Smash!

It hasn't been a bad week. Last Monday I played interclub tennis. I partnered Superman in the doubles - my volleys were even worse than normal but we just scraped home 4-6 6-4 10-5. That 10-5 score is a super tie-break which comes into play in doubles matches at night. I'm not a fan of it. It makes no sense at all to me that the third (most important) set should be vastly shorter than the first two (less important) ones. I totally understand the need for a reasonable finishing time but the super tie-break seems a rather artificial way of achieving that. I'd prefer just one long set up to nine or ten.

In the singles I faced someone twice my age. It was a real battle - we had a lot of long rallies and games going several deuces - and I came through 6-4 7-5 after 1¾ hours. My opponent was remarkably fit (I tried to imagine how my dad would have coped), but he did tire a bit towards the end as I came from 5-3 down in the second set. Superman was on the sidelines, talking on his phone, not really helping my cause. In the last game I led 40-15 but he came up with two screamers to save the match points. On my third match point I hit what I thought was a decisive lob but he ran back to retrieve it, and in desperation hit a moonball maybe forty feet into the air. Surely it won't clear the net. Oh no. It is coming over. I'm deciding what to do with the ball when Superman shouts Smash! and I smash it straight into the net. I do eventually serve out the match, taking my fifth opportunity. As a team we scored a clean sweep of wins; I was on court the longest.

After the tennis not a lot happened until the weekend. I was happy with that. I did some maths tuition on Thursday night but that was about it. Saturday was an interesting day though. I'm now looking at sharing a flat with Richard and John, another bloke from the Asperger's group. We had a look at a flat in Mt Eden. It was an older house, I'm guessing you might call it a villa, and it would have been very comfortable I'm sure. However it was just out of our price range. The three of us went for a coffee afterwards; we discussed all the things we wanted (or not) out of flatting - this was a useful exercise. I'm hopeful we can find something that suits us all.

Last night I saw an Italian film - Io Sono L'Amore - with Julie at the Bridgeway. Julie's got a bad arm, and when (as usual) she wouldn't stop talking all through the film, I nudged her other arm harder than I meant to, giving her (temporarily) two bad arms. And then my bloody phone went off. I didn't even think I had it on me, and it took me some time scrabbling around in my bag to turn it off. How embarrassing. Regarding the film itself, I wasn't sure what to make of it. A lot of arty camera effects and very dark (I mean literally - sometimes you could hardly make out anything) in places.

I'm currently reading Oliver James' Affluenza. So far it's an excellent read; I'll write about it in a later post I promise.

I should mention that I voted for Len Brown in the Auckland mayoral election, so was obviously happy with the outcome.