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Tassie; yes beer discussions are most definitely 'in scope'. In fact, I've just* had a lovely pint of 'Woodfordes Nog', ex-champion beer of Britain. I am a real Ale fan, especially dark ales and porters, and am probably a better drinker than TT player!
* regardless of the time I posted this, I started writing it in the evening!
On the subject of the Barna bats, I was watching one on ebay as I bought the Kenny. £50, in very good condition. Probably cheap, as a teammate just sold one for £129. Silly money in my book, and not appealing to me as it is a little before my time and therefore fails to tick my 'nostalgia' box.
I have a lot of topics lined up for use in this blog over time. Chapter headings if you like, which can be interspersed with current events to keep plenty of content going for a while. Today, I think I'll recount my earliest memories of TT, as well as the few TT events of this week which are too minor to justify a post of their own. Feel free to comment, or add yours. For this post I'll go up to age 11, the end of so-called 'Primary Education' here in England.
I grew up in the East End of London, England; Leyton to be more precise. Born 1968, 23 years after the end of the second World War. I do not have a clear memory of my earliest years, except that they were happy times.
In Leyton there was still some bomb damage in evidence from 'the Blitz'; a few places were even still actually pretty much bomb sites, and the housing was and remains a curious mix of new and old. We'd actually play on one of the bomb sites, although we weren't supposed to. A street parallel but two along from us had obviously been levelled and hadn't been rebuilt. Instead it had been converted into recreational space; at one end was a tarmac sports area, playground and craft hut. We played lots of football (soccer) there. There were then a few houses between, and then there was a park; the type with grass, playground equipment and, in this case, a prefab building that housed an informal youth club and had kid's play activities in it; painting, crafts, arts, drawing, a sloping pool/snooker table and - you know where this is heading I suspect - a foldaway table tennis table that sometimes also got used outside. Looking back the place was a bit of a wreck, but that doesn't tend to worry kids.
Back in those days we definitely had far less (materially) than we do now, but as children we would spend as many hours playing as we could. Give us a ball, an activity or a park and we could amuse ourselves for hours. So much energy!
Children were afforded a lot of freedom in those times. We'd be free to go from School to the park for an hour or two each day after School, and also for much of the weekend. There were lots of children, and made our own entertainment. I took to both the worn snooker table and the TT table and would play either at every opportunity. Later in life I have a real Snooker 'claim to fame', but we'll save that for another day.
I remember two other things around 1978. We had wonderful neighbours, mostly elderly. Many had lived in the road for years and years. There were about 120 houses in my street, and I knew who lived in all but ten or so. Very few people moved house from our road. There were organised coach trips to the seaside where virtually everyone in the street went.
The neighbours definitely looked out for us kids. One day an old man opposite gave me his old TT bat, as he was through with playing. He had played at work (london transport, a bus company), competitively. Now he must have been around 70, in poor health and retired.
This bat was the Stiga Ehrlich I have referred to before. It had two blue inverted Yasaka rubbers on it, and they had lost all grip and were very shiny. There was a bicycle puncture repair patch where the backhand finger rested, presumably as a hole had been worn over time. I loved that bat, and the vinyl stiga case it came in! Looking back it was effectively a slick, antispin bat; very retro now but at that time it was my bat, and a 'proper' bat at that!
At the same time my brother, 4 years my senior, had a 'Johnny Leach' bat; quite modern at the time with inverted rubber. Not an original. He played a little at School, but not seriously. We used to put some books up as a net on our dining room table and play for hours. Later we got a cheap net to put across. The table was small and attacking difficult, I think this may have been a formative factor for my cautious style!
On our annual holidays, we often went to the 'Sunshine Holiday Camp' at Hayling Island, near Portsmouth- a very 70's place looking back - but so much to entertain young kids; swimming, putting, snooker, table tennis, tennis, football, races, entertainers, films, cycles and I'm sure much that I have forgotten. I reckon mum and dad would have liked to go elsewhere once in a while but we nagged for a return each year. You can rest assured that I played a lot of TT there.
So at that stage I had plenty of opportunity to play, and took full advantage. Sadly casual youth activities like the club I mentioned seem to have mainly disappeared around here, probably a matter of cash combined with lots of child protection and health and safety compliance to deal with, but again that is another story.
I'd developed a 'style' that basically was built around consistency; self-taught aggressive pushing mixed with just keeping the rally going for longer than my opponent could; although I didn't really know anything about styles. We just played. I don't think the shiny rubbers would have supported any topspin strokes anyway. Serves were straight out of the hand bullets, we knew no better.
In 1979 I got my first competitive success! My school held a TT tournament and I entered. I don't recall much about the rounds but played a friend called Robert Harewood - another regular at the youth hut and terrific footballer - in the final with the entire School watching. It was a long game, a bit of a war of attrition, but I got there! I remember being quite nervous with several hundred children watching the game. I won a gold medal that I was incredibly proud of, and still have today, although some of the gold paint has flaked away. After School I ran around to see Joe Mills - the old man who had given me the bat - and show him the medal. He was so pleased that you would have thought he had won it himself!
So that was me up to age 11 as far as TT is concerned; lots of opportunity to play and maybe a little natural ability, but no formal tuition. That was to change drastically at secondary school, but we'll save that for another day.
I'll throw one question out there; when I did get proper coaching something that needed no change was my grip. I wonder whether this is because of that puncture repair patch that made my index finger gravitate to the correct place. Would this be a good thing to do for juniors routinely?
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Back in the present day it is just Summer practice time. I have a couple of days at a coaching camp lined up, end of July and end of August; these are at BATTS in Harlow and headed by Gareth Herbert, a Commonwealth Games gold medalist and ex-England #2. I have done these before and my game always seems to take a jump forward afterwards. These will make good blog content.
General summer practice is going well too. My main club has moved to a new venue with more tables, and better players are attending practices. Some venues seem to be suffering from heat and humidity though; More 'wet balls' than I can ever recall, although it doesn't really matter I suppose.
I do think we play far too many matches in practice though; I think it is used as a fair way to allocate table time, as there are generally more players than table spaces. Not so good when you want to work on specific aspects of your game.
I have been using my 'new' Nittaku Violin and managed to take a first chunk out of the leading edge......I do this with all blades; I guess I'm just very aggressive in the short game. It lifted a small piece of veneer too. It repaired nicely, almost invisibly, but I think I'm going to try some padded edge tapes. If I cut the rubbers oversize I always catch the table and lift them, so that's not an option.
Enough ramblings for now folks.....I suspect next time I write 'project Kenny Style' will have arrived. I am thinking of making it into a fun, chopping setup........possibly with a spongey LP.....as the ST handle should be good for messing around twiddling.
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Timo Boll ALC ST
FH Tibhar Evolution MX-P Max
BH Tibhar Evolution FX-S 1.8
185g
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I am enjoying the little collection we have growing here. Every one is just a little bit different, which keeps the reading interesting. And don't worry, I well know how nice it is to have a few responses here and there to know people read and take in what you write. Gives a warm and fuzzy feeling. 
Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
lol. There are good Chinese chopping rubbers like reflectoid and friends but you may as well just buy the real thing. As my father told me last week (he hasn't played since the 1980s but was a very good player then). Tackiness chop "that's the stuff". He used tacky chop 1.5 on BH and tacky drive 1.5 on FH on a surbek
