A Late Return: Table-Tennis a la Carte E-Book

Bill Rees

• Herausgeber: Parthian Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 69

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Bill Rees has been living in the south of France for ten years working as an itinerant bookseller in Montpellier. The one thing he misses about England is table tennis. Then he sees an advert to join a club for "experienced players only" and veterans. He starts training immediately, he's forty and not as fit as he used to be but Bill Rees is returning to the game à la carte.Covering one Sunday tournament in the depths of Languedoc when his team bids to make the National Finals, Bill Rees produces a deeply felt and deeply funny homage to the beautiful game of ping-pong. Rees shows the sport for what it is: painful, exhilarating, tactical, fast (especially when his club mate Alain is at the table), consuming. All of which is revealed from the perspective of a Brit playing in French amateur leagues. Conveyed is the pain of competition, the agony of losing and the joys of victory. The reader is also regaled with a Zen-like insight into the sport.For all those athletes who dream of glory being around the corner and never too late.Contains illustrations by the Monpellier based artist Beachy.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Author Biography

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

A Late Return

8 a.m. Mèze lycée, Hérault, France, 19 May 2019.

8.20 a.m.

8.30 a.m. Organisers’ call

8.40 a.m. Five minutes before tournament start.

9.05 a.m.

9.25 a.m.

9.35 a.m.

10.15 a.m.

11.00 a.m.

11.25 a.m.

11.45 a.m. Final. Fabre v. Galtier.

Misc. Notes

William Rees makes a precarious living by selling used books. He has worked as a reporter for a local newspaper in London and ran a bookshop in Bangor before the lure of travel, bookselling and a woman in France led him to take a less conventional path. His memoir, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Book Runner was a runaway hit.

In recent years, Bill has rediscovered the joys and frustrations of competitive table tennis. An embarrassingly large amount of his time and energies have been devoted to perfecting his backhand top spin. A Late Return goes some way to explaining why.

Parthian, Cardigan SA43 1ED

www.parthianbooks.com

First published in Great Britain by Parthian

© Bill Rees 2020

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-913640-30-9

eISBN 978-1-913640-41-5

Cover design and typesetting by Syncopated Pandemonium

Cover and interior illustrations by Beach

Printed and bound by 4Edge in the UK

Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A cataloguing record for this book is available from the British Library.

For my Le Vigan teammates

Ping-pong is a life style, a training in attention, a diversion, a mad passion and a way of not taking anything important too seriously and taking some tiny things much too seriously.

Pico Iyer

Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafés. Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me.

The Rider by Tim Krabbé

Attack early, not rashly.

Simon of Le Vigan

8 a.m. Mèze lycée, Hérault, France, 19 May 2019.

Alain is not one to prolong a rally. Like a good boxer he hits hard with high precision. Many shots land as outright winners. And shots that opponents do return seldom cause him problems. He simply hits hard once more. Go fetch! That the ball will be returned again is most improbable.

Adjusting to Alain’s pace of play is difficult. His speed of shot unsettles. Hurried into errors, opponents start doubting themselves. They start missing sitters. Ignominy ensues and defeat looms. I know because I’ve been there, on the – quite literally – receiving end.

Sport is about making better use of time than your adversary. On many levels Alain knows this. He is a fast closer of games. Before opponents know it, a chunky, sandy-haired figure is perfunctorily shaking their hand. Thirty-three points, rapidly amassed over three sets, to Monsieur Alain Fabre. So reads the scorecard, but really he should have one of those hooligan calling cards to give out: Congratulations! You have met Alain Fabre and joined the ranks of his time-starved victims.

Usually it is a quick death. Defeat, I mean.

*

Whether playing table tennis or having a conversation, Alain likes to get to the point quickly. Making or winning it.

For Alain, finishing things fast is a life credo. Driving included. Behind the wheel of his ancient red Peugeot estate, Alain is more of a Senna than a Prost, propelling it at engine protesting revs. On match Sundays it feels as though I get to partake in an additional sport, that of rally driving. Often I am in the front seat; an honorary co-pilot who – in lieu of classic navigational duties – is on the lookout for speed cameras and gendarmes.

