Have you noticed you simply can’t believe a word you hear, see or read nowadays?

No, not a single thing.  From fake news to the erratic, varying, misleading and contradictory statements emanating from across the Atlantic to……well, to the Madill golf blog.  Yep.  Mea culpa.

Last week I waxed lyrical (well, I hope it was lyrical) about my lovely time at Kooyonga golf club in Australia way back in the seventies when I was on the GB team selected to play in the Commonwealth tournament.  It was a fabulous trip (true);  I met and made lifelong friends (also true);  the venue was superb (again true) and the tournament was played at Kooyonga golf club in Adelaide.  Alas, that last fact is, well, not a fact at all.

My very own personal edition of BBC Verify, namely Gillian Stewart, who was on that team, texted when she’d read the piece.

“Blog fact check!  The Commonwealth tournament was played at Lake Karrinyup in Perth.  We then went on to Royal Adelaide where we played in the Australian Ladies’ Open.  You been on the gin?”

I don’t know if this is all made worse by the fact that I HADN’T been on the gin, or on anything at all, but I did feel slightly better when Gill’s next text read, “Well, it was 47 years ago.”

So, apologies all round – particularly to Kooyonga and Lake Karrinyup.  I got my two special Ks mixed up.  I actually played Kooyonga as a professional some years later and it just goes to prove that time frames can shrink to nothing and become blurred the further away you get from them.  Ah well.

I can’t leave the topic of Australia without lauding that country’s current leading female professional, Perth-born Hannah Green.  Hannah has just won the Australian WPGA Championship, her third victory in her last three outings.  She won in Singapore and then travelled home to Oz and tucked away two more wins – such an enormously difficult thing to do for any athlete competing on home turf.  The attendant pressures from carrying the hopes of a nation do not sit lightly but, with her husband who was caddying by her side, Green was immense, impressive, tough and gracious in victory.

“It feels really amazing,” the 29-year-old said. “Again, it hasn’t really sunk in, but it’s been a really crazy month. I guess it’s been four weeks since I won in Singapore. But it’s been really special to be able to do that in Australia.”

Green has made history by being the first Aussie, man or woman, ever to record three consecutive victories and, as always, she was quick to express gratitude to the great Karrie Webb (with her in the featured picture at the top).

Webb, as many of you will be aware, is the owner of seven majors, 41 titles on the LPGA tour as well as multiple other victories worldwide.  Even when she was at the height of her powers as a player Karrie was creating foundations and scholarships to support the legions of young Australian girls who were hoping to follow in her footsteps.  Hannah was the recipient of one of those scholarships more than a decade ago, receiving financial aid, travel expenses and coaching and mentoring from Webb.  She has never forgotten it.

Karrie, a sporting legend and now 51 years of age, is still very relevant in the modern game, her door always open to any young aspiring golfer seeking mentoring or help.  Talk about giving back.  Bravo the Aussies – and how marvellous to hear that she is once again to captain her country’s golf teams at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

From summer Down Under to the ravages of the weather in the northern hemisphere, I can report that I am now back in Blighty – and very happy to be so.  A nasty weather system and Storm Theresa rolled over the Canaries which meant that for the last three full days of our time in Tenerife we were pretty much confined to our AirBnb.  A state of National Emergency was declared with road closures, rock falls, torrential rain and lightning and it was stressful wondering if we’d actually make it to the airport at all.

Happily we did and my hubby took an inter-island hop over to Gran Canaria where he has met up with some pals for a week’s motorbiking.  So far they’ve just had one wet day and the worst is certainly over but I was a teensy-weensy bit alarmed when he forwarded a photo of how GC had suffered a couple of days before he got there.

This is on one of their biking routes and may give you an idea of what these islands have been through.

Thankfully we didn’t encounter anything like that on our way to the airport but we did see the civic maintenance crews out on the mountain roads clearing away the rock falls and landslips.

And I used to think five footers were scary!

I was going to put a question mark after the title, in a brave effort at optimism and I wasn’t going to mention football, in an attempt to hang on to the many readers who can’t stand the game.  However, as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I’m trying to write this and watch three games at the same time:  Wales v Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czechia v Republic of Ireland and Italy v Northern Ireland.

