The term ‘gonzo journalism’ was used back in the 70s to describe the work of Hunter S Thomson in Rolling Stone magazine. It’s like journalism with no rules. It’s first person rather than 3rd a lot of the time and it doesn’t adhere to normal structure or protocols. Like evidential truths. Who needs ‘em? So I would say ‘I modelled myself on the great Hunter S.’ except I hadn’t heard of him until Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas came out which was a kind of autobiographical story of an excessive stone-head, boozer, smoker, all round bad boy. So bad they had Johnny Depp play the lead in the film. And by that time I’d already started on my ‘career’ of making news articles more interesting by inventing stuff, including myself in the narrative (yes, it IS always about ME) and replacing ‘truth’ with ‘funnier’.

The tennis I play is rule free too. Because all those rules slow it down too much, cause people to become overly conservative and allow way too much time for ‘ball bouncing’ and other useless exercises. My way is better. Uninhibited by lines, bounces, niceties or anything, it’s about the pure enjoyment of hitting a ball.

But yesterday tennis turned full Gonzo. I played the younger daughter. First time in quite a few months. And she is a hard hitter. So hard that she hit the ball over the fence 3 times during an hour’s play. My balls. One of which now lives with the fishes. As it landed in the fucking brook. The other 2 were retrievable. So she hits hard, I hit it hard back and then, she slams a ball in the direction of my head/heart/testicles. I’ll parry it and get it back, and she’ll volley it over and I’ll slam it back at her. It resembles a duel using tennis balls as the chosen weapon. All the shots would count as ‘out’ if left, in any ‘normal’ game of tennis. But this ain’t normal by any definition. That’s when it becomes Gonzo. Which you can tell by the width of the smiles as we attack each other.

Maybe they’ll include it in the next Olympics, where the break dancing used to be.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx