Each section of The Years of Grace begins with some verse, and the introduction to ‘Sport’ is the worst by far:
Every girl ought
To love sport
But if she wants to be wise and adorable
and completely feminine
She will let meniwin
ALWAYS
Apparently Fifties Man was so fragile that if he was ever Beaten By A Girl, he’d crumple into a heap.
This section is the shortest in the book, partly because Noel Streatfeild admits she was always “the lowest-class rabbit at games”, but mostly because there are only three sports in which Fifties Girl is allowed to participate: lawn tennis, horse riding and swimming. There’s also golf, but “in many parts of the British Isles it is such an expensive game that few can afford it”, so I guess it’s fair enough that Noel chose to omit it from the book. Of course, there’s also ‘Watching Sport With Your Brother’. Watching sport played by men, naturally. I spent the entire section desperately wanting to watch Fifties Man getting trounced by Serena Williams at Wimbledon.
The next and final section of The Years of Grace is ‘Careers’. But what possible career could Fifties Girl be qualified to do, given that she spent her school years concentrating on being “well-groomed” and is forbidden from ever competing with a man? Chapter titles such as ‘You Might Be A Secretary’ and ‘Shop-Keeping’ give some indication, although ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ looks intriguing. The Foreign Office? MI5? I will report back.