Those Glory Days

It was back in those days when we played those games of naked table tennis deep within the jungles of Walsall, listening to the tribal drums in the heavy dark nights as the strange exotic creatures crept around outside our pagoda.

Those were strange colonial times, there were rumours that the natives were revolting… certainly the ones I’d met were less becoming than one would have – ideally – hoped.

Still, Walsall in those days was a wild frontier town where the men were men and the women… well, shall we just say that a cautious person always played table tennis in the nude just to avoid any surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant, especially in those matches where one’s opponent played without needing a bat.

Soon, though, it became strategically impossible for the old colonial power to keep such a wild and ungovernable place under its jurisdiction. The rebellion broke out and naked table tennis players fled the area in their hundreds all heading for the border, their ping-pong balls bouncing disconsolately down the road as they ran.

It seemed that at last the sun was setting on the last day of the Empire and we will never look upon the like of those days again. Even so, occasionally I get out the old moth-eaten net and check to see if there is still some bounce left in my balls before I strip off, salute the flag and take on all-comers as a way of remembering those glory days.