Posting Writing and the Hopman Cup

I'm going to try posting my writing the way Alan from NBW site advised BEFORE I rush up stairs, clutching work for reviewing and essential items such as sweets (candies to my USA friends) and several rats to scamper over my person while I watch the Hopman Cup on TV.

For those not in the know, the Hopman Cup is a tennis match, one of the number prelude to the Australian Open which is played in Melbourne, usually in heat so bad the players all faint on court.

I love tennis! My father was a tennis-maniac who played a mean game himself. When my brother was little, father drew a line, tennis-net high, across the wall of the "red shed" at the bottom of the house paddock. The "red shed" was of course, red, and the repository for saddles, harness, horse feed, a platform of pumpkins grown as stockfeed, an old dray filled with farm junk and - no doubt -carpet pythons, rats and mice.

My brother and I practised hitting a tennis ball against the red shed for hours, finally graduating to a similarly painted board at one end of our tennis court, built in the late 1950s. There mother would hold soirees of some elegance - provided the dogs were chained up for the afternoon - and practice being the Queen Mother amongst our neighbours.

From this unauspicious beginning, Robert and I graduated to competition and inter-town-district tennis matches. We were coached tennis at school as well as music lessons. My brother became not only an A-grade tennis player but a fine musician as well. I was an average tennis player and not too bad a pianist when I was forced to practice!!!

However, all this background chatter is leading up to the Hopman Cup. Harry Hopman was an Australian tennis player who led the way into modern professional tennis by forming the first Australian tennis teams. Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad were the first tennis stars Australia ever boasted - the "tennis twins" though they were unrelated, one tall and fair the other dark and short. Robert and I had the pleasure of meeting both of them when they did a country tour of exhibition matches. I also met Frank Sedgeman, Tony Trabert and a gorgeous little number called Lius Arillo who held court amongst we wittering girls!

Harry Hopman set himself up in America but Australia always remembered this illustrious gentleman, so one of the first tennis matches for the year is held in Perth, Western Australia every year. It's an inter-country competition, the prize being a fabulous cup, and the players prizes are two tennis balls embroidered with REAL diamonds! I kid you not!

Today is the last day, the finals. Spain is playing Great Britain so there is considerable excitement in the British camp as it's the first time they have ever got this far! The protagonists are Andy Murray and Laura Robson, a 15 year old junior player who has more than aquitted herself!

And - joy of joys - the Australian Open begins so Andrew and I will be affixed to the TV like bookends, eyes shaped in rectangles for 12 hours a day. The other 12 I am actually planning to get my entry in for The Cloud. Fragments of it have been whirring around in my head like bees, so while Andrew is doing his Justice Of The Peace course in Brisbane next week , I shall just have to get to work!

I guess I'd better stop babbling and get upstairs. I might miss a second of the action!!!

Oh, I forgot - the posting. Better give it a try!

Diana