Tennis aux Araignés

I feel quite pooped this evening. We were out playing tennis - the boys, RA and I. I use the phrase 'playing tennis' quite loosely, you understand. It's more 'muck about' than recognisable tennis, but the RA has a good whacking hand which may come in handy in a few years... and I can sneak the odd shot in a funny place quite by accident.

The boys have fun too. My eldest plays with us, and my youngest rides his bike then takes over another court with me and I throw balls at him. He gets them back to me as best he can. The net is not far off his actual height, so he does pretty well getting the balls over to me, and he is definitely making progress. I use special red spot soft balls with him to stop him straining his wrist. We bought three, promptly lost two, found one from somewhere else; our current tally - 2.

The other players on the courts were not much better than us, if at all... Two young lads played on one and used enthusiasm and strength as compensation for lack of skill, and on the other court was a little girl playing with her mother. There seemed to be a competition going on down on the non-reservable courts from the sounds of polite clapping that came forth from there.

The weather was fresh but sunny - perfect for running about. It's one of the more appealing aspects of living down here, the fact that we have such sublime weather for so much of the year.

When the boys got bored, they went and climbed up the bank behind the courts and then yelled to me to show me how clever they were. I was, actually, trying to play tennis with RA at the time, and it was a little off-putting to say the least. As I said to her, I bet Jimmy Connors doesn't have to cope with such distractions, but in fact, I'm not sure she knows who JC is, and such references are just further proof of my advancing years!

I am now bathing in the smug glow of the effects of my exercise despite following it with a G&T to cheer up NG. There's no doubt; exercise does wonders for blowing away the cobwebs. All I have to do now is attack those I left on my ceilings which I told myself added authenticity to my Halloween deccies which came down this morning.

Especially as those voracious insectivores are proving pretty useless at keeping the flour mite population down, as are the sticky traps which are still empty after 2 weeks although the mites are flying around without a care in the world.

Come to think of it though, we don't have any mosquitoes...