Dulverton Tennis Club - Minehead 'C' team - gambling and a cuckoo

Friday evening is club night at the Minehead Tennis Club but the 'C' team had a West Somerset league match over at Dulverton Tennis Club so off we went.

Now Dulverton Tennis Club used to have these strange courts that had a sort of fine grit over tarmac which I hated and avoided like I avoid ... well not playing tennis :-)

But these days their courts are fantastic all weather and a pleasure to play on, plus they are set in an idyllic location and the Dulverton tennis players are a friendly bunch of people so visiting them is a great pleasure.

We wended our way through Dunster village, Timberscombe village and onto Exmoor, with it's lovely high views over the Bristol Channel with glowering Dunkery Beacon to the right (where I saw a cuckoo a few weeks back), and then down the other side of the hills to the ancient valley town of Dulverton.

Battle was soon engaged and we fought hard through the evening with lobs, smashes, topspin, sneaky backspin and (usually mis-hit) drop shots.

My first serve was rubbish and I only suvived throughout the evening by getting second serves in with enough spin to please any politician and, happily, to frustrate the opposition enough to win a few points.

On the other hand, my dynamic net play just couldn't go wrong. Henman would have been proud of me (well perhaps he'd have had a laugh!)

So onto the food and the chat afterwards with a great spread put on by the Dulverton team in their club house, very rustic, made out of wood, full of country charm. This in big contrast to the new football club house on the other side of the field which was all concrete, glass, magnificent ... and had great toilets. Both young and not so young footballers were there in profusion playing what looked like 5 a side, yelling loudly at each other, as footballers do, and having a great time.

Tennis players are a talkative lot and knowledgable on a whole range of issues so I took the opportunity of canvassing views on the new Gambling Act 2005 which makes loads more gambling in the UK a whole lot more probable in the coming months and years.

I wanted to know what they thought about gambling, did they gamble and did they think it was essentially like any other economic transaction or did they think there were moral issues involved. It turned into quite a focus group and the rest of the Minehead 'C' team had a job dragging me away at the end of the evening (probably to the relief of the Dulverton crowd!) I don't think it would be fair to relate their views but it was an interesting straw poll that puts into context the little blog campaign I'm running against the Gambling Act of 2005 Rob's (mainly) anti-gambling Blog

And so back to Minehead, home and deep sleep.

Oh and we won six sets to two!

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