The clay has got a hold of me.
A week after crashing out - because that's what top players do - of the journalists' tournament at Roland Garros, I went back. Not to relive the scene of my ignominy but to knock up with one of my colleagues from the radio station.
The bonus was that the session was free. There aren't going to be many times in my life where I can play without paying so I figured I might as well do it on one of the best clay courts in the world.
I phoned at 9am to check that the courts were clear and I was told 1pm.
It all seems so effete. As I finished early at the radio station on Thursday I took in the From Cézanne to Picasso exhibition at the Musée D'Orsay.
Typical me this, I read about the show probably before I went to America and probably decided to catch it while I was alone in Paris during the summer. So clearly that plan failed because the whole family is back and the exhibition finishes on Sunday. Glad I went. Sad I couldn't see it a few times. It's stunning.
Nearly 200 paintings, drawings and pieces of sculpture that were either commissioned, bought or sold by Ambroise Vollard. Loads of the old-fashioned kind of art where you can discern the subject in the picture.
Vollard knew how to back a pony. His exhibition in 1895 of Cézanne's works not only made the artist's reputation but it made Vollard the big cheese on the dealer scene at the age of 29.
Van Gogh, Gauguin and Picasso were among the people he steered. It was Vollard who offered Matisse his first solo show in 1904, just three years after doing the same thing for Picasso.
"The most beautiful woman who ever lived," said Picasso, "never had her portrait painted or etched more often than Vollard by Cézanne, Bonnard and others."
Picasso drew a few, Renoir painted three pictures including one in which Vollard is dressed as a toreador. Pierre Bonnard did seven.
I liked the one from 1904. In this the 38-year-old dealer sits, caressing his cat, in a pose befitting a 007 villain.
"Observe Mr Bonnard," he says turning his head from side to side, "the instruments of art world domination."
With this view into Vollard's complex, it's easy to see that he was an astute judge of what was viable. He bought into André Derain and Matisse when hostile critics were dubbing them "fauves" (wild beasts).
One example of his savvy was with Cézanne's Le Fumeur accoudé from 1891. When Vollard sold it to the Russian industrialist Ivan Morosov in 1909 for 22,000 francs it was almost 100 times more than he'd paid for it 10 years earlier.
That beats even London house price inflation.
As I sat in a café after the show, I saw a couple of Scotland football supporters. They stopped at a corner to decide whether their path lay along the Rue de Lille or to the river along the Rue de la Légion D'Honneur.
One thing's for sure, the France coach Raymond Domenech won't be getting that medal pinned on him. His team's 1-0 defeat to Scotland on Wednesday had L'Equipe ululating on Thursday morning just four days after it was glorifying the side for it's 0-0 draw in Italy.
It's a fickle thing this sporting life. There are three games to go in Euro 2008 qualifying Group B. France still could make it.
However it will be over for the rugby team if they don't get their act together against Namibia on Sunday.
I find it difficult to complain about the football team though. Last summer they furnished me with an unprecedented sensation: being in a country where the team is contesting the World Cup Final. Never happened to me while I was living in England, that's for sure. Marvellous night it was. Right down to Zidane's headbutt on Materazzi.
You couldn't have written that. Seems hard to believe that the caucus of that side won't be in Austria and Switzerland next year.
Especially since England might be gracing the competition with their brand of dynamic incompetence. A man discarded a few years ago - Emille Heskey - comes back amid a general "Uh?" and galvanises a team to make everyone sigh: "Ah". Three nil against Israel - well they aren't that good. And then three nil against Russia - they are more than competent.
The Russia coach, Guus Hiddink, said after the match that his side had been very good in the development of play but no so good in the "punishment" side of affairs.
Well if they'd had a centre-forward called Dostoevsky that would've been a crime. But they didn't. England had Michael Owen who, since his Wunderkind days of the 1998 World Cup, has developed into a consistent punisher.
All of a sudden from the despair of the loss in Croatia to euphoria. England players can get their designer sunglasses ready for the mountain air.
I'm getting ready for some sea air. Back off to America in a few weeks with the three children and my nephew to see my grand-father.
After my nightmare experience with American Airlines in July, we're travelling Air France.
Hope they're better than their rugby and football teams.
Friday, 14 September 2007
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Is money important?
After Friday night’s atrocity in which the French rugby team lost to Argentina, L’Equipe could at least congratulate the country’s top footballers on it’s front page on Sunday morning
They drew 0-0 in Milan against Italy on Saturday night in the Euro 2008 qualifiers and so France remains top of Group B going into Wednesday’s match against Scotland who have themselves leapfrogged Italy after their 3-1 win over Lithuania.
With the country's pride restored I just hope that Scotland don't come along and puncture the fragile sporting ego in Wednesday's match.
I would go and watch that but I'm more than likely going to view England against Russia.
