BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.

Subject: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST,#
Date: 11 Dec 15 - 09:15 PM

Lawn bowlers:

http://www.lawnbowling-arcadia.com/home/history.html

Especially meaningful to people born on the 21st of July.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Dec 15 - 09:56 PM

Why, one of our semi-regulars members has enjoyed that for a long time.

https://longbeachlbc.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/misc-photos-019.jpg?w=300&h=225

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Dec 15 - 10:16 PM

I played that growing up, which I and my brothers almost didn't when my mother found out what we were doing with the china.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 12:53 AM

Sounds good! Exercise, fresh air and little chance of an injury. Go for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 04:11 AM

The real bowls game to play is crown green bowling - very popular in the north-west of the UK. The crown green is not flat but rises to a gentle crown towards the middle. The curvature of the green and the bias in the bowls make for a very subtle and interesting sport.

Do they have this in the US and Canada?

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 06:19 AM

Why do they call it bowling? Bowls are things to eat soup from. They don't tend to roll very well. The game is played with balls, not bowls. Why don't they call it lawn balling instead?

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST,Henry Piper of Otery.
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 07:06 AM

Bee-dubya-ell, Actually to be Geometrically precise, Bowls is not played with "Balls", a ball is spherical, Bowls are actually slightly flat sided and with a weight built in one side to give a bias in one direction or the other depending on which way round the Bowl is Bowled !!
Cheers, and Merry Christmas .

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Will Fly
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 07:09 AM

To which I'll just add that a ball can be "bowled" along the ground, though in cricket the bowler (not baller) bowls it through the air.

All very confusing... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: gillymor
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 08:34 AM

Looks like a fun sport but I didn't see any reference to July 21 in the article, #. My elder sister's birthday falls on that day and I'll be visiting with her over the holidays.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 08:37 AM

Ahah, now I know nothing about the actual game of bowling but I know a fair bit about bowling greens, as I spent several summers in my student days looking after the greens at Ainsworth, Chapelfield and Allen's Green in Radcliffe, all crown greens of course. Each green had a dedicated high-quality petrol cylinder mower with close-set blades and were self-propelled with a clutch mechanism. Two strips top, two strips bottom then VERY straight stripes up and down. There times a week, one up and down, one left and right and one diagonal (that was the hardest). All edges trimmed once or twice a week. There was a definite knack to using the clutch at the end of each strip, turning round without marking the grass and keeping moving. The home teams always wanted me to cut the greens because I got good at keeping the lines exactly straight and all the same width. A crown green is not an exact science - there are tiny dips and humps, barely perceptible to the eye, that the home team get to know in intimate detail. I got to know them as well and had to be careful not to let them upset my line, and skimming the turf off the tops of eminences was a mortal sin. Apart from wet weather preventing the scheduled cutting, two other hazards were heavy dew and worm casts. I had a high-tech piece of kit that consisted of a long pole with a long, skinny bamboo cane extension with which I could swish off the dew and casts. However, you couldn't swish off the casts if they were wet, as you'd just smear them over the grass, another mortal sin. It was a very rewarding job!

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST,#
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 08:50 AM

Have a great time, gillymor.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: gillymor
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 08:55 AM

Yeah, but July 21?

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 10:47 AM

With all due respect, it simply isn't half as fun as
cross country bowling.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: JennieG
Date: 12 Dec 15 - 05:31 PM

Lawn bowls has been popular for a long time in Oz......Himself plays. I don't. I play guitar and ukulele.

'Barefoot bowls' is popular too, often as part of a Christmas party. Participants don't need regulation shoes or uniforms, they play a game or two, have a drink or two, have some party food, play again. Drive past any of the five lawn bowls clubs in our town at this time of year and you are sure to find folk playing barefoot bowls in at least three clubs.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: gillymor
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 06:57 AM

Ah yes, July 21, a date that is inextricably linked to lawn bowling. Perhaps, #, as the OP you'll remind the uninitiated just why this date is so significant in the annals of this august sport.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 07:17 AM

Crown Green Bowling was a very popular in Huddersfield and in the club I used to drink in we had a set of small bowls (approx. 2 inches) that we could use on the snooker table. A good game and one that I excelled at fortunately.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 09:16 AM

Why, a photo of gargoyle!

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 09:32 AM

Be sure to wish garg a happy birthday, July 21st.

love, me

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 11:22 AM

Will Fly: The real bowls game to play is crown green bowling - very popular in the north-west of the UK.

Actually, popular both sides of the Pennines, will. Crown Green was the only type of bowls I ever encountered in Yorkshire and it was quite a surprise when I emigrated southwards to find that soft southern jessies play it on a FLAT Green!!!

To say nothing of dart boards. The "Yorkshire Board" I grew up with had no trebles and no outer bull...a difficult adaptation when moving south (or north, or west!). TV darts seems to have killed off the Yorkshire board though, since pubs "back home" now all seem to have standard boards.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: olddude
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 12:24 PM

Just don't use little people like they did in the 80s its not right

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Gutcher
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 05:28 PM

Just wondering Will Fly how-many of the good folk in Achiltibuie or Scourie will have actually come across a crown bowling green.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Gutcher
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 05:28 PM

Just wondering Will Fly how-many of the good folk in Achiltibuie or Scourie will have actually come across a crown bowling green.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 05:48 PM

You haven't got crown greens in Scourie or Achiltibuie because the amazing views would completely distract from the game.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Gutcher
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 07:10 PM

Aye Steve and the views are even more pleasurable since they got rid of that blot on the landscape opposite the Achiltibuie Hotel.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 08:28 PM

Some years back I was asked to play. I guess I misunderstood. Something about bowling and boweling...anyway, I was banned from the pitch, the club, the neighborhood, the city, and nearly the State. I did have to clean up my own mess, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 10:18 PM

July 21 is a very auspicious day in lawn bowling légendes.

It is claimed in the lore of the sport that on that day in 1588 Sir Francis Drake was on the greens engaged in a game of bowls when a military courier arrivéd and reportéd that hé was urgently needed... that the Spanish Armada was off thé coast.

Sir Francis is reportéd to have calmly replied, "That can wait, I have a game of bowls to finish." Another quote is "There is plenty of time to win the game and thrash the Spaniards too." He then proceeded to finish his match.
The ensuing nine day battle's first engagement between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada off the Eddystone Rocks was on July 21, 1588.

Thé Drake statue, in Tavistock (Drake's home village) portrays thé bowling scène.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/DrakeMonumentTavistock.jpg/800px-DrakeMonumentTavistock.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: JennieG
Date: 13 Dec 15 - 11:46 PM

Rap, you owe me a new keyboard.....geez.......coffee through the nose too.......

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Will Fly
Date: 14 Dec 15 - 04:15 AM

Point taken, Gutcher! It's a habit of mine to talk about the "UK" when replying to 'Catters from the "US". If the OP had been from the UK I would have said "England". Must do better.

On the other hand, of course, God's Own Country IS Lancashire... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 14 Dec 15 - 05:38 AM

That is true Mr Fly and more to the point I can prove it.

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Dec 15 - 09:08 AM

I believe the OP is in...Canada! The Great White North! Land of the musk ox and beaver! Where lawn bowling is played the year around on carefully leveled snow and/or ice! Where it is made more difficult because of the necessary caribou mittens, mukluks, and parka and the balls slick with the muktuk grease! And it's worse when you're in the Arctic instead of Montreal or Toronto!

Subject: RE: BS: Lawn bowling: the coming thing.
From: gillymor
Date: 14 Dec 15 - 09:19 AM

Beats the tar outta curling, aay?