Heinrich took up tennis when his knees gave out on
him and he could no longer play central midfield for the West Dusseldorf
Old Boys XI.
He wasn’t much good at tennis, the gammy knees saw
to that, but he didn’t need to be. Nobody else at his local tennis club
was either. There would be a cheer from the bar when anyone managed to
get a first serve over the net. It was more
a social activity and the highlight was the annual trip to Majorca for
the tennis camp. His club went to the same place every April with a view
to honing their court skills before the summer inter club tournaments
took place.
The truth however, was that Heinrich and his mates
were less interested in having their tennis skills improved and more
concerned with being first to the poolside bar back at the hotel. They
had some competition in that regard as several
other German Tennis clubs were making the same pilgrimage.
Tennis is not a mixed sport in Germany for some
reason. So the groups were single sex. Seven or so middle aged men at
one table, struggling with the concept of sporting fashion and the
smoking ban. Beside them, but at a discrete distance,
sat a smaller but better dressed coven of female German tennis mums.
Never the twain shall meet it would seem, apart
from at the mixed doubles tournament that the Hotel organised and which
the all trundled off to reluctantly.
The Germans are nothing if not efficient and
Heinrich and his mates would rise early to get the awkward tennis stuff
out of the way before racing back to the Hotel for midday and their
favourite table by the pool. The pool it must be stressed
was merely there to provide a picturesque backdrop to their drinking
activities. They had as little interest in swimming as they had in
tennis.
I had spotted them on our first day in Majorca. I
saw straight away that none of them would be troubling the Grand Slam
circuit. Their gear as much as their physique told me that. I guess
we’re used to seeing Nadal and Murray arrive on
court with a bag as big as a family would take on a month long safari.
Five or so rackets, a couple of changes of clothes and enough isotonic
drinks to pickle an elephant’s kidneys.
Heinrich and his mates had perfected a more
minimalist chic. They carried one racket each, the cover for which had
clearly been lost years ago on a similar trip. If a string broke at
9.05am, just after play had commenced, it would have
generated a nonchalant shrug from its owner and a look of envy from his
colleagues as he bade his farewells and headed back to the Hotel for
three hours extra sleep before the drinking started.
Apart from his racket, Heinrich carried a tracksuit
top which was old but not quite old enough to qualify for retro
coolness and a small towel that spent the rest of the year soaking up
beer spills when he watched Schalke on TV.
All of these were packed into a small non-descript
backpack. He was a paradigm of sporting fashion compared to his buddies
however. One of them carried his racket and towel in a Lidl carrier bag!
We have been travelling a lot recently. Apart from
this jaunt to Spain, we travelled to Luxembourg for Easter with a couple
of days in Germany at either end of the trip. The people I met in
Germany all worked in shops or restaurants. Even
if I tried my schoolboy German, they would reply in perfect and
slightly patronising English.
In Spain however, I got lots of opportunity to
speak the tongue of the Fatherland. There were lots of English people
there too but they tended to be older and interested in doing nothing,
apart from drinking by the pool that is. So when
the German tennis crowd turned up at lunchtime, the scrum at the bar
resembled Juno beach in 1944.
We borrowed bikes on most of the days we were there
and headed out along the majestic Mediterranean coastline. The people
we encountered along the way were mainly German and I guess they assumed
we were to. As a result, I spoke more German
than I did in my five years of secondary school. By the Thursday, I was
almost fluent and engaged in a profound conversation with a couple from Magdeburg. The subject was 1980s East German punk music, a subject I would
not previously have felt comfortable discussing
in English.
Once we had established that “Du Hast Das Farbfilm
vegessen” was indeed a classic of that genre, we moved on to
horticulture and a discussion on the trees of the Mediterranean and
their Scottish equivalents. My Kiwi wife looked on in amazement
at my previously unmentioned skill. Little did she know that to their
ears, I sounded like Manuel from Fawlty Towers.
I did make me realise however, that much of what we
learned in school still sits somewhere in the dark recesses of the
brain. It makes me feel more confident that when my daughter arrives
home from school seeking help with her homework,
I may be able to recall how to solve quadratic equations or to name the
three longest rivers in Africa.
We think that most of what we learnt in school was
useless (spending thirteen years learning the Irish language certainly
falls into that category) but perhaps it does have one purpose. Apart
from allowing us to help our children with their
homework, it also provides a foundation for countless meaningless
conversations with strangers on holidays. I’ve never used German for
work purposes for example, but it did allow some sweet tongued mumbling
to Frauliens when I travelled in my twenties, as
well as to East German tourists now.
