Competitive to the very last

Is there no limit to the vanity, self-delusion and stupidity of older men? No, there is not. And for evidence I would point not only to Washington, but also to squash. Squash is tennis played in a room with both players on the same side of the net. I first discovered the game at university where the college squash court was next to the bar.

Here, it seemed, was a game worthy of exploration and so it proved. I played for the next 35 years.

When I joined the Lyttelton squash club in 1988, Susan Devoy was world champion and the sport was booming.

Ms Devoy visited our club once and signed a photo of herself which we framed and mounted in the bar.

She spelt Lyttelton wrong but everyone does that, and it didn’t stop her going on to become the race relations commissioner.

I played interclub squash on Monday nights until half a dozen years ago. I remember the results of very few games, but I’ve not forgotten the people. We gave some opponents nicknames. I took particular pleasure from playing a scrawny, bearded, long-haired, soft-spoken man from Sumner. We knew him as Jesus.

We had to referee each other’s matches. You learned a lot about people from refereeing. Some accepted decisions with equanimity. Others spat with rage like spoiled and thwarted Kavanaughs.

As a young squash player you have energy on your side. You hit the ball as though trying to kill it and you run like a dog at the park.

That energy wanes as you age, but at the same time cunning waxes. I reached my peak at about the age of 40. After that the waning outdid the waxing.

Squash is hard on the body. It is hard on ankles, knees and elbows, and even vital signs. Most squash courts have had someone die on them. A player old enough to know better strains an inch too far, and deep in a ventricle a wee vein pops. Every member of the club envies the victim the manner and location of his death.

One club I belonged to considered putting a brass plaque in the wall nearest to where a muchloved member had fallen. But the committee ruled against it for fear it would affect the bounce of the ball.

In my mid-fifties I had surgery on a knee and did not dare return to squash.

But though I stopped playing I did not stop eating or drinking.

Thus it was that I reached Shakespeare’s fifth age of man – in fair round belly with good capon lined.

But then, last week, came an invitation to play again, nothing competitive, just a gentle hit up for old time’s sake and to earn a thirst. Might I be interested?

What, I replied, I mean what? Here I am a sexagenarian whose idea of exercise these last few years has been to heave myself wheezing from sofa to fridge to wine rack, as a direct consequence of which I am now dressed in half a hundredweight of unshiftable capon-lined fat.

Furthermore the notion of a non-competitive game is a joke. A moving ball excites a male brain as a running rabbit excites a dog, whatever age that brain might be and however decrepit the flesh in which it might be housed.

The result, as surely as night follows day, would be injuries to the flesh and spirit both various and catastrophic.

Shall we say 2pm on Wednesday, then? You’re on, I said. And God help me, I’m looking forward to it.