It’s that time of year, isn’t it, when you start readying yourself for winter by checking off all the maintenance jobs.  The chimney sweep’s already been and done his thing and this week the man came to service the boiler, rather confusingly bedecked in shirt sleeves and a woolly hat.  They do say, however, that we are about to leave this unseasonably mild weather behind us and experience a drop in temperature as we move further into November.  Oh dear.

Across the other side of the world, however, temperatures were very pleasant for the players at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship but they had to contend with swirling, gusting winds that played havoc with golf swings and putting strokes and, of course, hearts and minds.

The man who outlasted them all was Ireland’s Seamus Power (top pic) who knows a thing or two about playing in breezy conditions.  He needed all his experience and knowledge of the course to best Ben Griffin, a North Carolinian in his rookie year on the PGA Tour, who held a two-shot lead with seven to play.  The man from West Waterford was equal to the task, however, and squeaked home by a shot, recording 28 birdies (a new tournament record) for the four rounds.  This, his second PGA Tour win, shoots him up the world rankings to 32nd, pretty much assuring him of a spot in the first three majors next year and he also gains an exemption for the tour through to the end of 2025.

The icing on the cake, though, is a fast start in his quest for a place on Luke Donald’s Ryder Cup team next autumn in Rome.  I’m excitedly contemplating the idea there might be three Irishmen on the team (that’s including Rory and Shane-O), something that hasn’t happened since 2006 and the heyday of Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley.

That was arguably the most emotional match I’ve ever been at, taking place as it did at the K Club in Ireland, a mere six weeks after Clarke’s wife Heather had died from breast cancer.  Talk about thousands of spectators combining to carry Darren in his grief through a difficult week – it was quite something to be part of and truly unforgettable.  Darren defeated the current American captain Zach Johnson in the singles on the 16th green, at which point the grandstands rose as one to serenade the Ulsterman with “The Fields of Athenry”.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house and I remember thinking at the time how classy the US rookie Johnson was. The last 16 years have only reinforced that opinion.

Lowering my sights ever so slightly from the prospect of Ryder Cup golf, I can report that I have now officially set foot on a golf course – for the first time in a year.  No, not playing yet but walking round seven holes and spectating at Whittington Heath’s Friday Frolics.  The sister was drawn with Jayne Fletcher and June Organer and so I was afforded my first look at the new holes at this Staffordshire gem.

The first things to strike me were the panoramic views, the feeling of space and how quickly the course and the greens in particular were bedding in.  The surfaces were true, and fast, and looked a treat to putt on.  The bunkers were beautifully built and difficult to escape from – in fact, I think I’d take a couple of them out altogether.  I was always a fan of giving a player options but having a route allowing you to run (or scuttle) the ball onto the green doesn’t seem too popular these days.  I think sometimes designers forget their duty is to create a course that challenges and is fair to the entire membership – not just the best players.

The new clubhouse is impressive, to say the least and has a commanding view of the aforementioned new holes.  It is the polar opposite to the old, quirky, slightly ramshackle (and reputedly haunted) building used by the club for more than a century [not sure it was that long – ed] but there is one thing that hasn’t changed one iota – and that is the warmth of the welcome and obvious enthusiasm for the game.  That is always the essence and heart of a club and so much more important than fancy buildings, newly-designed holes and copious planting.

My day was made complete by bumping into Andrew Clark, one of the members, who used to work as a tournament director on the women’s tour in the 1990s.  We hadn’t seen each other for around thirty years but the time just melted away and we had a great catch-up.  That’s golf for you, though.

Finally, well done to our Women’s PGA Cup team for finishing third out in New Mexico last week.  Apparently the teams battled some very low temperatures, so it seems the girls were getting an early taste of what’s in store here for us.

Better go and root out the hand warmers.

There were complaints that there was too much golf in this bit of the blog last week, which just goes to show that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  I have to confess that ever since I realised that I couldn’t even guarantee pleasing myself, I gave up trying to please anybody let alone everybody, an impossible task.

