Hockey

I wandered along to the Happy Valley hockey club on Saturday 12th May, except when I got there nobody was there. There was a slight delay to getting there as I managed to stand on the wrong side of the road for Happy Valley trams – only realising this after about the third tram had gone past in that direction, and that there had been a succession of trams on my side having nothing to do with Happy Valley. A somewhat embarrassing walk across the road to leave one tram queue to join the one in the opposite direction. Arriving at the racecourse I could see football, rugby, and hockey pitches in the infield section, so now I just had to figure out how to get there – I didn’t believe I’d have to pay entry to the stands to get access to the infield pitches. Bearing in mind it’s just after midday and it’s as hot as ever traipsing round the outside of the course wasn’t the best idea I came up with. In the end I found a subway that would provide infield access about halfway round the course from where I’d started, and it was pretty disappointing to find an empty hockey pitch…

The racecourse looked to be filling up with spectators so I figured I could watch some horse racing. Which would have been a good plan, except there is no racing at Happy Valley on Saturdays. It turns out the racecourse was filling up with people to watch horseracing (at Sha Tin racecourse) on a big screen. So basically, as I see it, they go to the racecourse (and pay) to watch tv. Weird. So, I did end up paying entrance to the racecourse anyway (only HK$9 though).

Fortunately, in the time it took me to discover this people had started playing hockey at the hockey pitch. After a few nervous hellos etc. I ended up playing for the Midlands team in their end of season bash. Water based hockey pitch too! We finished losers in the bowl final, which I think made us not very good – but many beers were drunk, and it was good to meet people. Looks like I’ll be sorted with summer hockey! Hurray. Unfortunately, summer hockey won’t start for about 4 weeks… nuts! In all a quite successful end to the week. Although I’ll need to buy shinguards… hockey shoes would probably be useful too… and maybe my own stick… I can see I’m going to start accumulating some of the ‘general crap’ that clutters up my flat back home…