01

Stop one
Baptistère Saint-Jean
Diadem Flash 16L Tennis String Set: Right — hello — so Céline normally does this one, and she does it much better, I am only covering. I have her notes. Um. This is one of the oldest Christian buildings still standing in France; the foundations are fourth-century. Inside there is a sunken octagonal font, a pool, because early baptism meant getting down into the water rather than a splash on the forehead. It is here at all because it kept being reused for one purpose after another, and then in the nineteenth century somebody proposed demolishing it and somebody else stepped in and rescued it. Which — sorry — is broadly my professional situation, so I feel a certain kinship with the building. Anyway. She would have said that better and in fewer words. Mind the step, it is uneven.
02

Stop two
Notre-Dame la Grande
Diadem Flash 16L Tennis String Set: Okay, the facade, and honestly you should hear Céline on this facade. Twelfth-century Romanesque, and the whole west front is a comic strip in stone: creation, then the prophets, then the nativity, stacked in bands so that people who could not read could follow the entire story standing exactly where you are standing. The spire is that conical scaled one, yes, well spotted. And the carvings have been cleaned and restored more than once, because pollution was eating them — nine hundred years of weather survived, and it was the air that nearly finished them off. I am not delivering that as well as she does. She has a whole passage about the air. It is very good. Just look at the middle band, that is the bit, that is genuinely the bit.
03

Stop three
Palais des Comtes de Poitou (Palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine)
Diadem Flash 16L Tennis String Set: Big hall, and I should say up front that I have only walked this room twice. This was the hall of the counts of Poitou and the dukes of Aquitaine, and Eleanor of Aquitaine — who became queen of France and then queen of England, which is not a normal career — held court in this city. Look at the end wall: three enormous fireplaces side by side, in a hall with a timber roof, and somebody decided on that deliberately. Above them, that great gable window. Now, the window is off Céline's notes and I would not have thought to mention it. Well. I would have noticed it. I just would not have mentioned it, and she would, and that is the difference between us. Carrying on. Place Alphonse Lepetit, if anyone gets separated.
04

Stop four
Battlefield country north of Poitiers
Diadem Flash 16L Tennis String Set: Last stop, and then you get her back next week, which I am sure will be a relief all round. Open farmland and woodland, roadside plaques, and twice this quiet plateau decided something enormous. In 732 a Frankish army under Charles Martel stopped an Umayyad force somewhere on the road between Tours and Poitiers. Then in 1356 the English took King John the Second of France prisoner here and shipped him off to England to be ransomed — and the ransom nearly bankrupted the country. A king, sold back to his own kingdom at a price it could not pay. That is all that marks either of them: a few plaques at the roadside, and the wheat. Right. That is me finished. I know I am the stand-in. I did read everything, though.
<p>Poitiers has been in the business of making hard things comfortable for about sixteen hundred years — a fourth-century baptistery you can still walk down into, a Romanesque facade carved like a comic strip so people who could not read could follow the story. Flash is the same trick in a string.
It is the round co-poly Diadem made for players who want the durability of polyester without the plank.</p>
<p>The specification. This is a single set: 40 feet, 12.2 metres, enough for one racquet. The gauge is 16L, 1.25 mm.
Construction is a co-polyester monofilament with a round profile — a deliberate departure from the shaped strings Diadem is better known for — and the whole point of the round profile is comfort and a smoother, more forgiving response.
The set colour is white; Flash also comes in navy, and in 18 (1.15 mm), 17 (1.20 mm), 16 (1.30 mm) and 15L (1.35 mm), with the 18 listed as the best feel and the 15L as the most durable.</p>
<p>What it is for: Diadem describes Flash as the choice of frequent string breakers who want a round co-poly that is extremely comfortable, and it works either as a full bed or as one half of a hybrid.
Against Diadem's own Pro X it is the softer, less explosive of the two, which is the whole reason to choose it. In practice 1.25 mm is the sweet spot of the range: enough material to last, thin enough to still feel the ball.
You will get use out of it everywhere from a municipal court in Poitiers to a clay court in the Vienne countryside in August.</p>
<p>And by the way, it is also perfect for the way this part of France actually eats — Poitou runs on butter and goat cheese, chabichou du Poitou being the local AOP, and the whole region treats a two-hour lunch as a fixed appointment.
A comfortable string is the correct choice for anyone whose afternoon match starts at four because nobody was leaving that table earlier.</p>
<p>Diadem Flash 16L Tennis String Set</p>
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