Pique-nique in Oysterville

Mostly when we get together with old friends these days, we visit and reminisce non-stop. So it was yesterday at the First Maybe Annual Gordon and Roy Memorial Picnic – except for one slight embellishment. We had set out our pétanque game on the off-chance that a little competitive physical activity might be in order.

I think I had given the game to Nyel as a Christmas present years ago, probably after a trip abroad. One of our greatest lunchtime pleasures on such journeys was to take bread and cheese or other pique-nique makings to one of the Parisian parks – perhaps at Les Jardins des Tuileries – and watch a game of pétanque in progress. Like bocce in Italy or lawn bowls in England, it is popular pastime, especially among old men, or so it always seemed to us.

Pétanque

Pétanque, bocce, and bowls are similar. Cousins you might say. The equipment and courts are somewhat different. In pétanque, for instance, balls are about the size of an orange and are hollow and made of steel; bocce balls were traditionally made of wood but nowadays of hard epoxy resin and are more grapefruit-sized. Bowls is usually played on a manicured green lawn while bocce is played and by rolling the balls; pétanque and bocce on rectangular courts of sand or clay or fine gravel… and so forth.

Throwing balls at a target (which is what you do in each of these games) “is possibly the oldest known game in the world,” according to Wikipedia. The Romans were the first to play the game by the modern rules, though they learned the basic concepts from the Egyptians. Roman soldiers played the sport as a pastime between battles in the Punic Wars, and carried it into all the lands they conquered. The original balls were actually coconuts, brought back by Roman troops from North Africa.

Not Quite Oysterville

I understand that in recent years the games have become ‘cool’ for all ages and that there are actually pétanque and bocce leagues in France and Europe. Nonetheless, I still think of them as old men’s games and so when Nyel and three of our male guests wandered over to the “pétanque court” I was flooded with a weird déjà vu! So transported did I become, I was thinking in French and seeing strangers a bit slow and creaky with age, enjoying a game or two under sunny Parisian skies. OMG! I didn’t even think to take a picture!