CONKERS & CHESTNUTS

Visiting Belgian friends Alain (a valiant tennisman) & Janine Verrydt (photo) for a shampoo & haircut in their saloon of La Grande rue, Valbonne, I left by first crossing the Place des Arcades towards the Post Office side, & then by starting to walk up the long flight of steps. Looking right, I noticed horse-chestnuts (photo) below a tree that I hadn't ever noticed before: I went down & collected a few of these shiny, mahogany-coloured seeds. In England, they are known as 'conkers'; the reason being, that as children we made a hole through them, & passed a piece of string, knotted at one end, through the hole. The game was to play alternately 'hold a suspended conker in the air' & 'hit the opposing conker with your own', until one or the other was broken. In this way, separate conkers accumulated a score according to the number of opposing conkers broken. The added scores of opposing conkers were added together & attributed to the new winner. This once-popular English game between schoolboys is apparently unknown in France: presumably it is known that they are unedible, except for pigs (& perhaps horses).

There is a confusion in the naming of these seeds of the chestnut & horse-chestnut trees which I will now try to elucidate. In French, the distinction 'châtaigne' from a 'châtaigner' & 'marron' from a 'marronier' is clear: the first is edible, the second is not. But what about 'chaux, chaux les marrons !' & 'les marrons glaçés' ? Both these products emanate from châtaigners and not marroniers, n'est-ce pas?

For botanical precision, the trees are Castanea sativa yielding the chestnut, & Aesculus hippocastanum yielding the horse-chestnut.

This is now the time of year to visit St. Vallier, sur la route Napoléon, the village has a fine array of marroniers surrounding the equivalent of an English village-green (even used as a cricket pitch!)

The route from Grasse is either via Cabris, or via St. Cézaire. A good weekend outing: then please watch the Club notices for match events the following Thursday morning, & for music-lovers, another notice gives the details of a concert next Sunday in Peymeinade: the Dvorak 'cello concerto & 'New World' Symphony.

What an amazing area we live in!

OLDEST SURVIVING MEMBER

By the title of this post, I mean the Club member who started at the earliest date with the Vignal. I played against him this morning, & as we have confirmation from Madame Gardet that Alan Bennett (not the author of this name) was already a member in 1982, I feel obliged to make the fact known, & also to accede to his request to publish a photo of himself. Here is one above, & there will be one somewhere on my tennis website later.

If any of you have not met Alan, it will be because he has done a great deal of work these last few years in Kazakhstan, looking for oil - to keep 'the home fires burning', & to keep our cars on the road. Alan is a geophysicist specialising in seismic studies (he sets up earth vibrations by explosives, or other means & records the subsequent vibrational echos. This gives information as to where oil may possibly be found, & so to where drilling could be profitable.)

On the other hand, you may be surprised to learn that Alan's wife, Carmen in her own speciality, recently became World champion in Dog Obedience Training. (We have no evidence that she has ever practised these skills on Alan! or has ever taken her animals to prospective oilfields in sniffing trials.)

The only other competitor for the title of longest serving member, as far as we know, is Stefan van Holst of Frankfurt: but his membership is recorded as starting in 1984, two years after Alan. We await any claims from other readers............

FRENCH TENNIS BALLS

Numerous are the Anglo-French matches in our Club: one of the most recent was between our Cornish champion, Matt Frost, & that well-known anglophile, Jean-Philippe Goudeau (photos). As Matt trundled himself onto court, I heard him mutter something about the battle of Agincourt. In fact he used the correct name of the village associated with that massacre; 'Azincourt', which is situated in the Pas de Calais near Boulogne-sur-mer. (The village named 'Agincourt' exists, but is near Nancy in north-east France.) The origins of this well-chronicled battle date from the time when the English King Henry V claimed land in France from their Charles VI; & in fact coveted his crown. The cheeky reply from the French king's eldest son, the Dauphin, was a present to King Henry of some tennis balls!

Shakespeare records the reply with his customary elegance:

K.Henry:

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;

His present and your pains we thank you for;

When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,

We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set

Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.

K.HenryV,ActI,ScII

A little explanation is needed of the term 'hazard': this word, unused in our 'lawn tennis', occurs in the older game of 'royal tennis', now called 'real tennis' ('court tennis' in the States). The 'hazard' is the side of the net from which players receive the balls: the server plays always from the other side. This game is now only played in 40 courts around the world - covered courts, as balls may be hit against the walls & windows. The balls are made of cork, felt & tape - they rebound less than our tennis balls, so the special wooden rackets are curved to facilitate play off the floor & in the corners of the court. This may have helped royalty, who were not used to bending their knees! (see previous post: KNEES.)

Anglophobes will try not to remember, that the result of this infamous battle was an overwhelming victory for England, (in spite of the vastly superiority in numbers of the French forces.) As for our Cornish veteran, I am, for the moment, uninformed of the outcome.......