Rackety behaviour: what really goes on at London’s poshest tennis club
It was an invitation I couldn’t refuse. We got the best table in London and handed over a ‘sorry’ note from a dog
It is the poshest table in London, I’m telling you. Forget those chichi Mayfair restaurant terraces. Forget the River Café, which is sublime, yes, yes, but also where a piece of fish practically invisible to the human eye costs £900. At least I think it was a piece of fish. Could have been a tadpole. Forget those places. Last Friday, my friend Emma invited me for lunch at the Hurlingham Club.
I’m not a member of the 152-year-old Fulham club. Unless 63 generations of your family have been members and/or your Great Uncle Roderick took first place in the Guinness-Mountbatten Kettle-Chip Croquet Championship for several years running, you are out of luck. The waiting list is longer than Matt Hancock’s to-do list. (Also, a quick note on its name. Some people get very upset if you call it “the Hurlingham”. It is supposed to be “Hurlingham” or “the Hurlingham Club” but never “the Hurlingham”. Don’t have a go at me about these strange rules, please, I didn’t make them up. When Emma invited me, it was via a WhatsApp group she called “HurlLunch”, which would presumably cause certain members to have an immediate attack of gout.)
Anyway, it was exceptionally kind of her and an invitation I leapt on. I’ve been to the club before. Most notably, to help police a teenage ball Tatler held there one Christmas, which meant lurking beside the bushes to deter snogging teenagers. It is always an impressive sight (the club, not the teenagers). Leave the roars of those Fulham Range Rovers behind you and step through the perimeter wall to discover a lush, 42-acre site of greenery, perfectly mown, where the main noise is the gentle thunk of someone croqueting their opponent.
Last week, our senses having been collectively dulled over the past year, my outing there seemed even more of a spectacle. Having grabbed a rare, spare table, we sat on the terrace with the first bottle of rosé in front of us. It felt like coronavirus had never happened and looked like a Merchant Ivory film, 40 years on. People chewing smoked salmon in their whites. The “ping” of a tennis ball as two hedge funders battled it out on court. Other members kept appearing at our table to say hello to Emma (“haven’t seen you for yonks”). And there were roughly as many dogs as there were panamas. Dozens, probably.
Talking of which, Emma had arrived looking faintly nervous, clutching a candle and a card. It turned out, during her first visit to the club when it reopened a few of weeks ago, she and her husband drank a good deal of rosé and failed to spot their terrier peeing all over another member’s handbag. This, understandably, caused something of a kerfuffle. Being Hurlingham, it was a very civilised kerfuffle. Not the sort of fisticuffs you would get outside JD Wetherspoon. Still, Emma had duly written a grovelling note (ostensibly from the terrier) and wanted to hand it over.
When we tucked into the second bottle of rosé, we slightly forgot about this note. I made my way happily through a club sandwich and marvelled at the civilised surroundings. Those eating around us were almost certainly related to those who carried on drinking their brandy as the Titanic slid to the floor of the Atlantic. It would take much more than a little pandemic to shake them.