Lawn bowls

Oh poor neglected blog... I know I still owe another post about the remainder of our holiday to Sydney. I've been horribly busy ever since we got home. That's the downside to a one-week holiday - one spends the next 3 weeks catching up on everything!

So in the meantime, here's a quick post about BallFiend's highlight of the weekend. But first some background. When BallFiend was about 2 years old, he happened to see a bit of the championship lawn bowls on TV, and has enjoyed watching it ever since.

BallFiend watching the Women's Triples Final
from the Queensland Open, 17 October 2009.

BallFiend has also asked to play lawn bowls (and ten pin bowling) on numerous occasions. I took him ten pin bowling when he was about 3 and a half, but so far he has never done lawn bowls. So when I saw an ad in the local paper saying that the local lawn bowls club was having a free "family day", I asked BallFiend if he wanted to go. And unsurprisingly, he did.

We bowled with another family that included three kids and their dad. The youngest kid was just 2 weeks older than BallFiend and the oldest was probably about 11 years old. BallFiend was easily a better bowler than any of the kids. On his best shot, he put the bowl only about 70cm from the jack. (And my best shot was only about 10cm better than this!)

For me the afternoon was a 'sociological experience'. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. When we arrived, I was offered lunch - a free BBQ. (Despite being free, the food really didn't appeal to me: still-frozen supermarket white bread with cold snags and burgers, distinctly grey in colour. But I could not refuse the effervescent hospitality as every bowling club member, in succession, insisted that I have some lunch. The fact that we had already had lunch at home did not deter them.) Lunch was periodically interrupted by one of the ladies of the club ringing a bell to announce raffle prizes, or that more snags were on the way and various other things.

Blokey old blokes chortled and chatted around the bar. Ladies bustled about tidying up. And the best bit was the interior of the club room! It was straight out of another era... I'm not sure which one but definitely nineteen-something! (If you've seen Crackerjack, you'll know what I mean!) All that was missing was a portrait of the Queen.

But it was on our visit the the ladies toilets (BallFiend received an urgent call of nature, thus rescuing me from having to finish my lunch) that I was treated to the quintessential bowling club interior decor:

Vanity unit in the Ladies' toilets.

In case it is hard to see in the picture - the floor is covered in a plush blue carpet, the hand basins are circa 1950, and there are a lovely finishing touches on the vanity bench of fake flower arrangements and those gorgeous yellow tissue-box and soap dispenser covers. But even more delights awaited: the baby-blue coloured ceramic toilet bowl and seat in matching blue had BallFiend completely fascinated.

BallFiend is still six to twelve months too young to start playing competition bowls. But they are dead-keen to have more members (currently they have about 65 men and 20 women), so I reckon he could sneak in... Not sure that I'm up for it to take him along though. Going back in time was fun for an afternoon, but I don't think I could do it on a regular basis.
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