Friday, April 16, 2021

A Different Country Club

 I've been enjoying a bit of tennis lately.  To be more honest I've been sitting around in my lounge room while my television considerately beams tennis into my home.  From time to time I look up to see what's going on.  Front and centre of the tennis world at the moment is the Monte Carlo Masters which is held at that bastion of egalitarian entertainment the Monte Carlo Country Club.  Here the greats of the tennis world (or at least the male part of it) can do battle on the red clay every day and make it home in time for tea since most of them seem to live in Monaco.

I took a look at the Monte Carlo Country Club (virtually of course, I doubt if I would meet the entry requirements).  It is most impressive; court after court of red clay stretches to the horizon, elegant buildings hover over the arenas, although not so completely that spectators can't get amazing views of the Mediterranean when they're bored with the tennis.  The courts have names like Court Rainier III and the club is run (or at least headed by) a member of Monaco's princely family.  This is all very impressive but one thing kept nagging at me.  How in the hell do you have a country club when there's barely any country to put it in?  Let's face it, you'd have to expel the entire population of Monaco if you wanted to build a golf course there.

The answer of course is simple, the country club does indeed have a country to be located in and that country is France.  Despite the name, the rue Princess Grace address and the Monegasque flag* fluttering proudly over the buildings the whole damn thing is plonked just outside Monaco in neighbouring France.  To be fair this part of France used to belong to Monaco until the middle eighteen hundreds.  It may be that Monaco is attempting a creeping reconquest by purchase.

Putting aside the geopolitical ambitions of the House of Grimaldi for a moment ("Today; Menton, tomorrow; the world") it has to be admitted that I'm becoming increasingly obsessed with Monaco.  My desire to visit this strange land with its expatriate country clubs and militarised fire brigade has been increasing over the years.  The odd thing about this is I have absolutely no interest in things for which Monaco is famous.  Super yachts, designer clothing, casinos and the like leave me cold.  Even my interest in money laundering is purely professional and I can only dream of earning enough to make evading tax by residing in Monaco a viable option.  

Nevertheless the principality calls to me, summoning me to see the palace of the prince, the pint sized zoo, the narrow streets of Monaco-Ville and the faint but real possibility of meeting a genuine Monegasque lurking somewhere among the teeming crowds of tourists, tax evaders, corporate criminals and the various remora fish who feed on the scraps such people leave behind.  Sadly both pandemic and finances mean that such things are in the increasingly distant looking future.  For now I will have to settle for watching the Monte Carlo Masters on television, seeing the Monte Carlo Country Club in all its glory and thinking "I'd like to go to somewhere just down the road from there."

*For the record the Monegasque flag looks rather like the Indonesian one but with a French/Italian accent.

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