Jesus: how do you play him at badminton?

How on earth do you play badminton against the redeemer of all mankind?

The Spanish have an idiosyncratic system of forenames. Or perhaps I should say Christian names, since that term, rather frowned on in England now, does literally apply in this case.

How do you take him on at badminton, let alone with a hope of winning?
That's not a photo of my opponent. It’s a detail from Cornelis Massijs’ 
Christ driving the merchants from the temple

The other day I found myself on a badminton court about to play against a man who warmly shook my hand and introduced himself as ‘Jesus’.

Now, I have to confess, I hope without causing offence to my many Christian friends, that I am no Christian myself. It’s not at all clear to me that the Lord has redeemed us all, by sending his son to Earth to suffer and die for us, or in any other way. After all, had we been redeemed, I can’t see how Trump could possibly be sitting in the White House.

Even so, Jesus is quite name. A prestigious name. A name of power. How on Earth could I be expected to win a badminton game against Jesus? Why, it felt almost sacrilegious to attempt it.

In the end, the problem didn’t arise. He won. Not by a lot, but in a two-person game, there are no prizes for coming second, as Jeremy Corbyn has discovered. At least it was more Corbyn 2017 (a close defeat) than 2019 (a thorough thrashing).

One of the other players is called Maria Jesus. You might think that would make her still more unbeatable, with the virgin Mary on her side as well as the redeemer. As it happens, she’s a relatively weak player, so if Mary is full of grace, it reveals itself in the good feeling her partner enjoys on the rare occasions when they win.

The administrative side of the club is managed by Maria Jose. This name tactfully avoids calling on the redeemer himself. Instead, the allusion is to his parents. But then again, perhaps not. His mother certainly, but Joseph actually wasn’t the father, was he? The husband of the mother but not the father.

That kind of thing happens in ordinary human society too but as a general rule, the Church takes a dim view of it. Not though in the case of the holy family. It’s a complicated religion, Christianity, which is why its greatest theologians have been such subtle thinkers.

All this came to my mind when I was stopped by a man I didn’t know from Adam, or indeed from any other Biblical character, in the street just outside my house. One of the great pleasures of moving to Valencia has been the extraordinary friendliness of the locals. He was no exception.

He turned out to be a neighbour, if ‘neighbour’ is the right term for someone who lives in the same street but 51 houses away. The Spanish term means something more like a ‘nearby’, which feels more accurate. This man was a nearby of ours.

He started off by welcoming us to the area. I always wax lyrical about the place whenever anyone does that. Much the most pleasant neighbourhood we’ve ever lived in, lovely people, beautiful surroundings, etc. I try to avoid mentioning the weather because that seems so trivial. But they always home right in on it themselves.

“And the climate,” he said, “isn’t the climate wonderful?”

Well, having moved her from England which, proverbially, has no climate, only weather, the answer to that question was pretty obvious.

Before we parted, I thought I ought at least to introduce myself.

“I’m David,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Santiago,” he replied vigorously shaking it.

Santiago? That’s Saint James.

“Ah,” I said, “I’ve never met a saint before.”

“Well,” he said, “there’s a first time for everything. Now you have.”

Curious. I wonder whether he plays badminton?

Watching badminton. And the surprising political insight it gave me

Badminton’s a game I play, not one I watch.

Today, however, I made an exception. I was with a friend who regularly gives me a thrashing on the court, and he wanted to watch some of the Olympics matches.

My first observation was that those competitors played a pretty mean game. They too would probably thrash me. Well, perhaps not if they gave me a 19-point lead, though I suspect that even then they’d beat me 21-19.

Canada's Michelle Li, one of the players I watched
Not someone I'd like to see across a net

The second observation was that the commentators are just as delightfully dumb as in any other sport.

We watched one player win a game 21-6. In the second game, when the loser of the first reached 12 points, the commentator solemnly assured us that he was doing better than in the first game. With twice the score he made in the entire game before, I’d say that was probably true. I suppose I should be grateful to have it pointed out, in case I failed to spot it myself.

We learned that it was necessary for both players to win the game. I suspect they each knew they needed to win. I’m not convinced that there are any circumstances in which both players could win the game. It’s not a situation I’ve ever met and, while I play at a far lower level, I’m pretty certain that both players winning isn’t a feasible outcome at the Olympics either.

Then came a game where the players level-pegged it most of the way up – you know, 10-10, 10-11, 11-11, 12-11, 13-11, 13-12 and so on – until the scores reached 17-12. At that point, the commentator kindly informed us that the player who was ahead had some momentum.

That didn’t just strike me as true, it also provided me with a chilling reminder of the unpleasantness of reality away from the TV. Momentum is the organisation which is taking over the Labour Party at the moment, and achieving two effects: turning it into something much more brutal and unpleasant than it has been in the last thirty years, and making sure that it falls into the trap of believing it’s more important to have good policies than to get the opportunity to put any of them into practice.

Momentum, it seems, is something that drives you forward, but without a heed as to whether it’s straight into a wall or over a cliff.

Momentum in the badminton match led to joy for one player, tears for the other. The fruits of victory, in other words. Sadly, the victory of Momentum over Labour will only be tears, and shed all round.

