Travel Book for February 2012
My Life as a Hooker by Steven Gauge
Chapter 1
Little Legs
Oxford psychology professor the late Michael Argyle said that the happiest people in the world were those who were either active members of a religious group or those who took part in team sports. So it was that at the age of thirty-five, as a miserable atheist, I took up playing rugby.
I hadn't played any rugby since I was about thirteen at school in Wimbledon. Even then I hadn't really played very much at all. For several years I convinced the rowing teachers that I was playing rugby, whilst convincing the rugby teachers that I was doing rowing. Meanwhile I went home and did very little indeed.
If you are no use at sport as a child you will be cruelly mocked and ridiculed. Those who are not particularly well co-ordinated and have thin skins will eventually give up and go away to find some other activity, like shoplifting or solvent abuse. However, when you take up a team sport like rugby as an adult, even if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing, no one gives you a hard time. People are just pathetically grateful that you have turned up. They are nice to you because you have made up the numbers so that they can have a proper game. If you add to that a willingness to play in the front row, they can have contested scrums and you will have made some friends for life.
Rugby seemed to be a great place to deal with my own personal midlife crisis. I was in a relatively senior job in a large chamber of commerce and government-funded business support operation. Having spent the earlier part of my career in a more metrosexual media and political environment, I was now surrounded by some very blokey blokes; they were all either go-getting entrepreneurial types, or failed businessmen who had become business advisers. Most seemed to spend their days talking about sport and cars. If I was going to get on with this crowd, as the saying goes, I needed to ‘man up'.
I had also recently acquired contact lenses after a lifetime in glasses in a bout of midlife vanity. It could have been worse: others of my generation were bleaching their hair, getting inappropriate piercings and wearing leather trousers. Contact lenses paved the way to contact sports.
So when I found my way to Warlingham Rugby Club, I was delighted to discover a home for a group of men, all enjoying their own particular mid, early or later life crises and having a good time into the bargain. Here, by a Surrey playing field in the late summer, I found my way to the changing rooms and pulled on my newly purchased boots.
My Life as a Hooker by Steven Gauge is published by Summersdale (paperback; £7.99). It is also available through amazon.com and all good booksellers.
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