Thursday is blog day, so I used to try not to schedule anything else for that day – even though it would extend far in to the night and then the early morning, no matter how long I had to write.  Did I start immediately after breakfast?  No, of course not.  After lunch?  Well, eventually.  After dinner?  Of course, because when it comes to the bit, needs must.

Once a prevaricator….oops, better check the trusty Chambers; ah, no, not quite, it has to be procrastinator, deferring action, putting off what has to be done immediately.  Prevaricating is a bit different:  to avoid stating the truth or coming directly to the point; to quibble; to deviate (obs); to shift about from side to side (obs)….And it used to be, at Cambridge University, that a prevaricator was “a satirical orator at the ceremony of Commencement”.

Is that another way of saying smart Alick/Aleck/Alec/alec?  Just asking;  as a smart Alick etc manque (still haven’t mastered the acute accent, so not so smart after all).

Anyway, it turns out that lots of good things happen on a Thursday and who can bring themselves to turn down a good thing?  Carpe diem and all that.

Last week it was Crufts and this week it was Grayson’s Art Club:  The Exhibition, at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC).  In all the years I’ve lived in and around Birmingham, I’ve never been to the wonderful venue that is the MAC, pretty well in Cannon Hill Park and just across the road from Edgbaston, one of cricket’s most famous grounds.  Wow, what a place.

MAC is now 61 years old and Deborah Kermode, the CEO and artistic director, explained its raison d’être in the foreword to the exhibition catalogue:  “Our job is to provide arts for all, with the mission to make art an important part of people’s lives…We specialise in contemporary work, offering a busy programme of theatre, dance, independent cinema, art exhibitions and special events.  What characterises our work is the wealth of practical classes and workshops we offer in all aspects of creativity.  We are part arts centre and part arts school and we want people to get involved!

“MAC has specialist arts studios set up for ceramics, textiles, silversmithing, dance, painting and drawing, for the public to use from 9am to 10pm daily…we do it all, with the aspiration that creativity is at the heart of learning, bringing people together to make friends and learn new skills to support their health and wellbeing…”

It’s the perfect spot to display the wide variety of works sent in to the art club devised by Grayson Perry and his wife Philippa (and Channel 4) to get us through the pandemic and lockdown.  It was quite brilliant and showed how amazingly imaginative and creative people are.  As a woman of limited imagination and creativity, I am in awe.

Margaret Seaman’s “Knitted Sandringham”  is at the MAC and it’s awesome.  It took two years to make and as someone whose own mother begged her to put down her knitting needles at the age of seven, I find it beyond mind boggling, jaw dropping…The skill, the patience, the imagination.

It really is huge.

I couldn’t choose a favourite piece but here’s a selection of things that caught my eye.

The sainted Alice, who has just made her first visit to a children’s hospice to help cheer everybody up, didn’t come to the exhibition but Pugsley, Janene Elise Pike’s assistance dog, was there, on the wall, in all his glory (digital mixed media on canvas).  Janene, who has cerebal palsy, called the piece, “My Canine Hero, Pugsley”.

And because I get teased mercilessly for being a rather ineffective eco warrior, railer against plastic and rinser of the recycling, how could I resist Alice Rhubarb’s “The Face of Waste”?  It’s made up of all sorts of junk that won’t degrade and usually gets chucked into landfill not turned in to art.

For those of you who need a fix of golf, albeit a little below the elite level, here’s the Friday Frolic for today:  “THE MULTIPILIER”.  I feel we should have Arnold Schwarzenegger (correct spelling first go, incredible!) and The Terminator on hand because, weather permitting (who’s praying for sleet and snow?), this could be carnage.

Brace yourselves, here we go – and I quote verbatim:  “Best two Stableford scores [out of three] used in multiplier….lowest score is first number, second best score is used as second number…eg.  Team’s individual gross on hole one are 5, 4, 7.  4/5 used making 45 pts.  (if having to use 0 that goes as second number)  eg your team score 3, 0, 0, your score is 30 points.  Pair with highest pts score wins…”

My immediate reaction was “Aaaaagh” but I was reassured by our esteemed organiser:  “Stay in a darkened room overnight Patricia, you’ll be fine.”

My darkened room awaits but I’m not convinced.

Happy St Patrick’s Day everybody and here’s to Ireland’s Grand Slam (fingers crossed).

A cherished card from a friend in America who never forgets the occasion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure I should be writing anything at all this week because I’m still seething, down from incandescent but still bubbling, sputtering and spluttering, ready to erupt…just give me an excuse, go on, I dare you…

I went to bed cross and I woke up still cross…It’s been good to write it down, though and I’m feeling calmer now, more chilled.  Going to the hygienist at the dentist’s helped because I had to practise keeping calm and trying to relax as I lay back and waited for it to hurt.  It didn’t and I got a gold star for having improved the state of my teeth no end.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve stopped trying to stand on one leg for the two minutes and just concentrated on brushing.

Anyway, you’re probably thinking, “What on earth is she rabbiting on about this time?”

It is, wouldn’t you know, the footie.  The FA Cup, to be precise.  We, as in Totspurs, have won it eight times but the last time was 1991 and our last trophy of any sort was the League Cup (whatever it was called then) in 2008.  It’s now the Carabao Cup and Manchester United won it last Sunday, ending a trophy-winning slump that lasted a comparatively measly six years.  Sheffield United are a good side and will probably be promoted to the top division next season, so no one at Spurs could have been in any doubt that it was a test of the highest order.