I usually see these games with my mate Neil and they're really just a front for an evening of chilling out and catching up over a few glasses of wine.
We've seen some great games together in a variety of quite awful bars over the years. Neil somehow manages to find the most lurid establishments but then that's not surprising as he's an architect.
But that's for Paris. The Eurostar was unusually quiet on Sunday morning. I guess everyone is back from holiday and few people are doing their weekend breaks at the moment.
There were no British Sunday papers in the frequent traveller's lounge at the Gare du Nord. So I spent the train ride watching Isabelle Huppert as the career investigating judge in L'Ivresse du Pouvoir.
Just love Claude Chabrol.
Even the publicity for the film www.livressedupouvoir is quite stylish.
Must admit though I was waiting for the bloodbath.
It's a bit like a Tom Cruise movie. The main suspense is.......When is he going to run?
I'm going to try and see the theatre troupe Complicite at the Barbican in London. I've been a fan of theirs since the days when they were Theatre de Complicite.
And I feel the same way in their plays. Apart from the panoply of philosophical ideas....the question is....When are they going to start climbing the walls?
Actually I like the idea of being a wandering player. While many people have lived past lives as Richard the Lionheart or Florence Nightingale, I think I was an itinerant actor in a past life.
That's why I probably like Molière. Oy Poquelin you might have been the greatest comic writer in the French language but it's your lifestyle that gets big respect.
Complicite really endeared themselves to me when they reworked Der Besuch der alten Dame by the Swiss author and dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Studied that one for German A level and loved it. Seeing The Visit performed on stage with such verve and vitality entrenched it as one my favourite pieces. Can't say the same for L'Ivresse du Pouvoir.
I stepped off the train at the soon to be defunct Waterloo and sauntered to the South Bank. It was a glorious autumn morning. I walked along the embankment past the the already bustling cluster of cafes towards Foyles.
Since my first lesson on Thursday at the Centre de Yoga du Marais, I have decided to read up. Michelle, the teacher, has recommended The Heart of Yoga by TKV Desikacher and as I am supple of mind if not yet quite of limb, I ventured to the bookshop but there I found disappointment.
Didn't have it. Crestfallen, I retraced my footsteps past the now even busier parade of cafes for Waterloo Bridge.
And it was along this stretch that I chanced upon the then highlight of the day. Jeppe Hein's Appearing Rooms. Originally commissioned for the garden of the Villa Manin in Italy, it's an ornamental fountain that combines sculpture, architecture and technology.
That's what the accompanying blurb says. What it means is that there are a series of jets which spurt up every 40 or so seconds for about two minutes locking you in a water room.
And while one room is "closed" another "door" opens and you step in and the "door" closes behind you.
Of course you can be crass and barge right through the door. But you get wet.
It's so simple and compellingly interactive that it was joyous. Especially with all the shrieks. Brilliant. Thinking back about it still brings a smile to my face.
Roger Federer winning his 12th grand slam brought another smile. After my glorious demise at Roland Garros in the journalists' tournament I can now feel his pain at failing to capture the Coupe des Mousquetaires.
Federer was playing the Serb Novak Djokovic in the final of the US Open. I was going to stay at the Guardian and watch the showdown but I decided to go and see the film 12:08 East of Bucharest.
The 12:08 in the title refers to the moment that Romania was freed from dictatorship and communist rule.
Essentially if you weren’t on the streets protesting before this exact time can you claim to have participated in the overthrow?
This is the conundrum posed sixteen years later on a local TV debate in a town ‘somewhere east of Bucharest’.
Cool humour. The film by director Corneliu Porumboiu won the Camera D'or (prize for best first film) at the Cannes film festival in 2006.
I decided not to return to the office to watch the final. I arrived home to find — via BBC Radio Five Live — that the Swiss maestro was two sets ahead and 4-3 up in the third.
Djockovic held for 4-4. Federer moved to 5-4 and the 20-year-old then cracked.
I liked the extravaganza that followed the victory. The stats are radical. It was Federer's 10th straight grand slam final. Of those he's won eight. So I feel privileged that I've been there to see him on the rare occasion of a loss in a grand slam final.
He's now with Roy Emerson on 12 grand slam titles and two behind Pete Sampras. Of course many years ago it was said that Federer was the new Sampras.
But Sampras never won four consecutive US Open crowns, actually no one has since Bill Tilden in 1923. Sampras never won five Wimbledons in a row.
But enough of the antecedents. The MC of the prize giving at Flushing Meadows told Federer and the 23,000 spectators (including his conquered foe) that he'd won a Gas Guzzler XLV410i to carry his shiny US Open trophy and — just as importantly — a winner's cheque for $1.4 million.
While the crowd was swallowing that load of information....the MC added that because Federer had been the most successful player during the north American hard court circuit - the US Open series - he was going to be weighed down with another cheque for $1 million.
