A fun night at the indoor bowls
Updated: 2 days ago
I quite like the fact that everything changes over time and, with some exceptions, I think most things and activities improve for the better as the years go by. However I also think it is really nice to know that some traditions don’t change an awful lot over the decades. So, as I stepped into the Central Indoor Bowls Club event at the Central Wairarapa Indoor Bowls Association’s clubrooms on a crisp spring Tuesday evening, the whole atmosphere reminded me of the very friendly clubs and community events I remember as a child. Just as I recalled, club members arrived with a sponge cake or a packet of chocolate biscuits for supper, and the hall echoed to the redolent sound of the whistling Zip in the kitchen. For those young people who are much more familiar with a clubroom environment of canned energy drinks and boom box music, I’d recommend visiting these clubs and experience the warm, hushed, cosy hospitality, taste a cup of tea brewed in one of those enormous aluminium teapots, and in the case of indoor bowls, have a go at an activity that appears to be a lot of fun but is also deceptively harder than it looks.
It was the club’s final bowling night of the season and organiser Marilyn King had set the hall up for a fun night which comprised a variety of demanding and cunning bowling challenges, including laying curved lengths of rope under a mat so that the bowls would jump and deviate making it very hard to get close to the kitty. Another mat was double thickness which slows the bowls, and another had the kitty positioned halfway along the mat. Despite these mischievous challenges, and judging by the laughter and good-humoured banter, the twenty or so players of all ages looked to be be thoroughly enjoying the evening. It really did appear to be a lot of fun.
Club stalwart and indoor bowling doyen Elva Simonsen took the time to show me the basics of the game, and although I only tried twice, my best attempt just managed to wobble halfway down the six-metre mat - although I did get the bias somewhat right and the bowl gently arced and settled along the centreline. I was happy with that, but it did need a lot more effort to move the bowl along the mat than I had imagined, and the skill required to do that and then sneak past or knock the other teams bowls out of the way without disturbing your own teammates’ efforts, all to settle nice and close to the kitty must be quite difficult. Elva’s effort was so much smoother and accurate. However she made me feel a little less amateurish when she told me that she’d been doing this for over fifty years.
There are five indoor bowls clubs in Wairarapa: South Wairarapa who meet at the Greytown Working Mens Club, and then Clareville, East, Horseshoe and Central clubs who all play at the Central Wairarapa Indoor Bowls Association’s Masterton clubrooms in Hogg Crescent. The association bought the building, the former Martin Smith bus depot, back in the late 1980s so they could have the one venue permanently set up for indoor bowls and also to save the costs of having to rent other spaces.
The season runs from March to the end of September, although there is a summer pairs tournament running once a month from October through to February. Elva says that the clubs always welcome anybody who would like to pop in and have a look, and for just three dollars can participate and experience the game, and of course enjoy the hospitality.
