I'd tried for weeks to organise our B is for Barefoot Bowls but unfortunately the weather gods conspired against me, so given a lull in the rain, we were on our way to do what we'll probably be doing in 20 years time, bowling.
There was a bit of casual approach to barefoot bowls at our local. Just turn up and we'll get you sorted and sure enough that's all we had to do. Of course no one was expecting us, no one got us sorted, but we paid our fees and the beer was really cheap so EGG was thrilled.
That was temporary though because they sent us off with the key to get our own bowls from the big green shed. EGG finds opening strange locks a bit challenging so after about ten minutes of a badly concealed temper tantrum with "this is all getting a bit too hard" muttered from between clenched teeth, I took over and opened that pesky roller door to reveal bowls heaven.
Everywhere you could see there were wooden crates with bowls in them. I guess this would be very exciting to real bowlers, but to rank amateurs like us well it was a case of too much choice, so we grabbed the closest ones and off we went.
Actually only one of us is a rank amateur and that's me. I find it the most mind-numbingly boring thing in the world, but then my attention span is short. EGG however was the runner up bowling champion of North Rockhampton. Pretty impressive hey? So when lessons were offered by the woman on the next green, we politely declined because EGG knew what he was doing.
Big mistake. He really is a terrible teacher. He doesn't explain how things work so I gave up and just started bowling them any old how and he got a bit cross because I wasn't taking it seriously. Actually I had had lessons a long, long time ago at a social day, but I didn't learn anything that time because I spent the whole time batting off my ancient old instructor's roaming hands. Ahh memories.
But anyway it got hot and humid and I got sunburn and they didn't want to put the covers over for us because there were only two of us so I started complaining and EGG said we could finish. We kindly offered to leave our bowls for the next group of people who might come and they said no we had to put our bowls away.
I took lead with the locks on the shed this time avoiding a potential tantrum which may have actually included the pelting of bowls at people. But no, we returned our bowls, locked up carefully, returned the key and wondered why barefoot bowls wasn't taking off at this particular club. It's a real mystery.