Languages have been my skills but even my maths can figure out that Federer will be able to buy lots of lollies and tennis equipment over the next couple of weeks.
Two point four million dollars. As my mum would say: "I'd be happy with the point four million dollars."
If he were my mate his would be the first couple of rounds at the 90-metre champagne bar coming shortly to St Pancras International.
But I know he's the type of bloke who'd be just as happy at a cafe on the South Bank.
They drew 0-0 in Milan against Italy on Saturday night in the Euro 2008 qualifiers and so France remains top of Group B going into Wednesday’s match against Scotland who have themselves leapfrogged Italy after their 3-1 win over Lithuania.
With the country's pride restored I just hope that Scotland don't come along and puncture the fragile sporting ego in Wednesday's match.
I would go and watch that but I'm more than likely going to view England against Russia.
I usually see these games with my mate Neil and they're really just a front for an evening of chilling out and catching up over a few glasses of wine.
We've seen some great games together in a variety of quite awful bars over the years. Neil somehow manages to find the most lurid establishments but then that's not surprising as he's an architect.
But that's for Paris. The Eurostar was unusually quiet on Sunday morning. I guess everyone is back from holiday and few people are doing their weekend breaks at the moment.
There were no British Sunday papers in the frequent traveller's lounge at the Gare du Nord. So I spent the train ride watching Isabelle Huppert as the career investigating judge in L'Ivresse du Pouvoir.
Just love Claude Chabrol.
Even the publicity for the film www.livressedupouvoir is quite stylish.
Must admit though I was waiting for the bloodbath.
It's a bit like a Tom Cruise movie. The main suspense is.......When is he going to run?
I'm going to try and see the theatre troupe Complicite at the Barbican in London. I've been a fan of theirs since the days when they were Theatre de Complicite.
And I feel the same way in their plays. Apart from the panoply of philosophical ideas....the question is....When are they going to start climbing the walls?
Actually I like the idea of being a wandering player. While many people have lived past lives as Richard the Lionheart or Florence Nightingale, I think I was an itinerant actor in a past life.
That's why I probably like Molière. Oy Poquelin you might have been the greatest comic writer in the French language but it's your lifestyle that gets big respect.
Complicite really endeared themselves to me when they reworked Der Besuch der alten Dame by the Swiss author and dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Studied that one for German A level and loved it. Seeing The Visit performed on stage with such verve and vitality entrenched it as one my favourite pieces. Can't say the same for L'Ivresse du Pouvoir.
I stepped off the train at the soon to be defunct Waterloo and sauntered to the South Bank. It was a glorious autumn morning. I walked along the embankment past the the already bustling cluster of cafes towards Foyles.
Since my first lesson on Thursday at the Centre de Yoga du Marais, I have decided to read up. Michelle, the teacher, has recommended The Heart of Yoga by TKV Desikacher and as I am supple of mind if not yet quite of limb, I ventured to the bookshop but there I found disappointment.
Didn't have it. Crestfallen, I retraced my footsteps past the now even busier parade of cafes for Waterloo Bridge.
And it was along this stretch that I chanced upon the then highlight of the day. Jeppe Hein's Appearing Rooms. Originally commissioned for the garden of the Villa Manin in Italy, it's an ornamental fountain that combines sculpture, architecture and technology.
That's what the accompanying blurb says. What it means is that there are a series of jets which spurt up every 40 or so seconds for about two minutes locking you in a water room.
And while one room is "closed" another "door" opens and you step in and the "door" closes behind you.
Of course you can be crass and barge right through the door. But you get wet.
It's so simple and compellingly interactive that it was joyous. Especially with all the shrieks. Brilliant. Thinking back about it still brings a smile to my face.
Roger Federer winning his 12th grand slam brought another smile. After my glorious demise at Roland Garros in the journalists' tournament I can now feel his pain at failing to capture the Coupe des Mousquetaires.
Federer was playing the Serb Novak Djokovic in the final of the US Open. I was going to stay at the Guardian and watch the showdown but I decided to go and see the film 12:08 East of Bucharest.
The 12:08 in the title refers to the moment that Romania was freed from dictatorship and communist rule.
Essentially if you weren’t on the streets protesting before this exact time can you claim to have participated in the overthrow?
This is the conundrum posed sixteen years later on a local TV debate in a town ‘somewhere east of Bucharest’.
Cool humour. The film by director Corneliu Porumboiu won the Camera D'or (prize for best first film) at the Cannes film festival in 2006.
I decided not to return to the office to watch the final. I arrived home to find — via BBC Radio Five Live — that the Swiss maestro was two sets ahead and 4-3 up in the third.
Djockovic held for 4-4. Federer moved to 5-4 and the 20-year-old then cracked.
I liked the extravaganza that followed the victory. The stats are radical. It was Federer's 10th straight grand slam final. Of those he's won eight. So I feel privileged that I've been there to see him on the rare occasion of a loss in a grand slam final.
