VIRUS-TIME SHORT TALKS No. 3: SPORT IN THE GARDEN

SPORT IN THE GARDEN 

I’m back playing hurling, since this thing started. You know: the fastest field sport in the world. Hurling. When women play, it’s called camogie. The pitch is bigger than a soccer pitch. The best pitch is Croke Park. The goals are like rugby goals, but with a net on a lower cross-bar. It’s all over the world, like the virus, but a good one. China, US, everywhere. 

They call it shinty in the highlands and islands of Scotland. If you watch shinty, you can see where the golf swing came from. It’s the most ancient stick and ball game, played by the gods and by mythical women and men.

I’m back at it, on the stretch of grass that runs from the front hedge, facing the street, to the low wall at my neighbour’s side. Lockdown hurling. I have a length of about 5 social distances, which is a new unit of length. One social distance is 2 metres or 6 foot six, in old money. That’s the height I was aiming for when I was 17, but I hit a five foot ten ceiling that stayed in place for the following fifty years.

I played hurling when I was young, so pucking about is a nostalgia thing, as well as exercise. The sliotar, the leather-cased ball, is hardy and makes a dullsthockwhen it meets the hurl. It doesn’t fly out on to the street. I also have a tennis ball, skittish as a puppy, and it often abandons me in the hedge. 

You can hardly blame it; for not wanting to get a whack with the hurley. They say that if you lose a sliotar and you can’t find it, wait ‘til you lose the second one and you’ll find both. That’s why there’s always two remotes behind the cushions on the sofa. 

I found the sliotar and the tennis ball, where they’d perched on a mesh of twigs, like guillemot eggs on a cliff-edge. Though they’re not at all like guillemot eggs, which are pear shaped. Check them out. I’m home-schooling myself every day since the lockdown started.

So, with the good weather, I’m up and down the five social distances of grass a couple of times a day and I’m thinking about all the mature women and men engaged in marathons of sorting in sheds, attics, back-bedrooms, under beds and on top of wardrobes. 

They come upon hurley sticks, made of ash, hockey sticks, made of hickory and cricket bats, made of willow; lacrosse nets (not many of them around here) and let’s leave the baseball bats buried for a while yet. 

They come upon rugby balls, soccer balls, ping-pong balls, shuttle cocks, even more tennis balls, bowls for carpet and for grass and O’Neill’s Number 5s Gaelic footballs. And they’re out there in yards, front steps, back gardens whacking, tapping, kicking, throwing, swinging and flicking, then gently strolling after the strucken object, reliving glory days when the grass was lustrous green, the sun was gorgeous gold and there were no ceilings on the heights you could get to and no lockdowns. Only sport. 

(SFX: WHISTLE) Is that the whistle?

Broadcast on BBC Foyle, The Breakfast Show, 20.4.2020 

Available on BBC Sounds

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