Mallets Of Forethought

05/30/2006

It will come as no surprise to you all, my dears, as I sit well muffed against the northerly drafts that whistle the length of the Long Gallery, that my thoughts are very much on the splendid game of Croquet.

For once I have some sympathy for Pious Prescott, had he being playing football, or better still “keepy uppy” with some urban urchins, no one would have batted an eyelid. As a good socialist it is perfectly acceptable to be a serial wife beater like D i S n r MP (delete this reference Trollaigh, Old Boy. G Pollock QC), spend your hols with a corrupt Italian politico, support a junkie son, send your nippers to Eton or get the housemaid into trouble, but for god’s sake don’t be caught with an elitist Croquet mallet.

Along with an appreciation of good Port, a love of Croquet is the only lasting benefit of an Oxbridge degree, although some would add punting to that list, therefore I suspect many a politician of different hues has a well-used Croquet set at home. Of course, I am not speaking of Oxford or Association Croquet, the rules of which are almost unknown, however I refer to Kitchen Croquet, played universally on warm afternoons after a decent lunch. The game is practiced throughout the world, particularly in America where President Nixon, the inventor of the shout of “troquet” is said to have a mallet buried with him at Arlington. The US also supports “Cross-Country Crockey” or “Extreme Croquet”, which I have played at The Lakewood Croquet Club in Connecticut, the club boasts the motto “Mallets plus Morons equals Mayhem”. It was there, while I pondered a rather severe ruling that my host informed me “you can do anything you like as long as it does not involve physical violence”. I am not entirely sure that all his members were prepared to stop with this admonition. The Old Governor, my father, was addicted to the game, the rules of which he frequently made up as the afternoon progressed, to ensure victory. I have a lasting memory of him striding onto the grass rolling up his sleeves, OG tie round his panama, surveying a set made up from fencing wire and tractor parts, braying “Here we play the Watt-Jespersen convention: bisques at six and eight, all roquets taken by the strike”. This was complete gobbledegook, but certainly dragged his ghastly guests, and Anglican Bishop and an English Duke, to an ignominious defeat. I only recall one guest having the sense of humour to beat the Old Man when the guest fielded his twenty-year-old daughter as a playing partner. Suzie wore a summer dress and not much else, she had a habit of leaning over a lot while considering and taking her shot. We feared for the old duffer’s safety as he grew first red then purple, to the extent that he forgot to “adjust” the score value at the winning post and lost by three points. Those were the days, were the summers really that glorious? Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.