Without the least enthusiasm, Ted Bruning decided to take up badminton...
There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to take up a sport.
I’m not talking about the sport they make you do at school, nor about the weird few who choose to carry it on after they’ve left school, when they don’t have to any more. I’m talking about the sane, sensible majority who, as soon as they’re allowed, give up any activity more strenuous than walking to the pub really quite quickly, or cleaning their teeth moderately energetically, or leaping off the sofa and shouting "Yes!" while pretending to like football on the telly.
I’ll never forget the shock when I found that my big brother Clem, who at school was every bit as sports-shy as me, had taken up not just squash but jogging too. I thought he was mad. Worse than that, I thought he was a traitor to sports-haters everywhere. But eventually my own turn came, and I took up (da da DAH)... badminton.
Every Monday evening for the past six years, I’ve sacrificed the second half of EastEnders to struggle into my jogging trousers - which, by the way, contain enough cloth to make a full set of sails for a medium-sized yacht - the baggiest, most concealing sweatshirt that isn’t the wash, and a pair of counterfeit trainers I got on Leeds market for £8, and sallied forth with shuttlecock in hand (ooh missus!) to take part in the noble art of standing stock still with a shell-shocked look while several far more athletic friends who are still young enough to have what doctors call "reflexes" make me look a complete pudding.
Listen, this is what I’m up against. Julian and Ed are both 7’ 9" tall, have bodies that appear to be made of coiled steel springs, and charge about the court like rodeo ponies with hot wires up their jacksies. Jim is a few inches shorter, but makes up it for with ruthless determination, total concentration, a competitive streak as wide and as terrifying as that new bit of the A1(M) near Peterborough which has four lanes in each direction, and an unnerving ability to make the shuttlecock say THUNCK very loudly whenever he hits it. Angie, thank God, is only 4’ 9" in her platform trainers, so at least she’s not quite as frightening as the others. But she still has the power of locomotion, which seems to desert me whenever a shuttlecock flies by anywhere outside the immediate reach of my frantically windmilling arms.(Eat your heart out, Pete Townsend!)
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