My father, Rodrigo, had painted Nancy, and Michael became a very welcome patron and friend. When he was away on holiday with his first wife, he lent us a nearby cottage on the estate. Rodrigo and I had some bad-tempered tussles, watched by a brigade of young female housemaids dressed up like Lyons Corner House waitresses. When my father thumped the one-pound ball into the bushes, I found one of the prettier ones waiting to retrieve it, bending over so I could see a pair of sexy black stockings. I was tempted to linger in her company but Rodrigo was not in the mood to be kept waiting. The game went on, with both of us swearing lustily at each other.

For years, I forgot all about croquet, devoting my attention to more popular pastimes like soccer and tennis. It was during one of those blank spells between the FA Cup Final and Wimbledon that my sports editor suggested I do a 'light piece' on the Croquet Association Championships. He would send a photographer. I took the number 14 bus to the Hurlingham Club. A few players were on the lawns in front of the competitors' tent, but there was no inkling of the drama that was about to unfold.

Hardly had I entered the luxurious, sofa-crammed interior of the clubhouse when a large groan alerted my attention. A player was lying prostrate on one of the sofas, looking like death warmed up. 'Can I help?' I said to the victim. 'I think I've been food-poisoned,' said the young man. 'Can you help me get on to the lawn? I've got to play now.'The young man in white slacks with a brilliant IQ was Nigel. Aspinall, a West Country computer programmer and a strong favourite to win the singles. He was obviously in a bad way, hanging on to my arm and tottering out to play a game of doubles. I sensed then that croquet was no longer a game for cissies and chinless wonders. Aspinall was determined to keep going despite the need to vomit into the bushes lining the Thames. His partner was a Dorset GP who did not consider Aspinall's condition very serious. 'He should be all right for the singles, he said. 'Meanwhile we have a doubles on our hands.' Their opponents were not landed gentry but two Bedfordshire agricultural engineers who won the match despite Dr William Ormerod's stirring efforts with the mallet as his partner tottered around like a boxer about to go down after a flurry of punches.

Aspinall returned to the competitors' tent, where he sank miserably into a deck chair. It was here that I met Daisy Lintern, the long-time manager of the championships. She was sympathetic about Aspinall's plight, while insinuating she could not postpone games because of illness. 'I'm dreadfully sorry, but the show must go on.' Daisy, who had started playing croquet as a young girl with her mother in Somerset during the first world war, explained how the game had progressed since then. 'In the old days all the gentry wanted was to play on their lawns among themselves. Now more and more people like engineers and mathematicians want to play competitions.'

I left Hurlingham with Aspinall resting nobly on a clubhouse sofa. He admitted that many players like him played chess. 'It takes brains to play, and I suppose the same applies to croquet.'

Aspinall wasn't fit enough to compete in a singles semi-final, and Daisy refused to be lenient and postpone it. But he had the last laugh, winning many singles championships in subsequent years as croquet rolled off the pampered Edwardian lawns into another century.