Balls to the seaside

I have been away to the North East Coast, but do not think I have been idling. In fact various members of my family collaborated in the invention of a new sport, and since we fully expect it to take over from cricket as the traditional English summer pastime (and then be spread around the world where everyone, of course, will turn out to be much better at it than us and routinely humiliate us at it just to pay us back for our bloodthirsty imperialist past), I am going to give you a sneak preview of the rules right here.

The game is called 'Tynemouth, Cullercoats, Whitley Bay', which in case you don't know, are three neighbouring coastal towns, served by consecutive stations on the Tyne and Wear Metro. To play, you need two tennis balls, which start off in the hands of two of the four competing players, who are kneeling in a small square in the sand, but who for the purposes of the game are assumed to be on the platform at Newcastle Monument, waiting for a Metro to the coast.

Everyone starts rhythmically chanting the name of the game, and on the stroke of 'Bay', the two players holding the balls throw them to someone else. The chant, and the releasing of the balls, continue, until eventually both balls find themselves travelling towards the same player.

A player receiving two balls must catch them both in order to move along the line to Tynemouth- and subsequently, by perfoming the same feat, to the other stations. A player receiving two balls and dropping one, or both, goes nowhere- unless they have already started their journey, in which case they go one station back. The winner, you might be assuming, is the first player to Whitley Bay- but in a strange and endearing quirk of the game (all succesful games have strange endearing quirks understood only by true connoisseurs, like the offside law in football and the knitwear worn by golf players)- it is actually the first player to Monkseaton, which is the next station along.

Not only is a game of 'Tynemouth, Cullercoats, Whitley Bay' a fine way to while away an hour or so on the sands, it also shows potential as a spectator sport, if we are to judge from the reaction of two teenage Geordies, who had earlier beaten me and my brother-in-law 10-9 in an impromptu but hard-fought game of beach football (although I will swear there was handball in the build up to their 8th goal), and who later interrupted their busy schedule of ogling a quartet of swimsuit-clad teenage girls to enquire 'what the hell game are yous playing now?'. This adolescent scorn soon gave way to curiosity, then admiration at the dextrous handling on show- and finally amusement, as for the fourth time running my sister tried to claim an advance to Cullercoats on the strength of a clearly illegal between the knees catch. Soon our young spectators had marked out their own pitch, and were engaged in a pastime of their own invention, involving a full-size football and featuring the chant 'Palmersville, Benton, Four Lane Ends'- which I am sure you will agree is not quite as catchy as the original, but you have to give the kids points for effort.

It was an inspiring sight- and I would suggest that any game capable of distracting the attention of teenage Geordie boys from teenage Geordie girls in swimsuits is to be heartily commended, if only for the positive impact it could have on the incidence of underage pregnancy during the school holidays. More to the point, the thing is a sure-fire money-spinner, and as its co-inventor I will be putting a call through to the head office of Rupert Murdoch's evil empire this very afternoon. I expect to be signing up for a hefty share of the global TV rights within the week, and retiring to a beachside villa in Buenos Aires in time to watch on SkySports Superplus as England are comprehensively slaughtered at 'Tynemouth' by the Windward Islands in the 2005 Winter Series. In the meantime (and while this great game of ours is unsullied by rampant commercial interests) why not pick up a couple of tennis balls, form yourselves into orderly quartets, and get chanting the names of Metro stations. You know you want to, don't you?

Comments

[billy]

...just a change in the rules and you could be on to a winner...

the game can only be played by good looking girlies in swimsuits

if one on the balls is dropped an article of clothing has to be removed

...I can see fox tv/sky sports picking up the rights as I type :^)...oh, and don't forget to re-invest some of your *easily* earned cash in a video camera...I find it helps to tape any games I play with the ten year olds across the street so that I can replay not just my awesome goals but also their *obvious* cheating :^)...

[Paul]

What happens if you wind up on the Green line by mistake?

Can you catch the ferry from South Shields?

[jonathan]

The South Shields line is frowned upon by purists, but permitted. The Shields ferry, however, is strictly out of bounds.