He's now with Roy Emerson on 12 grand slam titles and two behind Pete Sampras. Of course many years ago it was said that Federer was the new Sampras.
But Sampras never won four consecutive US Open crowns, actually no one has since Bill Tilden in 1923. Sampras never won five Wimbledons in a row.
But enough of the antecedents. The MC of the prize giving at Flushing Meadows told Federer and the 23,000 spectators (including his conquered foe) that he'd won a Gas Guzzler XLV410i to carry his shiny US Open trophy and — just as importantly — a winner's cheque for $1.4 million.
While the crowd was swallowing that load of information....the MC added that because Federer had been the most successful player during the north American hard court circuit - the US Open series - he was going to be weighed down with another cheque for $1 million.
Languages have been my skills but even my maths can figure out that Federer will be able to buy lots of lollies and tennis equipment over the next couple of weeks.
Two point four million dollars. As my mum would say: "I'd be happy with the point four million dollars."
If he were my mate his would be the first couple of rounds at the 90-metre champagne bar coming shortly to St Pancras International.
But I know he's the type of bloke who'd be just as happy at a cafe on the South Bank.
Friday, 7 September 2007
Relocation, relocation, relocation
I was positively Federeresque in my on court behaviour.
As for the tennis.... nothing like him. I was more of a meteorological microcosm. I was hot when it was hot and as the conditions got milder, so did my tennis. Sadly it stayed cold.
Oh well at least I can go back to Roland Garros to practise with a friend. Problem is finding anyone who is free of a morning to traipse out to the Bois de Boulogne to play on the fabled courts.
I love tennis and I love playing but I have to say even my enthusiasm would begin to wane with regular trips out there, having to lug all my gear on the metro.
As I was preparing for the actual match, my mobile phone rang. It was the headteacher telling me that my eldest daughter had vomited at school.
And could I come to get her. For a moment I thought about telling the headteacher that I was indisposed as I was preparing for a match at Roland Garros.
But then I figured that my child would probably be instantly placed in the care of social services to keep her away from her delusional father.
So I said that my partner would come to take her away.
I did feel that it was almost stepping into the traditional role of woman dropping everything to go and tend the sick child.
But as she was in the local supermarket but five minutes away from school it was logical for her to answer the mayday call.
If she had been at work then I would have sacrificed my match.
The child is better now but she's really rather sad that she's only been able to go to school on Monday and Thursday. By contrast her sister who has never struck me as the natural student is relishing her return.
She brandished her first book at me on Tuesday afternoon. Was so excited that she could read one of the phrases in the tome that she didn't even let me put the shopping bags down.
I think she was just rubbing her sister's nose in it - so to speak - that she had managed to string together two consecutive days without dispatching the contents of her stomach at school.
The five-year-old will have her first Saturday morning at school while I have the first training session with the soccer team.
There's been some electricity breakdown at Stade Louis Lumière — our usual ground. So we're relocating to Stade Pershing in the Bois de Vincennes.
Another day. Another bois.
As for the tennis.... nothing like him. I was more of a meteorological microcosm. I was hot when it was hot and as the conditions got milder, so did my tennis. Sadly it stayed cold.
Oh well at least I can go back to Roland Garros to practise with a friend. Problem is finding anyone who is free of a morning to traipse out to the Bois de Boulogne to play on the fabled courts.
I love tennis and I love playing but I have to say even my enthusiasm would begin to wane with regular trips out there, having to lug all my gear on the metro.
As I was preparing for the actual match, my mobile phone rang. It was the headteacher telling me that my eldest daughter had vomited at school.
And could I come to get her. For a moment I thought about telling the headteacher that I was indisposed as I was preparing for a match at Roland Garros.
But then I figured that my child would probably be instantly placed in the care of social services to keep her away from her delusional father.
So I said that my partner would come to take her away.
I did feel that it was almost stepping into the traditional role of woman dropping everything to go and tend the sick child.
But as she was in the local supermarket but five minutes away from school it was logical for her to answer the mayday call.
If she had been at work then I would have sacrificed my match.
The child is better now but she's really rather sad that she's only been able to go to school on Monday and Thursday. By contrast her sister who has never struck me as the natural student is relishing her return.
She brandished her first book at me on Tuesday afternoon. Was so excited that she could read one of the phrases in the tome that she didn't even let me put the shopping bags down.
I think she was just rubbing her sister's nose in it - so to speak - that she had managed to string together two consecutive days without dispatching the contents of her stomach at school.
The five-year-old will have her first Saturday morning at school while I have the first training session with the soccer team.
There's been some electricity breakdown at Stade Louis Lumière — our usual ground. So we're relocating to Stade Pershing in the Bois de Vincennes.
Another day. Another bois.
