Oh, hush, my lewd, crude, rude mind. I spend a lot of time having to stand around on the bowling green and my brain starts acting up. Sometimes I sing songs in my head that are related to the people I am playing with. Davey Crockett, How do you solve a problem like Maria, Judy Judy Judy, Sylvias Mother, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, etc etc. Try it sometime. It’s amazing how many songs are all about the people around you. Or maybe it’s the colour of all the bowls – Yellow Submarine, Purple People Eater, Blue, Blue Christmas, White Christmas, Green Door, I see a red door and I want to paint it black…My life would have been so much easier if we all just played with black bowls. But then my head would be busy with other stuff – women should still be wearing white dresses and skirts instead of trousers. (Ooooh, I can hear you shrieking.) When playing lead you get to sit down a lot and watch – and for those of you who have never thought about it – white, cotton trousers are often see-through. So, if you wear them with thin, white or flesh coloured knickers then the world can see what you had for breakfast. Any padding with or without wings – all sorts of secrets. So, check your bum in those lovely, new summer pants. And any blokes reading this – you are NOT immune in your white pants. The same applies so get your bum checked out as well before you leave home. Being cool is one thing but there are some sights that are definitely NOT cool.
And then my creative little brain wanders off into dangerous territory. Viagra shots – If they’re not up they are of no use. A worm or hermaphrodite shot – that’s when you knock yourself up. And its no good one of my team – or even the opposing team – saying they’ve knocked me up because I am far too old for that to happen. Then calls of ‘you’re too wide’ (I already know that). You’re too heavy/take some weight off…yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me about it. ‘You’re too short’ – since when???
I probably should try and focus on what I am doing instead of keeping my brain busy with nonsense. I think I do this to stay ‘internal’ instead of external as I am not very good about dealing with confrontational situations. I try and avoid them whenever possible.
Recently I had to put on my Big Girl Panties and play some serious bowls. That meant I had to do scoring and measuring and stuff. Much to my chagrin I came up against a bull-dozer. A bull-dozer is an experienced player who looks at the head, says ‘3 to us’ and immediately starts to kick the bowls back for the next end before I’ve even really looked at the bowls. When you are the junior by many years it’s difficult to question their integrity. So, we had an ‘incident’ where I KNOW we had the shot, our lead thought the same and the skip had said we had it as we changed ends. I signalled our skip that we were one up, suggested I kick the bowls back to our lead so she could get the mat. To my astonishment they took the mat and began to play. By the time I realised what had happened, and questioned it, the end was in play – for me, it was a very upsetting incident. Bull-dozing is not fair play and even though our skip spoke to the umpire about it we are still none the wiser as to what should have happened.
It put me off my bowls to the extent that my brain went into lock down…until a little song popped into my head that let me rearrange the words. I wish I could sing it to you. It’s rude, lewd and crude but, boy, it sure makes me feel better about bull-dozers!
