TENNIS and a REVIEW
Sep. 19th, 2020 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA quick word on the tennis, first, mainly the US Open. I’ve been keeping an eye on headlines. Back when all we had was tournaments involving British players and the Adria Tour debacle, it became obvious how important the US Open was for players. Then Nadal wasn’t going. Then Murray had a comeback in the first round, but as it was five sets, predictably, he lost in the next. I heard that Djokovic had to be disqualified because of carelessness over a ball, and that Serena Williams lost in the semi finals (as if it was a massive shock. I know this is an extraordinary year, but Serena hasn’t won a grand slam final for years now. Can we stop feeding the biases of people who don’t watch tennis by pretending she is always the favourite? I was pleased to hear that it was Vika Azarenka who had won, in that it was great that Azarenka had achieved the comeback she’d shown hints of threatening last year.
But Osaka was tougher, and it’s a mini comeback for her, isn’t it, having struggled with being champion and no. 1 after achieving it, not to mention the 2020ness of this year. Then, on the men’s side, Thiem finally did it, also a fightback, with perhaps his greater experience of finals than Zverev (finally making the breakthrough!) helping. I don’t know, I didn’t see it, so I can only speculate.
The French Open is supposed to happen at the end of the month, behind closed doors, isn’t it? And ITV have the rights, so perhaps I will experience something of what football fans have enjoyed over the last couple of months. But the situation in France is ropey and the last I heard two of the top women had withdrawn, including an injured Osaka.
The Testing of Tansy: Winifred Norling, Ward Lock.
I don’t much rate Winifred Norling, and this book did not change my mind. A question is posed in the early chapters: would you rather be a scholarship girl or a snob? The trouble is that the author is secretly a snob.
Tansy McNeil has a busy first chapter of it. On the day she turns fourteen, she not only learns that she’s won a scholarship to Great Canford Hall, but that she isn’t really Tansy McNeil. Her father adopted her when he married her mother. Mr McNeil is a grocer, but Tansy’s birth father was a gentleman, and she has the right to bear another name, but she decides vehemently that she doesn’t want it, because her father’s family disowned him over his marriage to her mother. Indeed, she has some inverse snobbery.
At the school, Tansy is befriended by Rosamund Graversleigh, a kind-hearted and sympathetic girl, also the granddaughter of a lord, and Ros’s great chum Priscilla ‘Cilla’ North. While both girls are nice, they’re also mischievous imps, and soon Tansy and they are in trouble, but as a scholarship girl, Tansy is in a more vulnerable position, as the headmistress points out to her.
Fortunately, it’s the summer term and sports, specifically the high jump and tennis, take up the girls’ time and interest, until Camilla, another girl in their dorm, who it is more than suggested is a bit nouveau-riche, tries to blackmail Tansy into dropping out of the high jump, because she’s sure to win and Camilla desperately wants to. By this time, Tansy hs been inculcated with house spirit, and her capitulation to Camilla without being able to explain herself puts her into a bad position with Cilla, in particular.
In this episode, I was more horrified by the blackmail, which the mistresses and girls seem quite laissez-faire about. The culprit, Camilla, does experience a change of heart, in part because of Tansy’s magnanimity, and true nobility of spirit, because guess what? She starts to get an inkling due to a mix-up over baby photos of who her father really was. In fact, the writer – who’d been puzzling me with her attitude to inheritance and belonging – has a few crazy plot twists up her sleeve, with schoolgirls getting injured, heroic rescues and secrets of parentage crammed into the back end of the story.
Tansy’s favourite adjective is ‘ripping’. Some of the episodes are fun, such as a house mistress’s handling of a secret society that favours midnight feasts or the ‘guess the girl or mistress from their baby photo’ competition, but the underlying snobbishness and OTT plot are the sort of thing that parodies of this genre rightly take aim at.
[Edited on 31/07/23.]
But Osaka was tougher, and it’s a mini comeback for her, isn’t it, having struggled with being champion and no. 1 after achieving it, not to mention the 2020ness of this year. Then, on the men’s side, Thiem finally did it, also a fightback, with perhaps his greater experience of finals than Zverev (finally making the breakthrough!) helping. I don’t know, I didn’t see it, so I can only speculate.
The French Open is supposed to happen at the end of the month, behind closed doors, isn’t it? And ITV have the rights, so perhaps I will experience something of what football fans have enjoyed over the last couple of months. But the situation in France is ropey and the last I heard two of the top women had withdrawn, including an injured Osaka.
The Testing of Tansy: Winifred Norling, Ward Lock.
I don’t much rate Winifred Norling, and this book did not change my mind. A question is posed in the early chapters: would you rather be a scholarship girl or a snob? The trouble is that the author is secretly a snob.
Tansy McNeil has a busy first chapter of it. On the day she turns fourteen, she not only learns that she’s won a scholarship to Great Canford Hall, but that she isn’t really Tansy McNeil. Her father adopted her when he married her mother. Mr McNeil is a grocer, but Tansy’s birth father was a gentleman, and she has the right to bear another name, but she decides vehemently that she doesn’t want it, because her father’s family disowned him over his marriage to her mother. Indeed, she has some inverse snobbery.
At the school, Tansy is befriended by Rosamund Graversleigh, a kind-hearted and sympathetic girl, also the granddaughter of a lord, and Ros’s great chum Priscilla ‘Cilla’ North. While both girls are nice, they’re also mischievous imps, and soon Tansy and they are in trouble, but as a scholarship girl, Tansy is in a more vulnerable position, as the headmistress points out to her.
Fortunately, it’s the summer term and sports, specifically the high jump and tennis, take up the girls’ time and interest, until Camilla, another girl in their dorm, who it is more than suggested is a bit nouveau-riche, tries to blackmail Tansy into dropping out of the high jump, because she’s sure to win and Camilla desperately wants to. By this time, Tansy hs been inculcated with house spirit, and her capitulation to Camilla without being able to explain herself puts her into a bad position with Cilla, in particular.
In this episode, I was more horrified by the blackmail, which the mistresses and girls seem quite laissez-faire about. The culprit, Camilla, does experience a change of heart, in part because of Tansy’s magnanimity, and true nobility of spirit, because guess what? She starts to get an inkling due to a mix-up over baby photos of who her father really was. In fact, the writer – who’d been puzzling me with her attitude to inheritance and belonging – has a few crazy plot twists up her sleeve, with schoolgirls getting injured, heroic rescues and secrets of parentage crammed into the back end of the story.
Tansy’s favourite adjective is ‘ripping’. Some of the episodes are fun, such as a house mistress’s handling of a secret society that favours midnight feasts or the ‘guess the girl or mistress from their baby photo’ competition, but the underlying snobbishness and OTT plot are the sort of thing that parodies of this genre rightly take aim at.
[Edited on 31/07/23.]
