon arguing with Richard Osman about whether easy or hard mode was best on Twitter (can’t believe a man as smart as he thinks that easy mode is more tactical) to the point where I think I might actually have slightly pissed him off. But it’s a hill I am prepared to die on and a more contentious issue than Brexit for me and if that’s the end of our friendship then so be it. I’d rather be friends with a Leave-o-phile than someone who plays Wordle on easy mode.
I’d managed a reasonably average Park Run this morning despite the heat (27 minute and 21 seconds - a good half a minute a kilometre slower than my PB from last November) and after all the ball retrieving I was pretty much done in by bed time. We went to bed early, but I woke up around midnight, again with mild night terrors. I thought kicking booze had stopped these, but they are coming back a bit more regularly now, though I think it’s down to eating crappy food a bit too late, plus the heat today meant I was thirsty. I was up for three or four hours before I fell asleep on the sofa. Whatever had been worrying me was too abstract to be graspable. I don’t feel like I am particularly stressed right now. I might as well start drinking again if this is going to happen anyway.
