I left it over sixty years ago when I moved away
And curious to know if my old tennis club still existed
I consulted Google to see if it survives and has a website
Happily, it does but membership fees have increased somewhat
In the early nineteen sixties I paid six pounds for the year
Annual membership is now eighty pounds
Thanks to the ravages of inflation
I spent most of my weekends at that club
And worshiped a girl called Dorothy
Sadly Dorothy did not return my affections
Dorothy was very athletic and had
Lovely long legs and an awesome backhand
I never quite mastered my backhand
And would run round the ball to play it with a forehand
Rackets then were made from wood and strung with cat gut
The best one was a Dunlop Maxply Fort which cost over five pounds
Only the well-off kids would have one
I wanted one but could never afford it
Racket heads were affixed with a single shaft
Unlike today’s aluminon ones with twin supports
Then the balls were all coloured white
Present day fluorescent yellow is an obvious improvement
Backhands then were played with a single hand grip
But Chris Evert and others popularised the two-handed grip
The club’s website has a Gallery section
With four black and white photos going back to nineteen forty-nine
They were all taken at the annual dinner dance at a posh hotel
The most recent was for nineteen fifty-two
When Queen Elizabeth had just become queen
But before her coronation in June the following year
The Second World War had finished just seven years prior
And rationing would have been in full swing
I had not yet joined the club at the date of this latest photo
I was not even a teenager
But I recognised a number of faces from when I joined
And looking at that privileged group
In their evening dresses and tuxedos
I wondered how many had done war service
And how many past members had been lost
And how many then alive had lost love ones
A number of couples I recognised had children
That I knew as later I would play tennis with them
It is sad to reflect that everyone in that last photo
Will now be dead and many of their children dead too
Such is the fleetingness of life.