BS: Croquet, anyone?

Subject: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: meself
Date: 08 Jun 16 - 07:42 PM

So, across from my house is a kind of overly-wide boulevard - on which a crowd of young working guys have taken to playing, of all things, croquet. They are out there now, stripped to the waist, muscular and tattooed, beers handy, tapping mallets to wooden balls, and occasionally cheering and high-fiving.

Here's my question: has croquet all of a sudden become a 'thing', or did these guys actually come up with the idea of playing it all by themselves (which in this day and age, I would find extraordinary)? Have you spotted any unlikely croquet-players in your neighbourhood?

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: keberoxu
Date: 08 Jun 16 - 07:47 PM

Is "Pall Mall" (Regency) the same as croquet?

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: meself
Date: 08 Jun 16 - 07:56 PM

Wiki describes "pall-mall" as "a lawn game that was mostly played in the 16th and 17th centuries,[1] a precursor to croquet." So ... the same, only different, I guess!

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 08 Jun 16 - 09:28 PM

I used to play hit-&-giggle style croquet with some friends. It was a lot of fun.

The Marx Brothers used to play croquet and some other famous people.

It's a good game.

As to how these blokes decided to start playing it, I have no clues. It's a game which just keeps alive somehow, loses favour and then gets "rediscovered".

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Jun 16 - 10:46 PM

Did any of you catch the History Channel coverage on the emergence of what has been researched with very good probability to be a photo of Billy the Kid playing croquet? Maybe the beer and tattoo crowd saw that and decided that it's the manly thing to do. : )

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: meself
Date: 08 Jun 16 - 11:42 PM

Billy the Kid?! Well, that puts a different light on it!

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: keberoxu
Date: 09 Jun 16 - 03:10 PM

American author Julia Quinn specializes in Regency romances, and hers have some hilarious scenes with aristocrats turning games of Pall Mall, on their private lawns, into mock-vicious competitions (whacking the competitor's ball into the duck pond).

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jun 16 - 05:21 PM

keberoxu,

I remember reading - I think it was in Harpo Marx's biography - that the Marx Brothers played croquet with that mock-viciousness as well. There was something about a huge tree and they used to somehow make curveballs so that the opponent's ball was behind the tree and very hard to get back out. Something like that. They had a huge garden with lots of trees and bushes rather than just a sedate croquet lawn, all nicely laid out.

A harp player I knew was friends with a minister of the Anglican Church, living at an historic house. The front lawn was just a large patch of grass, but it turned out that it was actually a croquet lawn, so we used to play there sometimes and then have afternoon tea afterwards.

I made friends with a lovely Thai woman in the first week of a part time management degree at our local university. I invited her to come to our croquet parties too. She really enjoyed them as well.

Many happy memories of those croquet afternoons.

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: meself
Date: 10 Jun 16 - 12:25 AM

Of course, the most famous croquet game in literature is in Alice in Wonderland - or is it Through the Looking-Glass? Anyway, I believe the mallets are flamingos ....

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jun 16 - 02:04 PM

It's 'Wonderland' -- the game in Looking-Glass is chess. As well as the mallets being flamingos, the balls are hedgehogs, which keep unrolling and crawling away. Dr Dodgson certainly had a surreal imagination!

Croquet became very popular at Cambridge a few years ago, and has remained so. Many of the lawns in the college courts are laid out with hoops, and one will often pass playing students as one walks thru.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: keberoxu
Date: 10 Jun 16 - 02:26 PM

....but the hedgehog can never be buggered at all! he he he

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 10 Jun 16 - 03:35 PM

That's Pratchett not Dodgson, keberoxu! LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: meself
Date: 10 Jun 16 - 04:59 PM

They do manage to procreate, though ... must be a prickly business ... !

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Jun 16 - 05:11 PM

I think I remember some time ago putting following in one of the joke threads:-

How do hedgehogs make love?


Very very very carefully.


≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: keberoxu
Date: 12 Jun 16 - 05:04 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: Helen
Date: 12 Jun 16 - 05:19 PM

Mr Pratchett also "certainly had a surreal imagination", as MGM-Lion said of Dr Dodgson, but I don't remember any references to croquet in TP's books. I haven't read all of them, but I have read a large number.

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 13 Jun 16 - 10:34 AM

Herself used to play croquet at work (and still does once a year in a church croquet afternoon for charity where friends were astounded by her competitive spirit). She once played the final at work in fading light and the rain wearing binbags as improvised waterproofs to the amazement of visiting Mongolian scientists who were watching from the library windows. The defeated Cambridge croquet blue stomped off in a huff having flung down his mallet while S & her partner, who hadn't taken it too seriously, high fived in triumph!
Incidentally one of the church players brings her own mallet -how's that for one-upmanship!
RtS
(who has no hand-eye coordination)

Subject: RE: BS: Croquet, anyone?
From: meself
Date: 13 Jun 16 - 04:59 PM

The church ladies' afternoon-for-charity is the sort of thing that croquet would have brought to mind - my mind, anyway - which is why I've been surprised to see the young ruffians playing it out front ... !