Bad at badders
(L-R: Ian, Simon, Ellie and Hamish playing Badminton in the Kelvin Hall: Glasgow, Scotland)
If I have ever played badminton before, it was half-heartedly at secondary school, no doubt being jeered at by a more talented, adolescent onlooker. Thankfully those days are over and I feel slightly less pressure turning up to West End Glasgow now in sportswear. The badminton ‘crew’ have been meeting weekly for months now and I have never joined them, partially inhibited by my terrible backhand and also a ridiculous fear of inhaling shuttlecocks during play.
I did not perform quite as badly as expected. I managed to connect my racquet with the shuttlecock around fifty percent of the time, perhaps more in the good games. I have rarely been so satisfied to be the worst player in a room – usually (as Ying, my mother and sister can testify) I am a terrible loser. In a board game or casual competition or jape, I rarely settle for last place. Christmas Day last year saw Ying and I arguing in front of a roaring fire, enhancing the feeling of hot, competitive rage within me. It was a simple guessing game called ‘who’s in the bag’ and we were failing miserably because… I was about to blame Ying, but if I was being honest, we were both terrible.
Anyway, they have also all suffered from me being an awfully bad winner. The tiniest victory compels me to lunge into a air punch or an overly enthusiastic roar of triumph. I kept that to a minimum last night on the courts as I was a complete novice and I wanted to test the other players. Thankfully I know all of them well enough that they wouldn’t begrudge me a little grin and a shriek of delight at winning a point. I think I just feel the concept of winning and losing in a game – in general, I don’t mind if someone is better, quicker, smarter, but amongst friends when the monopoly board is out, I can’t help being terribly behaved, whether I am winning or not.
– Today Rosie is shaking off an existential funk and moving on to new projects in Glasgow, Scotland –
Er…no, you were the one that was terrible. I was keeping us in the game…