This morning we speed – incurring no fines – to Mèze, a small Mediterranean town on the edge of the Étang de Thau, arriving with oodles of guess what to spare. Yes, Alain always makes sure it is on his side. Time, time, time, time’s on his side, yes it is, as the Rolling Stones have raucously declaimed.

Our destination is a school gym. We find it easily. As have many other men like us desperate to recall the sporting thrills of their lithe youth.

Some remain inside parked cars, possibly engaged in last-minute meditation exercises. So as to be mentally fit for a sport once memorably described as chess on steroids. Not that I am making any special claims regarding the IQs of its practitioners. Least of all mine.

Obviously ping-pong is not as cerebral as chess. There are, though, certain similarities, like the kind of pain they both generate. That of losing versus that of thinking. You suffer one or the other or even both. It can be sheer mental turmoil. This is the downside of the deal. There is an upside, though. Mental ecstasy. Otherwise nobody would play.

As with chess some people question whether table tennis is a proper sport. To them I say: you cannot simultaneously play table tennis and puff on a fag. It is a SPORT, even if you do not have to be exceptionally sporty to play it.

*

In searching for a parking space, Alain drives with uncharacteristic circumspection. To avoid mowing down the competition. Definitely against the rules, that.

— Fais gaffe! I shout, forcing Alain to brake. Crossing our path is a hulk of a man. He would take some knocking down even by a car. The hulk, I now notice, is fulsomely bearded and waving demonically at us. Alain waves back.

— It’s Galtier. Said he couldn’t play, the lying bastard.

Alain winds down his window, cutting the ignition.

— Miracle cure?

— No, the knee’s still playing up, but someone’s got to stop you. You winning would be a travesty.

Their banter belies their determination to triumph today. Indeed, in order to do so, both men will strain every muscle, sinew and neurone.

The joshing between them ceases, principally because of some poor sod stuck in a sky-blue Twingo. With his paunch caught on the steering wheel, he is making quite a (comic book) spectacle of himself. For a few seconds, utter confusion reigns, owing to a burst of frenzied hooting. Its source we first think must be the floundering fatty. But the noise is actually being generated by an angry man whose Sprinter van is unable to move, let alone sprint. Alain has inadvertently blocked it in.

Raising an arm in apology, Alain revs up his Peugeot, making Galtier jump clear of both us and the Sprinter van. He does so with surprising agility. Surprising, that is, for a giant with a dodgy knee. I say as much.

— Bad knee my arse, says Alain.

David chuckles in the back. As do I until I see a parking space.

— Here. Here.

I get overly excited about Alain filling it with his unlikely racing machine. Must be nerves.

From the boot Alain and I retrieve our bags, leaving David slouched on the back seats. David intends to sleep away most of the time between now and the start of the tournament. This represents quite a challenge when your pillow is a lumpy kit bag. Just as well David is able to nod off almost at will. He is a sleeping maestro. Does he dream of bamboozling opponents with fiendish serves of reverse, side and top spin?

I do. Overgrown schoolboy that I am.

On most Sundays, for the league matches, we are a four-man team. Marco the kid, a 29-year-old plumber, sitting alongside David in the car. Marco is a left hander, an all-out attacker in the Alain mould. Only he is not as good.

Marco plays like a machine with one setting. Flat out. Minimal finesse.

Ça passe ou ça casse. It is a machine that regularly breaks down, and tends to function – with a high degree of accuracy – only against opponents with fast serves. His style is fast and furious. There is no fury in Alain’s game. Fury implies a certain imprecision and hot headedness. Alain is none of those things, especially when he has a table-tennis ball to strike and an opponent to outfox.

A louche bunch of blokes, piled into an accident scarred Peugeot, driven fast into the suburbs of Nîmes early morning, and leaving several hours later.

What must locals watching from rundown cafés think of them?

What illegalities must they be getting up to?

One, who asked for directions, even has a funny accent.

Table tennis, m’ Lud. We were playing table tennis.

Sporting pursuits, you say.

True, we would swear. And here is why. Because it feels so good, the delicious simplicity of shrinking a Sunday morning to bat, table and ball.

*