Last Friday I was asked to play an away match against our fierce rivals the “Kemsing Pilgrims” at St Edith’s Church Hall in Kemsing. I’d forgotten the match was coming up and was really tired from a week’s working and attending other events almost every evening so to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to it.

I would have to play two ladies doubles games, and four mixed doubles games with two different blokes. Each point you scored contributed to the team’s grand total, so the maximum number of points you could win was 15 per game.

My first two ladies games were a complete disaster. We lost 15-8 in the first game, and 15-3 in the second, so we scored just 11 points for the team. For my next two games I was partnering Gill, and we were quite confident as we generally play very well as a pair. However, tonight I was tired, and not only that, Tim and I were going to be travelling to the Birmingham NEC for an all day concert first thing next morning.

Gill and I scored a few points and then it started to go a bit downhill. Gill remarked that I should stop thinking about Birmingham and focus on the game! I won the next point but we were still struggling. Before our next serve, Gill said he would guard the net and I should cover the back of the court, and I agreed. At some point the opposition hit the shuttlecock high and deep and I moved to my right to hit it. Unfortunately, Gill got carried away and decided to leave the net and run backwards to hit it himself. In the event, neither of us hit the shuttle, but Gill did manage to whack me in the face with his racket. It knocked me for six, and I dropped to the floor.

The match stopped for a few moments whilst I got up and dusted myself down. It really hurt, but I wasn’t cut and thankfully he had just missed my left eye. I decided to play on to take my mind off the shock and the pain but we lost the first of our two games. By the second game I was really wound up and it wasn’t helping, but we somehow managed to claw back to win the second game by the narrowest of margins. Gill joked that he’d been forced to hit me to wake me up and spur me into action but I wasn’t laughing – a bruise around my left eye was swelling up so I could just about see it in my peripheral vision! Gill had given me my first black eye ever!!!

My final two games were also the last two games of the evening so I had quite a long time to sit down and feel sorry for myself whilst munching a couple of sandwiches. It was already late and I was hopeful that we would run out of time before I was due to play again. The penultimate players finished their games at 11.40pm, leaving Ron and I just 20 minutes to wrap things up either way.

At this point the Kemsing Pilgrims were 20 points in the lead overall, but I didn’t know it until the opposition whispered something to each other at the start of the first game. I didn’t really worry about what the result was, I just desperately wanted to get the games over with and go home to sleep!

The opposition were first to serve, but I quickly put the shot away and we won the serve back. From then on I played fast net shots against the Pilgrims best lady and soon we had a bit of a routine going, with me setting them up and Ron knocking them down! We took the first game easily. We had 5 minutes to play the final game. We decided to stick to the same game plan, and it seemed to be working. I played the winning shot just as the church bell began to strike midnight!

I was in such a hurry to get home that I almost forgot to ask what the final overall score was. It turned out that we won the whole match by just 6 points! The whispered message had been that Pilgrims only needed to score 11 points to make it impossible for us to beat them, and we had only given them 4! To beat the Pilgrims on their home turf is virtually unheard of, so the victory almost made the black eye worth it!!!

Two days on and the black eye is still visible in a good light, although the photo above doesn't really do it justice. It was a good job that we were at a concert all day Saturday – no one could see it with the lights dimmed. People have looked at me in a funny way but no one has asked how I got it. I think Tim is worried that people might assume he was responsible!