Word of the week - bricole

Defined as a stroke off a wall or cushion (in squash or billiards)I like two things, correction three things about this word. Firstly I think it sounds delicious. Secondly I like the fact that it seems to lend itself to use in other circumstances, "he negotiated himself out of difficulty deploying the splendid bricole of arranging for one of his friends to call his boss at precisely the right moment pretending to be......." kind of thing. Not that I have ever yet had cause to use it in any circumstance, except for talking about it for its own sake.

Lastly, it reminds me of the time I spent in the town of Pau in the South West of France. For some reason I joined a local boxing club and would turn up every week to an old place that reminded me very much of my old prep school gym but with every aspcet of that room augmented significantly; more smell of stale sweat, equipment which was even more delapidated, wooden floors even more dusty and worn out and with the sence of occasion enhanced by the addition of blood stains on the floor, these were not present in my old school gym. This establishment was headed by someone who I would describe as resembling the captain of the Vogon Destructor Ship (from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I suspect that a babel fish would have been of no help in trying to communicate with this man, I never understood a single thing he said. What I did like about him was the respect he was held in by the other part time pugilists. Every week after training, we would all (7 or 8 of us) decamp into the sauna which was the size of a large wardrobe. For the first several weeks I sat there and no one said a word to me. When someone finally did ask where I was from there was a lot of apologising; they had thought I was English (not Scottish) and everyone was my best friend after that.

Next door to the gym there was what I would call a Pelote Court although I am sure that, strictly speaking, it might have been called something else, especially now I have looked at "this". It was basically a carpark sized bit of land with a huge wall. In there I would occasionally see exponents with long banana-shaped bats hurling a ball at a phonomenal and frightening speed in great arcing bricoles.