At the bowling alley

This morning I was at the MacArthur Lanes, knocking the pins over for two hours. There were about twenty of us, all women; we had plenty of fun and felt really hungry at the end, after all the physical exertion, so wolfed down some slices of pizza for lunch, delivered from Louis' Pizza. This was a Diplomatic Hospitality event that had proven popular last year as well, very relaxing for the diplomats.

This is the largest bowling alley in Ottawa, with 32 Tenpin lanes, all kept beautifully clean, and everyone has to wear the same kind of shoes when playing, available from a special counter. You can choose your balls, which have holes in them for two fingers and a thumb. Some of the ladies snagged their nails on them, but I just found them rather heavy to lift––actually some balls were heavier than others. Whenever they'd been rolled at the pins, they popped back up automatically into the ball dispenser. The pins came back automatically too. There was something mesmeric about the apparatus that was doing that.

I got a score of over 100 which wasn't bad for someone who hasn't been bowling for 40 years or so!