I have always depended on the insights of strangers

The worst bit of walking back from my Sunday morning badminton class is that most of the walk’s uphill. That’s painful after an hour’s drilling by an admittedly fine, but demanding, coach followed by a second hour’s play.

It’s particularly painful when I reach the station. Cutting through it is my most direct route home, but it means climbing a double flight of stairs. Tedious in the extreme when your legs are already stiffening up nicely.

Today I’d got to the top, with some relief, when I saw a little old lady about to struggle down with a suitcase she was having trouble managing.

My first thought was, “normally, I’d help. That’s the kind of person I see myself as. Who cares if I have to come back up the stairs again afterwards?”

My second thought was even more galling: “little old lady? She’s probably only a few years older than I am. What’s a little old man doing offering a little old lady help?”

That settled it for me.

“Can I help you with that?” I asked.

It took three times of asking but in the end she heard me.

“Oh, thanks,” she eventually said, “but it’s heavy, you know.”

Her case was about the size of the backpack I use to carry my kit to work. That’s a lot heavier than I like, since I insist on carrying two laptops, but it’s still perfectly bearable. Her suitcase was pretty much in a day’s work, literally, for me.

As we walked downstairs, she must have caught sight of my sweat-stained shirt and my racket bag, and asked, “are you a tennis player?”

“No,” I said, “badminton.”

“Oh,” she said, pleased, “so am I.”

She paused and thought again.

“Well, I used to be.” That gave me just a couple of seconds to feel superior before she went on, “I used to play for Yorkshire.”

She played for her county?

“Oh, well, you know…” I started mumbling, planning on telling her that I never came even remotely close to that level.

Great game!
See the player on this side of the net? That isn't me
The one on the other side isn't me either

“I’m from Sheffield,” she cut me off.

“Lovely city!” I said, and meant it. It also struck me as a better subject

“Yes,” she went on, twisting the knife, “my son played for England.”

We were at the bottom of the stairs by then. I showed her the way to the taxi rank, we smiled and said our goodbyes, and hurried back up and on my way.

People often ask me why I talk to strangers. I think it’s for the kind of experience I had this morning. It teaches you about yourself – like looking into a mirror, but one that gives you back an unvarnished, brutally true assessment of what you are and what you do. Like, not as young as you thought, nor as good at badminton.

Chastening. But I’m sure it’s good for the soul.

Keeping score in badminton. Better than counting lengths of a pool

One of the advantages of the weekend, is that the kind of exercise I take changes.

During the week, it’s swimming. But at the weekend it’s badminton. And that’s a huge improvement. Not just for the obvious reason that badminton doesn’t involve total immersion in cold water, or contact with any kind of water at all except perhaps in a bottle, but because badminton’s actually more fun. You score points in badminton – well, occasionally you lose them – so you can work out who’s won.

A winning point, as a shuttle dips over a net

It’s impossible to tell who the winner is in swimming, except that I have a sneaking feeling it’s the pool. Certainly, I always feel I come in second.

I suppose the reason I enjoy a game, as opposed to a sport, with a scoreline rather than mere endurance, is that I’m fundamentally competitive. That doesn’t mean that I expect to win or anything. I like to think I’m far too much of a realist for that. What I have is more a kind of potential competitiveness: the sense that in a competitive game, there is a chance that I might win.

After all, it does sometimes happen.

There’s a curious phenomenon that comes into play here. The same thing, I’m told, happens in childbirth. Clutching the little bundle of joy they’ve just received, and blissfully unaware of the 20 years of sheer ghastliness ahead, new mothers lose all memory of the pain they’ve just gone through to get that bundle of devilry into the world in the first place.

The same thing happens to me with badminton. I know I must have lost a whole bunch of games because I know, with my rational mind, that I played rather more games than I won.

Make that substantially more games than I won.

But the detail of any one of those defeats? Expunged from my mind as though they’d never happened. The victories, on the other hand, stay with me in glorious detail, to be replayed at leisure in my mind afterwards. For instance, in that wonderful bath into which I let my aching limbs subside.

With swimming, there’s no such joy. Just a vague sense of achievement. Though since I leave the pool by the same ladder that I entered it, even that is somewhat limited: all that effort to get back to place I started from? What was the point? Where’s the mileage in that?

It was like that in the days when I used to go running. However far I ran, I always ended up back at the car. Like one of those nightmares, or Alice in Through the Looking Glass: you run and run but you get nowhere.

So I’m enjoying the weekend. Badminton on Saturday. Badminton on Sunday. And some games I’ll win.

Then Monday, I’ll be back to swimming. And it’s a safe bet the pool will end up ahead. Again.

Badminton reduces the horror of exercise and adds a spark of Schadenfreude

Swimming’s a real super-sport. Exercises every part of you. Doesn’t put particular strain anywhere. But it has one huge intractable problem: it involves covering yourself in cold water.

True, it’s not that cold. However, my benchmark for water into which I might immerse myself is the kind you find in a bath. Swimming pools are a lot less alluring than that. And, in the winter, when it’s quite cold enough outside, the allure is still less marked.

