Weather · Rink 2
Rain days, and the six months of the year when the green is shut
A bowls green is a lawn that has to be looked after, and for about half the year it is closed so that it can be. For the other half the weather decides a good deal of what we do, and a wet Saturday in June is as much a part of the season as a dry one in August.
- Written
- 7 February 2026
- Looked over
- 21 March 2026
- Reading
- 7 minutes
- Ends
- 4
- Green
- South London
When the green closes, and why
Our green shuts at the end of September, give or take a week depending on the weather, and does not reopen until the middle of April. The closure is not arbitrary. After the last games the grass is scarified to drag out the dead thatch that builds up over a summer of play, spiked with hollow tines to let air and water into ground packed down by thousands of footsteps, top-dressed with a fine sandy soil brushed into the holes, and overseeded wherever it has thinned. After that the green needs the winter to recover. Walking on it in November, when the ground is wet and the new grass is fragile, undoes the work, which is why the gate stays locked and why the notice on it is ignored mainly by foxes.
We watch the autumn work from the path when we can. It is the only time the green looks untidy, brown and pitted and dusted with sand, and every year somebody new to the group assumes it has been ruined and asks whether we will lose it. We will not. By the time the daffodils are out along the railings the surface is flat and even again, and a better colour than it was in September.
What a group of park bowlers does in winter
There is no indoor rink close enough for us to use regularly, and most of the group would not want one anyway; the indoor game is its own thing, played on carpet at a pace that has little to do with a park green. What we do in winter is meet once a month for a long breakfast at the café by the park gate, talk over the season just gone and plan the next one. The winter breakfasts are where scorecards get argued over, where someone brings a cutting about a green in another borough that has been turned into a car park, and where people who have only ever met on the grass find out what each other does for a living.
Some of us walk round the park on a Sunday and look at the green through the railings, which sounds odder than it is. You can watch the grass coming back week by week, and some time in March the groundsman appears with the mower for the first time. It is the surest sign that the season is not far away. Most Februaries someone suggests practising on the rough grass in the open part of the park with a jack and a few old bowls, and we usually try it once. Rough grass teaches you very little about a green, apart from how much you miss it.
Rain in the middle of the season
The rule on our green is simple. If water is standing on the surface, or a heel pressed into the grass leaves a mark that fills with water, nobody plays. A bowl on a sodden green throws up spray, and more to the point the players' shoes leave dents that are still there a week later. The groundsman has asked us, politely, to err on the side of caution, and since this is the only green we have, we do as he asks. On those days we sit on the covered bench along the front of the pavilion, watch the rain and talk.
Light rain is another matter. A green that is damp but firm plays heavy and slow, and the bias takes hold later, so bowls run straighter than you expect and then turn sharply at the end. Wet bowls are slippery, and the careful players carry a small towel in a pocket to dry each one before delivery. Some of our best afternoons have been in a fine drizzle, with the green empty apart from us and the whole park quiet.
Chalked up in the pavilion
- Standing water, or a heel mark that fills: no play
- Damp but firm: shorter jack, dry every bowl, expect a late turn
- After heavy rain, give the green a day before walking on it
- Thunder: off the green at once, not after the end is finished
The pavilion on a wet afternoon
The pavilion is a small brick building with a kitchen at one end, a room with a long table, lockers along one wall for the bowls sets, and a veranda facing the green. It belongs to the council and is shared by whoever has the green that day. On a rain day it becomes the whole of our session. Somebody puts the kettle on, the scorecards from the last few weeks come out, and the talk drifts from the game to everything else. We have had long wet-afternoon debates about the right way to measure a close shot and whether a toucher chalked in the rain still counts, and one memorable afternoon on the history of the park itself, which a player who grew up nearby knew better than any sign.
I used to think of rain days as lost sessions. Over three seasons I have come round to the idea that they are when a group turns into a group, more than on any sunny afternoon on the grass. The people who come down to the pavilion on a wet Saturday, knowing there will be no bowling, are the people who will still be coming in five years.
Written by one of the group and read over by the others after a session. Last changed 21 Mar 2026.Back to the score sheet