There’s a bit of a pause here because I can’t type for laughing at a memory that flashed into my mind.  Now, it’s my memory and my mind, so I can’t promise that it’s remotely accurate but I’ll share it anyway, not least because, looking back, it’s breathtaking in its arrogance – even though, looking back, it was, in its way, excellent advice…

Peter Dawson had just become head honcho at the R and A, insofar as anybody who’s just the secretary/chief executive or whatever the current title is, can be head of such a disparate body of members.  (And yes, I know, they’ve rejigged themselves to separate the club and all those weird and wonderful members, women now included, at last, shock, from  the body that does all the easy stuff like running the Open and other events and being one of the world’s governing bodies.)

I think we were chatting about how to deal with the press, those pesky people who persist in asking awkward questions, given half a chance.  Sometimes it’s with malice aforethought but mostly it’s because we’re nosy and want to know what’s going on and why.  The worst thing you can do is lie to us – that never ends well – and getting irritated isn’t a good idea either; that gets us really interested and all being well, makes you even more irritated…

My memory is that I, no Alastair Campbell, breezily suggested that there was no point in trying to be too careful because somebody somewhere would extract whatever it was they wanted from whatever you said, whether it was what you meant or not.  I favoured the Laura Davies slog-sweep-for-six approach, much more fun than the Tiger Woods dead bat, you’re-a-piece-of-work sneer.

I think Peter, who played a big part in getting golf back into the Olympics, and is still operating in choppy international waters as chairman of the OWGR (official world golf ranking), opted for a more nuanced approach.  Whatever, it seems to have served him well enough, though it was always fun to see how annoyed he started to get at all those persistent questions about the R and A’s lack of female members and insistence on taking the Open to places where women were second-class at best.  Then, I had no sympathy.  It was all their own fault.  Years ago, they had a solution jumping up and down in front of them – and they ignored it.  And consigned themselves to more years of ridicule.  Ah well, happy days!

By now, you’ll be understanding why I never pursued a career in PR.

And, no, though I’m old and inept enough to be a highly-paid consultant, I had nothing whatsoever to do with the Liz Truss debacle.  Even she had more sense.  Much good that it did her.

You’ll undoubtedly be glad to know that I’m still singing, after a fashion and I remain in awe of people who are musical, can sing and play an instrument or two.  One of my old friends – admittedly almost all my friends are old – is an accordion player of some distinction.  He long ago gave up golf for fishing (bass and all sorts of fascinating and lurid lures) but he is still a mean performer on the old squeeze box.  Funnily enough, the last episode of The Repair Shop I saw featured an accordion and the workings were beyond complicated.  Though not beyond the genius who did the repair.

Anyway, I digress as usual and my accordion-playing friend, a genius in his own right, not least when it comes to organisation (a word that sends me into paroxysms of awe – you get the drift), moved heaven and earth to assemble a band beyond compare.  Of course, he’s an American who now lives in Texas, where everything is on a scale beyond the comprehension of mere mortals on this side of the pond.

Last month, he assembled a 17-person ensemble of musicians, singers and actors, some professional, others gifted amateurs for an evening that was a 1960s country western music setting featuring guitars, piano, drums, bongos, violin, banjo and accordion, interspersed with a variety of fun, frivolity and fanfare.  I quote, mostly, and it sounds like a heck of a night, never to be repeated.  There will, fortunately, be a DVD, to be released just before Christmas.  So, that’s any time now.

I was in TK Maxx a couple of weeks ago after giving blood that ended up at St Thomas’ Hospital in London (the blood doning people send you a text) and, horror of horrors, there was Christmas music playing.  Even my dodgy ear recognised that it was a bit early (barely mid-October) for carols and assorted Noels and I felt sorry for the staff who couldn’t escape.  Goodness knows how they’re feeling now – and there are still weeks to go.  Hope they’re getting paid extra for the auditory assault.

Talking of assaults, I’ve just been watching some of the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup – England v Australia, so there’d be no holds barred whatever the sport.  It was full on, all in and captivating.

I am now staggering to bed exhausted and, as so often, in awe.