I Have the Best Mates

I really do have the best set of mates out there.  They come in all sorts, young, old, short, tall, fat, skinny, beer drinkers, teetotallers, those with prototype knowledge, those good at modelling, those with hair and those without, those who steal trains, those that take the wrong branch on a running day and those that back the winning horse.  Some of my mates fall into many of the above categories.

 

I have to tell you a story about one of them who backed the winning horse!  He is the editor of our Great Club Magazine that goes right around the world in readership.  He photoshops me in weird hats, pink tutus and other things and generally just takes the p155.  Well he and a small team of Club members are also doing a great job in spicing up the Club N scale exhibition layout.  They have been doing a great job for some time now.  Anyway, the developers have come in and bought up the Golf Club on the layout and are converting it to a high profile and costly resort.  It will have a large ten lane swimming pool, tennis courts and basketball courts.  Last Saturday I was just amazed at what they were doing.  One thing was however troubling me.  The tennis courts that they were installing, to me anyway, looked to be Horribly Oversize.  It was not until Thursday at work this week that I caught up with this member, and asked the question that I thought that the Tennis Courts looked way to big and if anyone had doubled checked the size.  My question was prompted by watching the Australian Open on Wednesday night on TV and from side on getting a basic view of the tennis court with people on it.  I came to the conclusion that the court measurement from the base line to the service line was about 2 people lengths.  From the service line to the net looks about 2 and a half people lengths.  The model that I saw last weekend, when I mentally convert from N scale with N scale people, was way oversize and possibly Horribly Oversize. 

 

So when I spoke to this member about this, and he said, "No it was fine as 'HE' had checked and double checked and that the tennis court was indeed the correct size for N scale".  So on Friday morning, I thought I would Google "tennis court sizes" and convert the dimensions from metres 23.774 x 8.230 for a singles court and 23.774 x 10.973 for a doubles court, into N scale size by dividing by 160 and getting 14.9cm x 5.1cm and 14.9cm x 6.9cm.  When I sent this club member an email advising these dimensions, he was quick to reply, “Yeah Peter got it wrong!”  What a great mate.  Having his other mate’s back!  What a guy!

 

He is one of my bestest mates.  I just hope I don't get too many things wrong so he can have my back.