Saturday, October 04, 2008
Not Cricket
Today I played croquet in the park. This is the first time I have actually played a full game, according to rules not made up by me at the moment. It is an interesting pastime. The chief joy is obviously in thwacking the balls through the hoops, that basic phallic pillar of most popular sports. But it is the essentially English nature of it that is fascinating. On the surface, all is gentlemanly and civilized. There is lawn, deliberation, sauntering. Frequently, tea and whitebread sandwiches with no crusts. Perhaps, in the background, a swan. It is all very unhurried, and no one, I am guessing, from Queen Victoria on down has ever broken a sweat in a game. But underneath lurks a zero-sum framework that is built around crushing the position and hopes of fellow competitors, usually just when victory seems within reach. The various strategies that seem most successful - pounding others' balls into the stratosphere, blocking everyone's path, turning your ball into "poison" - frequently result in a weird undercurrent of vindictiveness and hostility overlaid with the forced gaity required by the sunny innocence of the game's exterior. Still an all, it was a nice day in the park, and when I next play I am going to double roquet those bitches into next week.
