The Old Men On The Bowling Green

Commonplace Newsletter #52

Some people like to listen to music to relax, some people like to contemplate the bobbing and diving of tropical fish in a temperature controlled tank, the soothing swimming punctuated by plumes of bubbles from the automatic opening of the tiny plastic treasure chest on the rockbed. Me, I like to sit on my balcony and contemplate the old men playing bowls on the bowling green. In fact, they are playing right now.

So why don’t I take a seat at the outside table and tell you all about it.

Pre-Match Build-Up

It’s Wednesday late afternoon as I write this and the players are beginning to arrive. They are all retirement age and beyond, tanned berry-brown with grey slacks and carcinoma-preventing sun hats. Thin limbed, some with the protrusion of mild beer bellies, others stick-thin all over. One guy has a wooden walking stick, another has glasses so thick that he must be legally blind. These are our athletes.

Now on Tuesdays you get the lads, the youths, average age maybe as young as late 50’s and they whoop it up a bit more and they fling the bowls more forcefully at the jack (or whatever it’s called) sometimes missing it completely and sending their bowl careering into the distant gutter that forms a moat between the edge of the grass square and the paved outer perimeter.

But not the Wednesday crowd. They’ve arrived trailing wheelie-bags through the small squeaky entrance gate that annexes the bowling club from the main public park. And they mean business. Into the clubhouse and out again a few minutes later wearing their uniforms, white polo shirts with dark blue detailing, slightly different high waisted grey slacks, slightly different carcinoma-preventing sun hats. Above the double doors to the clubhouse is a bit of signage that says [Redacted] Bowling Club along with a crest, and I believe that same crest is on the heart of the polo shirt, the same spot where younger men may sport a logo of a laurel wreath or an alligator. It’s a bit hard to tell from this vantage point.

One or the younger guys- maybe 66, 67 years old and with a full head of hair- unlatches the faded green little storage locker/shed thing and fetches the bowls and the jacks and pushes them around the green in a zimmer-frame like contraption that they collect them in post game. Or post frame or whatever they call it.Saves having to handle them and carry them from one side of the green to the other at the end of each game. Maybe this young buck is at the bottom of the hierarchy or the clubhouse seniority. I can only speculate.

The group of nine men have split into a four and a five, and both bowling from my left to my right they begin, the smaller of the two groups nearer to me in the foreground. The small white jacks are skimmed and the first bowler from each game, bowl in hand, places a foot on the little welcome mat like bit of carpet that each group are armed with. And they begin.

The Game Itself

It’s a blazing hot day. Beyond the treeline of hedges and tall foliage that separates the bowlers from the hoi-polloi there are little clusters of sunbathers in the main park. Kids being pushed on swings. An athleisure-wear sporting woman jogging laps with her music device strapped to her arm. Two teens throwing a basketball in the vague direction of the solitary hoop.

But that’s beyond our bowlers. Out of sight and out of mind, perhaps.

This game is completely uncompetitive, which is why I enjoy watching it so much. Like fish in a tank, the bowlers just are, they are simply in the process of being. Unlike with our two free-throwing and layup missing youths there is no frustration, no defeat. Unlike our jogger there is no effort, no pushing, no fitness goal in mind.

The bowlers barely move besides the slight crouch and lunge and the slight underhand bowl and follow through. They are barely breaking a sweat let alone exerting themselves, and this in weather so hot that my highball glass and forehead are both pretty heavily beaded.

There’s no scorekeeping either as far as I can tell. There are two metal scoreboards like number-flipping desk calendars in the green shed there but I have only seen them be used maybe once or twice a year when there are proper games. On those days the green is swarming with maybe forty white uniforms- male and female both if memory serves- and I have the slightly uneasy feeling that my balcony is about to be swarmed. I don’t watch those games.

So our two groups go left to right and then right to left and back again. Over and over, zimmering the cluster of bowls along from side to side after each game. Players aim to get closer to the jack than the other bowls and a particularly good throw will earn a round of muted applause and the short, sonorous praise of ‘wehboh’- which I think translates as ‘Well Bowled’. All often-used exclamations having a way of blending into a sound beyond language.

The only other sound you hear- or at least I can hear from three stories up- is the phrase ‘Guh-lie’ which I have finally managed to decipher as meaning ‘Good Line’ which is to say that the bowl in question was aimed correctly even though it was thrown with either too much or too little force. Wehboh- and you don’t hear it that often, maybe half a dozen times in a couple of slow hours of play- denotes that both the line and the force of the shot were outstanding. When a shot is neither wehboh nor guh-lie nothing is said. The players merely remain a safe distance beyond the growing cluster of bowls or gathered around the welcome mat with their hands folded behind their backs, Prince of Wales style. Watching, waiting, perhaps sharing gentle witticisms and bon mots. As I said I can only speculate.

Closing Montage

Two hours pass. I drink my drink, I briefly head inside and stand in a star-shape in front of the whirring racket of the fan I have set up in the kitchen. Screaming at its highest setting and providing sweet relief as long as I don’t move a centimetre beyond its blast radius. I have a second drink- pretentious fizzy water in case you were wondering- and I observe the gents throw a few more rounds from behind my sunglasses.

The young buck is wheeling the bowls back to the shed. The guys all slow-walk into the clubhouse and emerge seconds later- superman like- in their civilian outfits that are curiously similar to their bowling attire.

They seem no happier than they were at the outset, no sadder either. Not more fatigued, not more energised. They just are. They wheel their bags through the squeaky gate and separate and head off in different directions. Some solo, some in pairs.

I look at the completely indecipherable notes I’ve made on a scrap of paper while witnessing this anti-sporting event. And as the young buck, the last to leave, squeaks and padlocks the gate closed behind him, I wonder if something can be made from those notes of mine.

Until next time, 

Live Well,

Tom.

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