So it was a great relief to opt for badminton this morning instead. You don’t get undressed for it. You quickly get warm. It doesn’t involve water, at least not until the post-game shower. And it’s fun: you even know who’s won, which is difficult with swimming (although in my case, I reckon it’s the pool that wins. Every time).

A joy in itself. And it can even deliver a lesson on life

The place where I played is an informal club, where you just turn up and play with anyone else who’s there. It has a few unwritten rules. If there are too many people for the courts, you take it in turn to sit out a game. If beginners show up, everyone plays with them at some stage or other, to make sure they’re fully involved.

Well, when I say ‘everyone’, I’m exaggerating slightly. There are always a few people who just know they play better than anyone else, and are therefore entitled to rise above the mere rules that govern the rest of us. They never leave the court. And they turn their back, in disdain, on the weaker players on whom it would be a waste of their precious time to squander their talents.

As well as being amusing in itself, this behaviour turns the badminton club into a microcosm of society. We live in a world where a small number of highly privileged people believe that they owe their positions to their superior talents – actually, we owe it to them to ensure they have those positions in recognition of their superior talents – and they know they’re entitled to ignore the rules if it suits them, or even to buy themselves governments that will change them on their behalf.

The sense of entitlement. The bane of modern society.

We had an entitled player this morning. The only time I saw him voluntarily leave the court was when two other men suggested that he make up a four with the three of us; he clearly wasn’t going to lower himself to playing with me so managed to persuade someone else to take his place.

Instead, he moved on to the court next door and started a game with three friends of mine. The one playing with him is an impressively powerful player, though not always as accurate as he’d like. When his strokes come off, they’re often unbeatable, but they don’t always come off. Still, overall he’s a strong player, an asset to have on your side and I’m happy to play with when I get the chance.

Now, here’s an interesting aspect of this state of affairs, and again it reflects the nature of society. The people who feel they belong to a self-appointed (perhaps I should say ‘self-anointed’) elite think themselves massively superior to all others, justifying for instance their having incomes 40 or 50 times higher than those at the bottom of the scale. The player this morning who felt himself so far above me, and who was playing with my friend, clearly regards his game as massively better than mine. In reality, it’s little more than marginally better than mine. 

OK, decidedly more than marginally better. But no more than that.

So I was delighted as I left the court and walked past his to hear the score. 14-1. To the other side. Despite the fact that he was playing with a good partner.

I was sorry for my friend but absolutely delighted for his partner. Couldn’t happen to a better guy, I felt.

Pure Schadenfreude, of course, pleasure in another’s misfortune, and therefore reprehensible. But its being reprehensible didn’t make it any less enjoyable. I left the club with a song in my heart and a spring in my step, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

It's the games people play with each other that matter

An excellent test of the character of a town is the quality of its badminton.

When we were living in the Paris region, we were in a beautiful suburb on the West of the City, St Germain-en-Laye. A wonderful town centre with all the most glorious shops you could possibly want – in fact, given the prices they charged, rather more than we could possibly want. There was also a fabulous chateau, where one of the greatest of French Kings, Henry IV was born, or lived, or something – I’m vague on the details. I can confirm that he wasn’t in residence when we were around.

Anyway, it wasn’t the chateau itself that had the charm, it was the extraordinary terrace beyond, where you could walk for ages through formal gardens with a glorious view down to the river Seine and, beyond it, Paris. Unbeatable. Wardown Park in Luton is great, but not quite in the same league, and the river Lea – well, it’s not quite the Seine.

The river Lea in Luton

Majestic view from the terrace in St Germain

Problem is – a view’s a view. You see it once and think it’s wonderful. Maybe even twice or three times. But then – what else are you going to do with it? It stays beautiful, but despite changes in light and weather, well it’s pretty much as beautiful each time. What matters is the people. That’s what really gives a place its charm.

And when it comes to the people in St Germain-en-Laye – I’m reminded of the guardsman’s comment on the Battle of Waterloo: ‘my dear... the noise... and the people.’

St Germain was where friends of ours were asked, nay told, by neighbours to take in the futons they had hung out on their balcony to air. Said neighbours had ‘visitors coming round in the afternoon’ and what did our friends think? That ‘this was Naples?’

So I suppose our experience at the badminton club was hardly a surprise. We paid our subscriptions to join (OK, OK, I mean, I paid, I was the moron). We went just once. After an hour hanging around it became clear that no-one already playing was going to leave a court, ever, to let us play. So we left and never came back.

Tonight Danielle and I went to our local club here in Luton. There were only four other people there, all men, playing an intense doubles match when we arrived. It looked as though we’d be obliged to knock up on a court on our own for the whole evening.

Nothing of the sort. The four men finished their match and called us. ‘Come on, we’ll swap in,’ they said. Two of them went off to play singles, and we played a doubles match. So it went on for the time we were there – four playing doubles, two playing singles, swapping around each game.

That’s tolerance, decency and generosity. Would I exchange them for a view? You’ve got to be kidding.

Anyway, to be honest, the Lea’s not that bad. Quite pretty, isn’t it? When you look at the picture closely.