By John Silverton
Damian is a reluctant tennis fan; he has little choice because his house is opposite the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club and his wife a member of the organising committee. Every June begins the turmoil of two million visitors descending on the Club for the annual major grass court championships. For two weeks the village pubs and restaurants are full, the streets congested, the trains and underground overcrowded, the crowd noise often deafening. However, there are compensations. Damian’s family receives complimentary tickets to the show courts, which they sell on eBay, and lets out their house to seeded players for an exorbitant rent that finances the family’s annual holiday. Thus Damian gleefully lines his pockets whilst avoiding the hassle and inconvenience subjected upon his local haunts and amenities.
After the turmoil of the championships Damian is relieved to get back to normality and resume his fitness routine that includes a morning run around Wimbledon Park. On one occasion on Damian’s morning jog, he spotted a stray tennis ball in the grass, picked it up and shoved it into the pocket of his shorts to take home for the dog. Maybe dogs should be trained to retrieve the tennis balls at the championships to replace the ball-boys,’ he thought. Rover would love it.
One of the stars who rented Damian’s house was former world number one Chris Evert, and the ball reminded him of a cheeky cartoon when Chris Evert and John Lloyd ended their affair. Chris Evert had a reputation for relationships. An image of her on court, racquet in hand, was captioned with the double entendre call: “New balls please.”
Emma Raducanu also stayed in Damien’s house before she purchased her own pad in South West London. After her shock USA Open win the Sunday Times ran a cartoon showing a Taliban official open-mouthed shouting, “What have women ever achieved?” A tennis ball is whizzing towards his open mouth, a pertinent and paradoxical gobstopper.
A friend of mine used a tennis ball to chat-up women in restaurants and pubs. If he fancied a waitress, for instance, he would place the ball on the table. The inquiring conversation would go something like this:
‘What’s with the tennis ball then? You a good player?’
‘No, never played the game.’
‘So why the ball?’
‘It’s a talking point. You are talking to me,’ (said with a wry smile) and a date was usually forthcoming. If the waitress wasn’t inquisitive, John considered she wouldn’t be worth dating anyway. But I digress. So back to Damien’s morning jog.
Further round the park Damian came across his next-door neighbour’s attractive teenage daughter jogging in the opposite direction. She was an aspiring tennis player to county standard. They stopped for a polite chat.
She looked down at Damian’s shorts and cheekily said, ‘What’s that bulge in your shorts?’
‘It’s a tennis ball,’ he replied.
‘Oh, you poor man. I had tennis elbow and it was so painful.’
Author Bio:
John Silverton was born in 1945, A Man of Kent. He is a former freelance journalist, newspaper columnist and magazine features writer, although most of his commercial life has been in marketing. His first novel, ‘A Pearl Amongst Oysters’, a suspenseful romance spanning half a century, received acclaim and is available from Amazon (books). He is winner of the Anderida Writers’ poetry and short story competitions . A book of short stories, entitled ‘Marilyn and Other Stories’, will be published 2025. A second novel, a murder mystery entitled ‘A Murder of Crows’ should be published 2026.
Contact Author:
Email address: johnsilverton@hotmail.co.uk
