Anyone for croquet?
Mallets, hoops and balls are set to become a common sight in North Walsham this spring and summer as players enjoy a leisurely game on the Memorial Park.
The town's U3A branch is launching a croquet group in April for up to 50 of its members who want to have a bash.
The traditional game involves using a mallet to knock a ball through hoops embedded in the grass.
Rosemary Spicer, one of the organisers, said they had all got the bug after a taster trip to Bodham Croquet Club, near Holt, organised by North Walsham U3A, or University of the Third Age, an international social and educational organisation for retired people.
'We all had great fun. It's a game you can play regardless of physical ability. On the other hand, it's quite exciting and can get quite vindictive,' said Mrs Spicer.
'If someone is just about to score and they are in the way of you scoring yourself, you knock their ball out of the way to stop them. It can get quite hilarious.
'Bodham is a little bit far for us to go to play regularly so we decided to set up our own group.'
North Walsham U3A, which has about 260 members, contained many interest groups and most attracted about a dozen people.
But when the croquet was advertised Mrs Spicer said between 30 and 50 people had responded.
The group has been taking advice from the East Anglian Croquet Federation which has lent members two croquet sets.
And federation development officer Jonathan Toye will be visiting North Walsham on Good Friday to show the group how to lay out a pitch and give them tuition.
Members hope to play on the first Tuesday of every month from April to September.
Mr Toye said croquet's 'snooty and elitest' image was wrong. It was played in many a back garden across the country and when he introduced it to schoolchildren, they loved it. The GB team regularly won test matches against New Zealand and the USA.
In Norfolk, Hunstanton had a club established 100 years ago, there was another at Downham Market, one in Norwich, at Eaton Park, the Bodham club and a small one in Wells which was combined with a bowls club. A new one was due to be set up shortly at Scratby, near Great Yarmouth.
The game had been partially eclipsed in the first two decades of the 20th century by the popularity of lawn tennis. Two tennis courts would fit on to one croquet lawn.
? Croquet was immortalised in Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland where soldiers formed the arches while players used flamingoes as mallets to strike 'balls' which were live hedgehogs.
In recent years the game hit the national headlines when former Labour Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was criticised for playing croquet on the lawn of his official country house, Dorneywood, while Prime Minister Tony Blair was attending a US summit in May 2006.
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