Thursday, 6 September 2007
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
I just love it when the newspapers chew over the big issues. Last week in the Guardian’s Notes and Queries column Andrew Brannan wrote in wanting help.
In what sequence should he show his young son the Star Wars episodes?
I quite liked the reply from Neil Rodgers in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. “Would it not be more challenging to consider which order to introduce a young son to the Dr Who series?”
Sharon Shaw, from Tunbridge Wells, probably spoke for millions when she suggested that starting with the Phantom Menace (Episode I) he risked putting the child off.
She said she and her husband planned to unfurl them in the following order. Episode IV (A New Hope); V (The Empire Strikes Back); I (The Phantom Menace); II (Attack of The Clones); III (Revenge of the Sith and VI Return of the Jedi.
“This way they get drawn into the simple wonder of the originals, before being left on the cliffhanger at the end of Empire to watch the back stories,” she added.
Gianluca Newcombe, aged nine, from north London, gave the child’s view: “I watched all the Star Wars films with my twin brother and my father in order I-VI. I advise everyone to so you don’t get confused.
“For example, the Emperor dies in Episode VI but then if you go and watch Episode I after that he is alive again!”
You cannot argue with that.
My conundrum has been that R2D2 has fairly limited powers in the original three and he fair clunks around as the Rebellion is threatened by hordes of Galactic Stormtroopers. But in the prequels, it can zoom about hanger decks and has all kinds of capabilities.
That’s not logical unless machines, like aging Jedi warriors, lose their potency. Watching it in chronological order would lend credence to Luke’s assertion in Episode IV to a sceptical Han Solo that Ben is a great man.
I could go on but then I’d have to go out and buy episodes I-III watch them and then IV, V and VI all with a critical eye.
I haven’t got the time because I have an 18 month old son to get through his first week in crèche and to prepare for my combat on Friday morning in the second match in the journalists’ tennis tournament on the unforgiving terre battue etc etc at Roland Garros.
It’s been a bit damp today and that will slow conditions down. That’s not going to suit my all action game.
On the subject of losers at Roland Garros, I was watching Federer hack up Andy Roddick in the quarter-finals at the US Open earlier. It was a real slugfest.
Roddick, dressed in a black T shirt, black shorts and white socks, was a pumped-up dynamo of aces, crunching forehands and grunts. Federer, kitted out in all black, was by contrast, silent poetry.
I’ll never have his dazzling array of shots but I can at least emulate his on court comportment.
In what sequence should he show his young son the Star Wars episodes?
I quite liked the reply from Neil Rodgers in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. “Would it not be more challenging to consider which order to introduce a young son to the Dr Who series?”
Sharon Shaw, from Tunbridge Wells, probably spoke for millions when she suggested that starting with the Phantom Menace (Episode I) he risked putting the child off.
She said she and her husband planned to unfurl them in the following order. Episode IV (A New Hope); V (The Empire Strikes Back); I (The Phantom Menace); II (Attack of The Clones); III (Revenge of the Sith and VI Return of the Jedi.
“This way they get drawn into the simple wonder of the originals, before being left on the cliffhanger at the end of Empire to watch the back stories,” she added.
Gianluca Newcombe, aged nine, from north London, gave the child’s view: “I watched all the Star Wars films with my twin brother and my father in order I-VI. I advise everyone to so you don’t get confused.
“For example, the Emperor dies in Episode VI but then if you go and watch Episode I after that he is alive again!”
You cannot argue with that.
My conundrum has been that R2D2 has fairly limited powers in the original three and he fair clunks around as the Rebellion is threatened by hordes of Galactic Stormtroopers. But in the prequels, it can zoom about hanger decks and has all kinds of capabilities.
That’s not logical unless machines, like aging Jedi warriors, lose their potency. Watching it in chronological order would lend credence to Luke’s assertion in Episode IV to a sceptical Han Solo that Ben is a great man.
I could go on but then I’d have to go out and buy episodes I-III watch them and then IV, V and VI all with a critical eye.
I haven’t got the time because I have an 18 month old son to get through his first week in crèche and to prepare for my combat on Friday morning in the second match in the journalists’ tennis tournament on the unforgiving terre battue etc etc at Roland Garros.
It’s been a bit damp today and that will slow conditions down. That’s not going to suit my all action game.
On the subject of losers at Roland Garros, I was watching Federer hack up Andy Roddick in the quarter-finals at the US Open earlier. It was a real slugfest.
Roddick, dressed in a black T shirt, black shorts and white socks, was a pumped-up dynamo of aces, crunching forehands and grunts. Federer, kitted out in all black, was by contrast, silent poetry.
I’ll never have his dazzling array of shots but I can at least emulate his on court comportment.
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
I'm keeping the day job
Well the career will last for another 48 hours. That's how long I've got to savour my win. Three sets on the unforgiving terre battue at Roland Garros.
It went on for ages but I prevailed 7-5 1-6 6-0. Not quite sure what happened in the second set. I remember saying to myself stay solid and I promptly lost my opening service game to go 0-2 down.
Managed to get to 1-3 but it went cataclysmic after that. Obviously there was some regrouping for the final set. I just remember saying move your feet and that worked.
My opponent Stéfan missed a few shots that he'd been making in the second set. And that was the difference. He was generous in defeat and I was gracious in victory to the point of remonstrating with him that he didn't play a really stylish forehand crosscourt.
He said he didn't have the confidence to do so. Shame, I said, because when it suddenly emerged in the third set I thought I was playing a Spaniard.
We've exchanged cards and might well do some hitting down at his club on the southern fringes of the city.
I walked around fairly gingerly at the office afterwards. I watched a bit of the Anna Chakvetadze Shahar Peer quarter final at the US Open.
Now they really walloped the ball. I looked on enviously.
Maybe Thursday night's yoga class can help me become as one with the ball.
It went on for ages but I prevailed 7-5 1-6 6-0. Not quite sure what happened in the second set. I remember saying to myself stay solid and I promptly lost my opening service game to go 0-2 down.
Managed to get to 1-3 but it went cataclysmic after that. Obviously there was some regrouping for the final set. I just remember saying move your feet and that worked.
My opponent Stéfan missed a few shots that he'd been making in the second set. And that was the difference. He was generous in defeat and I was gracious in victory to the point of remonstrating with him that he didn't play a really stylish forehand crosscourt.
He said he didn't have the confidence to do so. Shame, I said, because when it suddenly emerged in the third set I thought I was playing a Spaniard.
We've exchanged cards and might well do some hitting down at his club on the southern fringes of the city.
I walked around fairly gingerly at the office afterwards. I watched a bit of the Anna Chakvetadze Shahar Peer quarter final at the US Open.
Now they really walloped the ball. I looked on enviously.
Maybe Thursday night's yoga class can help me become as one with the ball.
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
Court craft
The call has come through to play in the journalists' tournament at Roland Garros.
Wednesday morning at 10.15. I have no idea how to prepare for a match of this magnitude.
It’s probably not a good idea to stay up during the night to watch Novak Djokovic take on Juan Monacao in the last 16 at the US Open.
I might be best served by sleeping.
But I do know that it's probably not worth treating it like a usual game and getting up at 9 and having breakfast and ambling along to the courts.
It would have been good to have had one coaching session before but I've been working, doing my day job. I'm not a professional.
Of more importance is the boy's adaptation to his new life in the crèche. It was something of a saga getting a place. I documented the ups and downs in an article published a few weeks ago on one of the Guardian websites www.guardianabroad.co.uk/family/article/339
And after that tribulation there's an upside for the parent after dropping off the fruit of their loins at the crèche. It is slap bang opposite Chez Prune.
This is a cafe that doesn't try too hard. The food there is OK - not brilliant, not awful. The position — overlooking the Canal St Martin — is marvellous. And most importantly it was in the vanguard. It opened when the 10th was still considered a dead zone and the canal but a dirty and forlorn urban waterway.
Now of course it's a gleaming green canal — the epicentre of the bobo wonderland that has descended. At one of the spruced-up sluices Audrey Tautou ran the gamut of gamine as Amélie Poulain. Local estate agents thereafter chortled all the way to the Michelin-starred restaurants.
Maybe I'll be dining out with them with the earnings from my impending tennis career.
Wednesday morning at 10.15. I have no idea how to prepare for a match of this magnitude.
It’s probably not a good idea to stay up during the night to watch Novak Djokovic take on Juan Monacao in the last 16 at the US Open.
I might be best served by sleeping.
But I do know that it's probably not worth treating it like a usual game and getting up at 9 and having breakfast and ambling along to the courts.
It would have been good to have had one coaching session before but I've been working, doing my day job. I'm not a professional.
Of more importance is the boy's adaptation to his new life in the crèche. It was something of a saga getting a place. I documented the ups and downs in an article published a few weeks ago on one of the Guardian websites www.guardianabroad.co.uk/family/article/339
And after that tribulation there's an upside for the parent after dropping off the fruit of their loins at the crèche. It is slap bang opposite Chez Prune.
This is a cafe that doesn't try too hard. The food there is OK - not brilliant, not awful. The position — overlooking the Canal St Martin — is marvellous. And most importantly it was in the vanguard. It opened when the 10th was still considered a dead zone and the canal but a dirty and forlorn urban waterway.
Now of course it's a gleaming green canal — the epicentre of the bobo wonderland that has descended. At one of the spruced-up sluices Audrey Tautou ran the gamut of gamine as Amélie Poulain. Local estate agents thereafter chortled all the way to the Michelin-starred restaurants.
Maybe I'll be dining out with them with the earnings from my impending tennis career.
Hello Dali
"Your moustache looks so rigid — How does it react to the winds of public opinion?"
