"Fat to Fittie"

After years of being involved with contact sports, injury turned me towards tennis in my late 20’s, I actually got quite good at it, until the pressure of work and a moaning partner, forced me to have a break. Unfortunately, this is when my health started to go downhill and the dodgy hips I’d had for years began to hurt at the lack of inactivity. A few years later I was in need of an operation but had now become a bit of a fat git. In order to reduce my belt size I took up swimming, but this wasn’t enough. I missed tennis so much, for the first two years of not being able to play, I couldn’t watch Wimbledon, surely there had to be something I could do and of course there was, a smaller version, table tennis. Despite not being able to move I began to play quite well and was challenged to a game by my nephew, he beat me five nil.

I wasn’t put off and promised him in 3 months I’d be the one winning. I still remember the grin on his face and the grunting chuckling sound as he left the building, nothing like wanting to kick someone’s arse to motivate. Thanks to a magic gel that gave me an hour of pain reduction, I was able to get to a decent standard where I’d stand a chance of beating him. The day of the match came and I’d blathered (good old Yorkshire word meaning “covered with a generous layer”) the magic gel all over my hips and legs. he turned up with his brother, obviously as a witness and to record my impending embarrassment, which, wasn’t to be. I returned the 5-0 thrashing on my first nephew, did the other 4-0 and beat them both in a doubles/singles game 3-0. Suffice to say, I was a bit chuffed, unlike the pair of them. The thrashing I gave is a moment I relive in my head quiet often and mention at every family gathering. However, while swimming 30 minutes later while they sulked in the sauna, I got an excruciating pain in my side. This was diagnosed a week later as a hernia and put an end to my table tennis showing off, just as I’d got started. That’ll teach me.

Fast forward 4 yrs, I’m desperate to play again, but the problem is, no one will, let’s be honest, who wants to lose against a fat cripple that can’t walk without sticks? This isn’t the sort of thing you’re going to live down, mostly because of my past bragging about beating my nephews, no one will take me on. In reality I’m a few weeks away from being any good and I constantly make arrangements to meet for a game, only to find no one shows and I’m left twiddling my bat alone, story of my life. Who knows, perhaps someone will step up and risk their pride, but they’ll need balls the size used for playing tennis and not ping pong.