Another glorious spring afternoon 

Tennis anyone?

All this sunlight is going to my head. For the second time this Spring, and possibly the third time in my life, I strode out to a tennis court on Monday to manfully swat a ball about a bit.

My companion, a terribly dry-witted historian, was fortunately as unskilled as me, but considerably more versed in the theory of the game.

We played what I dubbed "gentleman's rules" - you can serve anywhere, return outside the court and the ball can bounce twice your side of the net. No score kept. 50 or 60 hours of this and I might improve enough to be able to play.

I had full-spectrum returns: I could miss the ball, return it, or send it merrily spinning beyond the confines of the Court, arching high over the fence onto the sports ground on the left, or equally as high to the right to land over the netting on the next court with about equal frequency. Quite impressive. Though not half so good as the amazing shots where it went straight up and came down somewhere over my right shoulder.

We got in just before a glorious afternoon turned to thunder.

Vistor

I had last week the pleasure of another visitor, an old Balmain flatmate still incarcerated at the Big Evil Firm where once I toiled (soul not so much sold as leased with a right in reversion).

I managed to give him the full treatment. Arriving on a Wednesday afternoon, we buzzed round my standard selection of Colleges and the Backs, went to a pre-dinner talk on international law where I was presenting the speaker (my favourite guru of all time) and then went in to a formal dinner in hall.

Afterwards, drinks in the MCR and Bar and off to a late show at the ADC theatre, where I knew both actors involved, the director, producers and (by fluke) most of the people in the bar. I was apparently rather visibly and distractingly drunk in the front row. I'm sure I put no-one off their lines.

My former flatmate later said he felt he'd packed into his first 8 hours in Cambridge more experiences than in 4 days in London, certainly not a bad review.

He also appreciated getting out into the English countryside. Shame he was so allergic to it ...