My destination was the Middle Park Bowling Club, where the petanque people have re-established themselves after being forced to move on from their former St Kilda base, which is now a development site. On a long stretch of gravel that I first took to be a car park, a group of men and women was playing petanque. One of the men gave a cheery wave. I assumed this was Peter Mangan, president of the Melbourne Petanque Club and one of the championship organisers. But I was wrong.
Petanque people are instinctively friendly.
Mangan was the only man there not playing, the only man wearing a tie. He'd taken time off from his job in municipal government to talk petanque, but I could tell from his twitchy fingers that he'd rather be tossing a few boules. The first thing I did was sort out terminology. Petanque is the game. Boules are the steel balls used to play it - although, just to confuse things, the French often call the game itself boules.