Eastern Block (Playing the Moldovans at Tennis - Tony Hawks)

Member Name: indiecater

Product:	Playing the Moldovans at Tennis - Tony Hawks
Date:	26/07/02 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Outlandish Forays Dripping In Irony.

Disadvantages: The Irony May Have Been Lost On The Main Players.

It's true what they say, travel does broaden the mind. Before we took flight around the world my reading habits consisted of a daily browse of the TV guide and the occasional NME. Backpackers, like students, have more time on their hands than they know what to do with (despite the fact that one of the wonders of the world is next door to the hostel!). With disposable free time you've got to be creative in finding things to do. More often than not there is volumes of reading material at your disposal.

You could say that travel writing is the easy option for the lazy author. You don't have to think, just write about what you see or experience. But, when you get guys like Bill Bryson and Pete McCarthy flushing their experiences with sparkling imagination and humour the whole thing becomes a lot more than a descriptive travelogue. It helps if you are partaking of the same journey as you read but not essential.

Tony Hawks comes from the same school as the above authors. He pursues his laughs like a rabid ferret, eeking out any shard of humour that could raise a tittle. Nine times out of ten he manages to avoid cliche and brings forth another nugget of satire. Perhaps his days of being a stand up comedian have provided the ammunition. He also has quite a few TV appearances behind him but is probably best known for his appearances on 'Have I Got News For You'.

So how do you end up in a strange Eastern European country with a mission to beat its top footballers at tennis. Well, the same way you find yourself travelling the length and breath of Ireland with a fridge, you take on a bet dreamed up in the pub by your friend Arthur Smith. While the absurdity of such a bet would be lost on most of us as soon as our hangovers cleared, Hawks relishes the task. When you find out that the loser of the bet must strip and sing the Moldovan National Anthem outside a pub on the Balham High Road at
the height of winter you begin to appreciate his lust for victory.

When Hawks arrives in Moldova he conscripts the services of Iulian, a native of Chisinau the countries capital, to get over the language barrier and to act as a guide in a country where public transport harks back to the early 20th century. Iulian, it turns out, is a dedicated soul if a little too easily resigned to the fact that his bosses task will be fruitless. His ability to remark on a situation with glibness is both a wonder and frustration to Hawks. It seems that Moldovans corner the market in looking brow beaten, which makes for a difficult time if you are a person looking for favours from the natives to achieve your goal.

Moldova has hardly embraced capitalism (due mainly to high level corruption) and so achieving matters that go beyond the basics requires ridiculous patience. Playing 6 games of tennis with its countries footballers involves going beyond polite requests to do so. Once Hawks finds this out he does what any desperate man would do in the situation, he lies. Passing himself off as a BBC documentary maker he manages to breech the inner sanctum of the Moldovan Football Association. A long list of empty promises and an unfeasibly long neck eventually gets Hawks places, tennis courts to be precise.

The laughs come thick and fast as Hawks runs several bemused Moldovan footballers ragged on the court. The players generall turn out to be pretty awful at holding a racket and swinging it in a way that would return the small ball at an angle that clears the net. Hawks milks the scene where one hapless footballer takes aim and fires a volley only to see it crash unsympathetically on his own head.

Throughout his stay in Moldova Hawks is given a room in the home of a typicial Moldovan family. The family show an initial weariness towards the author and his misguided adventures. As time goes by,
however, a genuine warmth emerges as translation difficulties are overcome through geniality and helpful cross cultural exchanges. By the time it comes for him to leave it is obvious that everyone concerned is sorrowful

As events on the tennis front begin to conspire against him Hawks has to make short sojourns to Northern Ireland and Israel in order to play the players he couldn't confront in Moldova. His desperation almost leads him to organising a Playstation tennis session with the players who are unable to compete on a real court. Such is the changeable nature of the Moldovan officialdom that at one point the authors aspirations rest on whether the teams hotel serve enough breakfast sausages!

'Playing The Moldovans At Tennis' comes complete with a bag full of characters. Hawks outdoes himself with his vivid descriptions of what can only be described as pretty drab personalities. He is also a master at wordplay and pulls comical revisions of well worn phrases from his experiences. At times you groan but his relentless style is addictive. His propensity to look at the funny side of situations despite the fact that failure seems the only real outcome is refreshing and uplifting. God loves a trier and it seems that he certainly holds a candle for old tone.

At times Hawks can be whimsical (or pathetic depending on your mood) in the extreme. One example near the start of his trip has him presenting a round table (of the white plastic garden variety) to the King of the gypsies in Moldova who happens to be called Arthur. While many would have viewed the action as condescending it is taken in good spirits.

While Hawks writing is witty the photographs that accompany them are drab. Pictures of each of his tennis adversaries with customary fake grin are hardly revelatory and little role in peppering the story with pictorial backdrops. The fact that they are in black
in white heightens the sense that Moldova has a long way to go to divert the hoards from the Greeks islands.

Tony Hawks can be an engaging author, his writing style is saturated with self depreciating humour and wildly vivid descriptions of the situations he finds himself in. It's hard not to be taken in by his word play and imagination that truly adds colour to situations that were probably pretty mundane at the time. 'Playing The Moldovans At Tennis' works best if you read it in snatches. I got through it after 25 journeys to work and back. It kept me amused as other passengers sat bored anticipating another day on the 9 to 5 treadmill.

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