Love-All

The decorously informative church

Guide to Sex suggested that any urge

could well be controlled by playing tennis:

and the game provided also "many

harmless opportunities for healthy

social intercourse between the sexes."

For weeks the drawings in the Guide misled

me as to what went where, but nonetheless

I booked the public courts and learnt the game

with other curious youths of my age:

and later joined a club, to lose six one,

six love, in the first round of the Open.

But the only girl I ever met had

her "energies channelled" far too bloody

"healthily", and very quickly let me

know that love was merely another means

of saying nil. It was not as though I

became any good at tennis; either.