Summer Sports - Bowls
timed. You need to plan it for a couple of days without rain, so it can be fully absorbed instead of rinsed.
I’ve had dollar spot – a huge outbreak of dollar spot, I’ve had red thread, and if you’d come last year, you would have seen the western side of the surface barren.
We had to take it up, because we were afflicted by take all patch. I had to dig to 300mm and rebuild it completely. It was horrendous; destroyed one of our best rinks. That took three years to recover, which highlights the importance of these preventative measures.
Now, the quality of the grass is rather good. It has three types of grass in it. It’s got ageing rye grass, as well as a more recent bent and fescue 30/70 mix, which is excellent.
And I buy quality, expensive grass seed, because I was sold some Johnson’s J Premier Green as a one‐off, and after it helped massively, it was too hard to go back. I have now switched to another premium seed, however ‐ the Limagrain MM10. I used that this year, and it germinated even with the awful weather in which we sowed it. Five weeks ago, we had bare patches all along the edges, and there’s been take‐up all over. That said, I have robbed Peter to pay Paul. I’ve taken some turf from the overlap and introduced it to some of the struggling areas. The main problem on a green this small is that we can’t move the players around between the rinks. It’s a matter of over use, because the rinks are the minimum size you’re allowed at 4.2 metres each, and we can’t make them any wider, because they just wouldn’t fit.
“
I regard the green rather like a temperamental adolescent. It has its moods, and you can’t abuse it or mistreat it, because it will bite you back if you let it down
I have a helper in the summer who cuts the green, but that’s the extent of the help I get. And, as you can see, my family have come down today to help with the cutting of these bushes at the edge of the green.
I’d also like to cut down this 50ft sycamore [in the south‐east corner], because it casts enough shade to make the southern edge of the surface about five degrees Celsius colder than the rest. And then there’s the issue of all the leaves falling.
I’ve also made that argument on safety grounds. Not long ago, a huge branch fell down that hill there [east], which is where the children walk to school. Had it happened at the wrong time,
76 I PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018
someone could have been seriously hurt.
There are two large lime trees too [west]. The sun travels past the sycamore, then the walls, then the lime trees, and by 7.00pm at the height of summer, we’ve had all the light we’re going to get.
What that also means is that the western side of the green will stay frozen for the entire duration of a frost, including during the daytime. I’ve seen that area frozen solid for two‐to‐three weeks.
The frosts are great, of course, but it really freezes that end, and what that means is that, if I don’t come to clear the dew every morning, it becomes very wet. That makes it even more perfect for disease in the long run. It’s a green with lots of issues, and it takes a lot of looking after. From me, that’s about ten hours per week in summer and three in winter.
I regard it rather like a
temperamental adolescent. It has its moods, and you can’t abuse it or mistreat it, because it will bite you back if you let it down. I’m used to managing difficult young people too, because I was a teacher for thirty‐five years in a large comprehensive school. I started teaching in 1969, and absolutely loved it. You got to work with children, see the good you were doing, take them on trips and whatever else was needed. You know, you could teach them.
Then, gradually, as the National Curriculum came in and I switched from PE to pastoral, then retrained and switched again to Design and Technology, and teaching changed too. And because I didn’t like the way it was changing, I spent the final eighteen years of my career teaching teachers how to teach D&T properly.
What destroyed the whole system was the target‐setting, and the idea that it was better to push children through a standardised hoop than to teach them things.
My GP told me “you can either retire early or die early”, so I walked away at fifty‐seven. And now I spend my life trying to do other things. So, I came to Wales to help my daughter where she already lived. And I started bowling and tending the greens. It’s been lovely.
I was a pupil at The Perse School, Cambridge, hence my love of sport. It had remarkable
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