"She bends."
Oh that crazy Salvador Dali. Towards the end of the exhibition about the showman incarnate at the Tate Modern in London, there's a series of photographs with a few witty words from the rogue himself.
It was my second trip on Monday to see it. The first was about nine days ago. But that was with the entire family on the August Bank Holiday weekend.
Since the Notting Hill Carnival was frenzying up the western sector, London Underground had laid on a fully functioning network.
That didn't necessarily mean that we could travel any more efficiently, but it was reassuring to know that they weren't making it more difficult.
We met my sister and her chap in the Turbine Hall and after coffees split up. She took the girls round somewhere while Ann, the boy and I went round the Dali & Film.
In the wacky race that is Hollywood, Dali ought to have fitted in a treat. And indeed he did but with some strange bedfellows such as Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and The Marx Brothers.
Actually teaming up in any capacity with Harpo, Zeppo, Chico and Groucho would have to be a zany experience.
But the exhibition showed snippets of Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'or. I knew about the dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound.
There's the finely chiseled Gregory Peck on the psychiatrist's couch relating his innermost thoughts to Ingrid Bergman.
A man with no face, being chased by a shadow of wings, and wheels dropping.
You just have to love the bravura.
What I didn't know was that Hitchcock was a big fan of Un Chien Andalou and there's a clin d'oeil to the Dali/Bunuel film when a pair of scissors cuts through a photograph of an eye.
The razor blade across the eye in Un Chien Andalou still makes me squirm. Others — such as a bleeding horse's head on a piano — makes me chuckle. Ants on the hand leave me baffled.
I don't recall being overly impressed during my tour of the Dali Museum in Figueres. I went there about 20 years ago. It was during a trip to north-eastern Spain to see a then friend of mine, Nick, whose parents owned an apartment.
And the idea was to meet up with an Australian friend who was travelling through Europe.
The details are hazy now but I'd arranged to be at Nick's on something like July 21.
And told Caroline as much.
I phoned Nick to say there'd be a delay but I couldn't get any word to Caroline. This was in the time before emails and mobile phones.
So after my weekend in Manchester with a new flame, I set off for Spain.
I got there on — let's say July 24 — a few days late admittedly. Nick and Caroline were at the train station greet me.
Once I'd settled in Nick was asking me if there was anything between Caroline and me because he thought she was rather lovely.
I said definitely not, she's an intelligent girl.
Caroline wanted to know why I was late. I said I'd just met this woman and given the choice between travelling to north-eastern Spain and shacking up in northern England, I'd chosen the Lancastrian option.
I thought I was plausible but Caroline didn't buy it. I remember it to this day. "No, come on, why were you late?"
I obviously didn't look the type who could hang out for a weekend with a woman. I was hurt and quite insulted but still had enough about me to concoct a story about Barclaycard not giving me the credit to pay for tickets and being cash-strapped.
She accepted that reason and then she let the matter drop. We went on to have quite a good holiday.
While Caroline doesn't now remember repudiating my masculinity, we can both reconfigure the train trip back to Paris in which some bloke (who Caroline probably fancied) went to light up in the corridor between the non-smoking carriages at the same time as this good-looking woman (who I would have probably fancied had I not been still thinking northern England).
And obviously amid the haze there was a spark. They both returned and were virtually smoking each other by the end of the train ride.
Caroline went on with her Europa tour and I went back to London.
It later went surreal with the girl from Manchester but that's another story. Dali always whips up those memories.
So it wasn't surprising that on the solo visit to the Tate on Monday I found the Millennium Bridge swaddled in a spongy cash and coins carpet.
I wish it swayed as it did when it was opened. But it doesn't and that's the past.
The future, according to the MasterCard PayPass, is cashless.
A card thrust into my hand told me the MasterCard PayPass would change the way I pay for items under £10.
There'll be less waiting, less queuing and no fumbling for change.
To pay with MasterCard PayPass I will simply Tap & Go.
I'll be able to use this facility at around 1,000 retailers with the number rising to 5,000 in the near future.
All I now have to do is check availability with my bank and of course visit a website www.mastercard.co.uk/paypass
I'm not entirely clear I want to contact my bank for another card for the rather lovely wallet I bought in Mulberry while killing time at Stansted airport before the flight to Stockholm.
I quite like my change purse. The chink chink of little pieces of cash link me with my perceptions of being grown up.
When I was a child, adults had change. And people with cars had keys. We once hired a Renault to drive from Paris to visit friends in Burgundy. After I'd done the paperwork, the Avis assistant handed me a rubbery oblong object.
I looked at it, up at her and was just about to ask when I was told that it was the key.
No jingle jangle. No teeth. No way. Have to say the Renault was brilliant. Shame about the key.
I'm not signing up for the cashless future quite yet but I might well track down some Bunuel films on DVD.
