Right then, here we go, keep up. Nine to twelve racquets — nine to TWELVE — across three racquet compartments, and one of those three lined in silver thermal climate-controlled material, do I hear a thermal? I hear a thermal. Two zippered front sleeve pockets for valuables, one inside zippered pocket, one zippered shoe pocket, and the shoes go in the shoe pocket where the shoes belong, sir, thank you.
Dimensions: 74 by 33 by 38 centimetres, or if you prefer it in inches, 29.1 by 13 by 15, and that extra depth over the standard model is where the third compartment lives. Black for the mud, neon for the fence, and you will find it in a clubhouse full of identical bags in under two seconds.
Colour, black and neon yellow.
Weigh it up: twelve frames, three compartments, one thermal, one shoe pocket, three valuables pockets. That is a team bag valued at an entire season, and I am not taking bids under a full club campaign.
Decin. Decin Chateau stands over the Elbe with the Long Ride running up to it — a walled sandstone carriage ramp, several hundred metres of it, built so a coach could be driven up to the door rather than a guest having to walk. Somebody looked at a hill and decided the hill was the problem. Next lot.
Sold to the gentleman in the sandstone.
The Shepherd's Wall, a sandstone cliff with a lookout on top and the river bending underneath it. Tyrs Bridge of 1933, one arch across the Elbe. And then — and this is the lot I actually care about, this is the one I would keep — the hunger stones.
Down in the riverbed, boulders carved by people in drought years going back to 1616, positioned so that when the water drops far enough for the carving to show, the message is already waiting. They are messages that only arrive on the worst days.
And here is the line on them, carried down four centuries and appearing only when the river fails: if you see me, weep.
"They carved a message that only surfaces when things have gone badly wrong."
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