Equal pay for equal work!

It doesn’t take much to strip away the self control of prejudice denial for the beast to stride forth in all its unreformed glory.

I blame Francoise Durr.

Francoise was a French lady tennis player. Over the course of her career, Durr won 26 singles titles and 60 doubles titles. She was ranked World No. 3 in 1967 and was nine times ranked in the world's top ten from 1965 through 1976. She finished second to Billy Jean King in annual prize money won in 1971.

And I loathed her style of playing which, for me, summed up the absolute and total horror that was women’s tennis.

Durr served by throwing the ball through the troposphere, passing the tropopause and somewhere well into the stratosphere. When the ball finally re-entered normal space, she then had a sort of extended arms windmill approach to the serve which ‘bonked’ the ball, seemingly in slow motion, towards her opponent.

Her opponent had, by this time, committed suicide rather than endure the horror of subjecting herself to the slow torture of the tedious baseline return that was the basis of her ‘game’.

For me (in my unregenerate form) Durr’s tennis, stood for all women’s tennis, and anyone actually paying to watch such a third rate travesty of a world sport was incomprehensible.

Maria Bueno and Billy Jean King showed the way forward and women’s tennis soon developed into a more attractive alternative, especially when the men’s version developed the ‘killer serve’ which, in its way, was just as tedious and game destroying as the Durr destructive approach. I grew to enjoy and sometimes prefer women’s tennis!

Then, today, the announcement from the organization which has, through its ineptitude, ensured that we have not had a men’s Wimbledon Champion since Fred Perry, has pronounced that this year women will have the same money as men in the Championships. And, at once, the Neanderthal sexist took over my body.

This is where the title comes into force: “Equal pay for equal work.” But this, apparently, does not apply to the tennis players. In a game of tennis in the forthcoming championships the men can win with playing in a minimum of three sets and the women can win with a maximum of three sets. With men, even with the straight sets win, they must play at least three sets; with women a straight sets win is two sets.

This is not equal, this is not fair, and women should not have the same money. The logic to me is unmistakable. A man who is two sets up is in a strong position to gain that final set, but anything can happen, and part of the fascination of the male game is what happens given the complexity of a possible five set game. For the women; two sets - you’ve won. The same money? For what?

Equal pay for equal work!

This little diatribe is surprising given the fact that I was out to lunch with Dianne today which should have left me feeling mellow and at peace with the troubled world.

How do you tell the worth of a restaurant? You look inside and, if it’s full, you assume that it’s popular because of the quality of the service and food; if it’s empty – the opposite.

Our first choice of restaurant in Canton was closed so we drove on and ended up in Da Castaldo, which was empty; as we discovered when I stopped trying to get in through a window and used the door instead.

We were greeted with restrained enthusiasm by the waiter and allowed to settle in any place we chose. The service throughout the meal was attentive without being obtrusive and allowed us to talk and chatter and gossip and discuss to our hearts’ content!

The set lunch menus was small but more than adequate and, when I asked for cheese instead of the sweet selection, it was provided without fuss and was exactly what I wanted.

A sea food starter was followed by pan fried haddock with potatoes and carrots. My cheese was accompanied by coffee and the meal by a couple of glasses of wine.

As a lunch it was almost perfect: excellent company in our own private eatery! With good food too!

I must lunch more and more widely: there are places in Cardiff I have never been – and I should!