ON THE GREEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 263, 27 January 1928, Page 10

ON THE GREEN

BOWLERS HAVE A LANGUAGE ALL THEIR OWN, ONE WHICH IS SUBTLE, AMUSING AND OFTEN HIGHLY. PUZZLING SOME “PET” EXPRESSIONS The subtl© expressions heard on the bowling greens must be highly amusing to those who are not conversant with the game. During the tournament just concluded at Christchurch bowlers from the four corners of the Dominion met and spent a fortnight together, and it is on such special occasions that students of bias unthinkingly, but not unwittingly, afford onlookers amusement with their excuses and ejaculations froreign to all other pastimes but bowls. Not a new one is that when a lead plays a bowl that was frightfully narrow, and swings across the head. When the bowl is half-way down the green the skip of the team says with disgust, “You’re as narrow as a hen’s face.” “Cracking an Egg” Another is when the third asks his skip to play up on this o.r that bowl, and, as a word of caution, yells: “I just want you to crack an egg on it.” Short bowls hav© their terrors for skips, and when “wood” of this kind gets on its journey the man in charge of the head takes it as a personal affair. Last week one inquired of his second, “Don’t you love me, Herb?” “Put half an inch on George,” is the instruction of a skip to a third who wants his man to blaze the bowl down the green at a two-minute clip. Then there is the playful “second,” who requests his partner to “tickle the kitty behind this one for three,” and as the bowl is travelling toward the white he is unable to contain himself, so forms himself into a corkscrew, murmuring all the time, “Take her with you,” “Pick her up, pick her up.” If the shot is successful he says to his mate, “I’ll take ye to the Old Dart wi’ me, Jimmy lad.” “Easy Monday” And the third, who dreads the possibility of th© approaching bowl getting a slight cannon off one on the wing and is heard to remark, “Easy. Monday now,” “no rubbing.” Then Dame Fortune butts in. One team is all smiles; the other, well, is anyhow. Frequently they remark, “You can’t play the other fellow, too,” meaning that Dame Fortune is assisting their opponents. Bowlers have a language of their own, and “You’re thin,” “You’re shy a good yard,” “I want you a yard gone,” and “You’re doon the burn, Alec,” are to be heard on anf green where a Glasgow mon is playing. Then there is th© tailor who describes his pal’s bowl as being just a suit-length away from the kitty. The fellow from Redcliffs . also makes known his hobby by crying to a dying bowl to keep its head up. Lyttelton also receives its quota from skips who saj- that their colleague on the mat "ill find such and such a “port” with his next bowl. One of the oldest “cries” on the bowling green is, “For God’s sake, be up.”