The Uffington Three arrived at Blewbury Croquet Club (BCC)  on a July afternoon in 2019. Men in white, a fold in the Berkshire downs, two of the finest courts in southern England. Peter Allan, then one of England’s most rapid improvers, joined us for what we later identified as a four ball break, His four ball break. Would it ever be our turn? It never was…

‘Have you played before?’,Paul Wolff, the chairman, enquired politely over Prosecco in the sun. We lied of course. Rare is the person with the integrity to admit to previous on a croquet court. Membership of Oxbridge teams?  Too long ago to count. I played a garden variant of AC with my mother, competitive, experienced, wily. She said I should never whinge when I got beat. In that, I had plenty of practice. One day when I was 15, I built my first irretrievable winning position. My mother stalked off. We never played again. A life lesson….

When we signed up at Blewbury in late summer 2019, we received generous expert coaching from Joe King, now chairman of the club. He taught strokes and tactics, of which he is a master.  For Carol, the most competitive among us, choosing GC was a no brainer. Why watch from the sidelines when you could taste blood? Sandy, more attuned to nuance, kept a foot in both camps, adapting the strokes to both formats.  I leaned towards AC, far closer to my distant memories, even though the rules have been revolutionised since.

If ever there was a socially distanced game, it is AC, but Covid Year Zero rules remained frustratingly illogical until liberation day, March 29th, 2020. Time for a travel journalist forced into semi-retirement by a pandemic to hit the road.  Over the next five months, I did courses with James Hawkins in York and Cliff Jones in High Wycombe. I entered AC, GC and one ball tournaments at East Dorset, Southwick, Wycombe and Hurlingham as well as Blewbury.  The instruction emphasised the need to negotiate 12 hoops in one turn by constructing a four ball break., The competitions revealed how far I was from achieving it - even with a bunch  of bisques.

As I usually had to falsify my handicap to meet entry requirements, then defend this to organisers who didn’t want their events despoiled by beginners, my lies improved more rapidly than my game. Shafts of light? An AC time out victory over a comedian In pink crocs and a (genuine) England shirt.  3rd out of 8 in an informal November GC tournament. And, nearly always, kindliness, advice and patience from organisers and players more skilled than me.

Thank you all but be aware that I’ve taken note of the following dictum from Cliff Jones: ‘If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got’. As I put in bleak midwinter practice sessions on Blewbury’s magical turf, I plan to be armed and dangerous by the Ides of March.  And I’ll still have that forest of bisques…..

By Minty Clinch [originally published February 2022]