It would be absurd not to.
"She bends."
Oh that crazy Salvador Dali. Towards the end of the exhibition about the showman incarnate at the Tate Modern in London, there's a series of photographs with a few witty words from the rogue himself.
It was my second trip on Monday to see it. The first was about nine days ago. But that was with the entire family on the August Bank Holiday weekend.
Since the Notting Hill Carnival was frenzying up the western sector, London Underground had laid on a fully functioning network.
That didn't necessarily mean that we could travel any more efficiently, but it was reassuring to know that they weren't making it more difficult.
We met my sister and her chap in the Turbine Hall and after coffees split up. She took the girls round somewhere while Ann, the boy and I went round the Dali & Film.
In the wacky race that is Hollywood, Dali ought to have fitted in a treat. And indeed he did but with some strange bedfellows such as Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and The Marx Brothers.
Actually teaming up in any capacity with Harpo, Zeppo, Chico and Groucho would have to be a zany experience.
But the exhibition showed snippets of Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'or. I knew about the dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound.
There's the finely chiseled Gregory Peck on the psychiatrist's couch relating his innermost thoughts to Ingrid Bergman.
A man with no face, being chased by a shadow of wings, and wheels dropping.
You just have to love the bravura.
What I didn't know was that Hitchcock was a big fan of Un Chien Andalou and there's a clin d'oeil to the Dali/Bunuel film when a pair of scissors cuts through a photograph of an eye.
The razor blade across the eye in Un Chien Andalou still makes me squirm. Others — such as a bleeding horse's head on a piano — makes me chuckle. Ants on the hand leave me baffled.
I don't recall being overly impressed during my tour of the Dali Museum in Figueres. I went there about 20 years ago. It was during a trip to north-eastern Spain to see a then friend of mine, Nick, whose parents owned an apartment.
And the idea was to meet up with an Australian friend who was travelling through Europe.
The details are hazy now but I'd arranged to be at Nick's on something like July 21.
And told Caroline as much.
I phoned Nick to say there'd be a delay but I couldn't get any word to Caroline. This was in the time before emails and mobile phones.
So after my weekend in Manchester with a new flame, I set off for Spain.
I got there on — let's say July 24 — a few days late admittedly. Nick and Caroline were at the train station greet me.
Once I'd settled in Nick was asking me if there was anything between Caroline and me because he thought she was rather lovely.
I said definitely not, she's an intelligent girl.
Caroline wanted to know why I was late. I said I'd just met this woman and given the choice between travelling to north-eastern Spain and shacking up in northern England, I'd chosen the Lancastrian option.
I thought I was plausible but Caroline didn't buy it. I remember it to this day. "No, come on, why were you late?"
I obviously didn't look the type who could hang out for a weekend with a woman. I was hurt and quite insulted but still had enough about me to concoct a story about Barclaycard not giving me the credit to pay for tickets and being cash-strapped.
She accepted that reason and then she let the matter drop. We went on to have quite a good holiday.
While Caroline doesn't now remember repudiating my masculinity, we can both reconfigure the train trip back to Paris in which some bloke (who Caroline probably fancied) went to light up in the corridor between the non-smoking carriages at the same time as this good-looking woman (who I would have probably fancied had I not been still thinking northern England).
And obviously amid the haze there was a spark. They both returned and were virtually smoking each other by the end of the train ride.
Caroline went on with her Europa tour and I went back to London.
It later went surreal with the girl from Manchester but that's another story. Dali always whips up those memories.
So it wasn't surprising that on the solo visit to the Tate on Monday I found the Millennium Bridge swaddled in a spongy cash and coins carpet.
I wish it swayed as it did when it was opened. But it doesn't and that's the past.
The future, according to the MasterCard PayPass, is cashless.
A card thrust into my hand told me the MasterCard PayPass would change the way I pay for items under £10.
There'll be less waiting, less queuing and no fumbling for change.
To pay with MasterCard PayPass I will simply Tap & Go.
I'll be able to use this facility at around 1,000 retailers with the number rising to 5,000 in the near future.
All I now have to do is check availability with my bank and of course visit a website www.mastercard.co.uk/paypass
I'm not entirely clear I want to contact my bank for another card for the rather lovely wallet I bought in Mulberry while killing time at Stansted airport before the flight to Stockholm.
I quite like my change purse. The chink chink of little pieces of cash link me with my perceptions of being grown up.
When I was a child, adults had change. And people with cars had keys. We once hired a Renault to drive from Paris to visit friends in Burgundy. After I'd done the paperwork, the Avis assistant handed me a rubbery oblong object.
I looked at it, up at her and was just about to ask when I was told that it was the key.
No jingle jangle. No teeth. No way. Have to say the Renault was brilliant. Shame about the key.
I'm not signing up for the cashless future quite yet but I might well track down some Bunuel films on DVD.
It would be absurd not to.
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