They’re all part of the closing stages of qualifying for the World Cup and they’re all tight and tense, apart from the game in Bergamo, where Italy were 2-nil up with not much time left (and won 2-nil). ***

Anyway, ever hopeful, I travelled down to N17 last Sunday to watch Spurs play Nottingham Forest, who were just a point behind us in the relegation battle.  They’re now two points ahead after beating us 3-nil.  Essentially it looks as though only West Ham, who loathe and detest us with a passion (for reasons I’m not quite sure of), can save us from relegation.  We’re showing few signs of being able to save ourselves, particularly at home.

“You’ve got to ditch that team,” Mo said.  “They’re hopeless.”  That’s not the way it works, as she well knows.  Thanks to the great Pat Jennings (1967 FA Cup final), I’m lumbered, waiting hopefully for some decent football to cheer.  Yes, we are currently useless, devoid of confidence, too easily picked off by any side that scores first against us but better times must be ahead, surely.

Question is:  will I live to see them?

Relegation will cost Spurs untold millions but, you know, the only reason I’ll be really upset is because it’s bound to cost a lot of people their jobs, people behind the scenes, who probably don’t earn that much but love the club and work tirelessly to make things run smoothly.  They’ve undoubtedly been let down by those higher up, who are proving themselves beyond clueless.

I’m increasingly convinced, this being the era of the conspiracy theory, that Vinai Venkatesham OBE, our relatively new chief executive, who spent many years at Arsenal, is some kind of Trojan horse.  He certainly seems to be presiding over our destruction.  Doesn’t make it any better that I recently discovered that I’m related to somebody who went to the same prep school…

This being spring, officially, despite the other day when here in Lichfield we had four seasons in quick succession, including a good effort at snow, I did a bit of cleaning.  Proper cleaning.  As in hauling stuff out of awkward corners; pulling out fluff-encrusted dead slaters; wiping down cupboards; emptying said cupboards and disposing of contents dated 2017;  thinking about tackling the dreaded (but oh-so-useful) Venetian blinds; cleaning the winter boots; retrieving the summer sandals and sunhats (ever optimistic on the weather front, which could quite easily go the way of the footy).

Yes, you’ve guessed it, it’s the classic blog-avoidance strategy.

I couldn’t bear watching the aftermath of the footy, with the winners leaping about in delight (they still have one more match to win to get to the finals this summer) and the losers not knowing what to do, where to put themselves, how to stay upright, what to say…

So, never being one to give full concentration to the blog before midnight, I put on an old, almost antediluvian episode of New Tricks, which was followed by an even older Inspector Lynley mystery.  The opening scene had a smooth, suave expert witness saying he was still convinced that the woman appealing her prison sentence for murdering an abusive husband knew exactly what she was doing at the time, that there was no way she could now plead insanity.  The judge agreed and the woman’s father threatened the expert….you get the picture.

Next morning, we see the expert, in a beautiful home, giving his wife a surprise present and a kiss before heading for his swanky car.  “Hmm,” I say to myself.  “What’s going to happen here?  Is the car going to explode?  Or…?  No, the car’s going to explode.”  And, a millisecond later, that’s what happened.  I started laughing and thought, “Mo would be furious.”

Time after time, if we’re watching something together, before I can stop myself, I’ll say what I think is going to happen and often, too often, it’s right.  Could there be anything more infuriating!  It’s daft, really because I’m sure I’d be wrong about The Mousetrap.  Didn’t Winston Churchill leave at half-time because he’d sussed it out?  No way I’d outthink the great Agatha.

Anyway, golf, that great game of ours.  Played on Tuesday, in very blustery conditions, even for a person brought up on Ireland’s north Atlantic coast and staggered to what I thought was a very respectable 30 points.  The winning score was 43.  Wow.  Beyond impressive.  Perhaps I should have a lesson or two and discover the route to the practice ground.  On second thoughts, doubt that would do it.  Too late.  Too late.  As a Scottish friend was fond of saying whenever the game was driving him to distraction.

 

***Gutting.  Wales and Ireland beaten on penalties after late equalisers by the opposition and no goals in extra time.  In this case you can’t say “Ah well, there’s always next year.”  The World Cup is every four years.  Bugger.