Tuesday, January 25, 2011

In another Life


Many moons ago, I was addicted to badminton...no not that long ago!








In the late eighties, having started to play a bit too late to ever be REALLY any good, badminton filled a humongous crater in my life. My two closest friends (who were also my flatmates)departed to get married and I took up with a racquet and shuttlecock.

For a few years, until a few things intervened, I ate, slept and drank badminton.












Even harboured dreams of becoming a Zhang Ning (the world's top player)










Twenty years on, badminton has come back into my life with a bang (or should I say 'smash'?)Premature retirement from the soccer team by my twelve year old son, due to, in his words: "It's no fun anymore," filled me (and I'm no "Tiger Mother") with disappointment and a generous dose of anxiety. What now for him at weekends & midweek, without his training, matches etc?
So for the second time, badminton came to the rescue. Having spotted the box of dusty runner-up plaques and medals in the attic, earned by sweat and tears during all those wannabe Zhang Ning years, he decides on badminton as his sport of choice.


And he's loving it, bashing and swooping with my twenty year old racquet that carried me through many tightly fought matches.







The icing on the cake, though, was when I mentioned his new sport to my coffee buddies and guess what, even though we are meeting up for years, the four of us turn out to be closet, former badminton lovers!

One morning a week, the walls of our local sports centre now enclose the frantic bashings of a resurrected shuttlecock.

4 comments:

Hot Cross Mum said...

Great post - and love the picture you use at the top! Here's to his many successes.

Susannah said...

Great! The exercise will be so good too. I have never been remotely sporty much to my disappointment but I love the 'thought' of it. :-)

Have you done anything to your blog settings lately? It is just that I have you linked from one of my blogs http://thestreamingnow.blogspot.com/
So I can see when you update and I was really surprised to see this post, as my blogroll is still showing your last one! If I hadn't popped in, I would have missed this one.

Anyway, I did pop in so caught it anyway. :-)

Susannah said...

Fixed it! I deleted it and re entered it and it worked again. :-)

Mari G said...

Hi Susannah
Thanks for popping in. I actually need to look at a few things around the set up of my blog, a friend is also trying to comment and can't. Teething problems maybe...
Mari