Even so, it was a chance lost and a fellow fan summed up the frustration of us all:  “Inconsistency rears its head yet again….”  I was less calm and responded:  “I am beyond furious, such a wasted opportunity, too much sloppiness in the passing and Richarlison [a Brazilian who cost something like £60 million] is bereft of confidence and oomph.  Mind you their goal [scored late on by Iliman Ndiaye] was Ricky Villa-esque and they looked as though they knew what they were doing.”

Looking for Sheffield United’s badge I turned to my trusty Book of Football (published in 1971 I think) and discovered two things:  the logo has changed substantially and when Spurs won the FA Cup for the first time, in 1901, as a non-League club, they beat Sheffield United, one of the best teams in the country, 3-nil in a replay.  No wonder this blog takes ages to write – there’s a lot of meandering down highways and byways, lots of twists and turns and distractions.

There were 114,815 paying spectators at Crystal Palace for the 1901 final against a Sheffield side that contained three of “soccer’s immortals”: ‘Nudger’ Needham, wing-half, Fred Priest, inside-left and ‘Two-Ton’ Foulke, the goalie who weighed 22 stone.  Spurs were leading 2-1 when the referee, a Mr Kingscott from Derby, ruled that the Spurs goalkeeper had been over his goal line before clearing the ball after a goalmouth melee.  One of the first sporting films ever made seemed to show, however grainy the footage, that Mr Kingscott had made a very grave error…However, he refereed the replay, at Bolton, the following week.

Ah well, there’s always the rugby, though I’m not feeling particularly bullish about Ireland’s chances at Murrayfield on Saturday week.  We’re unbeaten so far and will be the favourites but our record in Edinburgh isn’t great and the Scots have their eye on the Triple Crown.  Perhaps I’m just looking at things with the jaundiced eye of someone more used to BBUs (brave but unavailings) than IDVs (impressively dominant victories).  When and how on earth did we become so good?

Here’s hoping for another Grand Slam and, who knows, perhaps even a World Cup…Well, we’re good enough and are renowned for our luck, so if everything that can align, aligns…

From the sublime to the less than, you’ll be delighted to know that I’ve probably now got 0.000000adinfinitum1 of a point in the world rankings after earning £12.50 (I think) in this week’s stableford.  Now, it was a limited field, it was only 13 holes and there wasn’t that much of an international flavour to the entry (though at least one of our number comes from Norton Canes and somebody still has a place in Spain) but you’ve got to start somewhere.

Also, bear in mind that we’re still having to work around the diggings of HS2, that great infrastructure project that is providing lots of work for the diggers and the engineers and the archaeologists and lots of money for somebody somewhere as the billions mount up and lots of disruption for the rest of us.  Don’t forgot that if you’re a UK tax payer, you’re paying for this.  The train’ll be up and running by 2034 apparently, though nobody’s quite sure where it’ll be going…

You’re nearly off the hook, so instead of launching in to Tiger and tampons (the DWD, the dog-walking dermatologist, a kind and practical soul, pointed out that they’re useful for stemming nose bleeds, so perhaps even we post menopausals should keep a couple in our golf bag; and now we know that we can give them to the men we outdrive – and there are a few!), I’ll talk about rakes.  Are you still with me after the digression?

When we last voted on rakes and where to put them (wonder what Tiger’s take on that is?), I voted for putting them in the bunkers.  I’ve now changed my mind  – and I believe the R and A recommendation is for out.    We have some silly bunkers, too deep and difficult enough to get in to easily, with getting out well-nigh impossible without help and now we have some eejits, presumably able-bodied, perhaps even athletic, who have taken to tossing the rakes in places few of us can reach.

Out, out, out please.

Finally, here’s a photo of the aurora borealis, taken by a friend’s daughter  in the Highlands of Scotland.

 

 

As acronyms go, it would be hard to find a worse one.  Surely, surely, we must be able to find a decent replacement for the, frankly, bloody awful GOAT:  Greatest Of All Time.  Come on, I don’t think so; it’s the last thing I’d want to be called in the unlikely event that I was mentioned in any such elevated conversation.  Even if it was only in the context of procrastinators from Portstewart, I would balk/baulk at being labelled a goat.

Here’s the definition of goat from my trusty Chambers:  “a horned ruminant animal (genus Capra) of Europe, Asia and N Africa, related to the sheep; (with cap and the) Capricorn; a lecher (fig); a foolish person (inf); (in pl) the wicked (Bible)…”  So far, so bad.

It gets worse if you look at goatish, adjective:  “resembling a goat, esp in smell; lustful; foolish.”  Oops.

Now, I don’t mind goats, they have a lot to commend them despite the rather disparaging dictionary descriptions and I’m delighted to sing the praises of Chuckling Goat, the wonderful company in Llandysul, deepest Wales (a little north of Carmarthen, a little west of Lampeter) that supplies the gut-enhancing kefir that I glug religiously every morning.  There’s no doubt that goats have their place but it is NOT at the top of any tree, sporting or otherwise.

This “greatest of all time” stuff has always got my goat and been filed under CRAP:  completely rubbish and pathetic.  Sadly, it hasn’t gone away, so I suppose we’ll just have to come up with something better.  For instance, dragons are much more dramatic and dynamic than goats but there’s nothing snappy about “Did Really Amazing Great Outstanding Notable Stuff”.  Thinking caps on, please.

This musing/moaning has mostly come about because Tiger Woods, the god of golf, has ventured back onto the fairways this week at the Genesis Invitational (he’s also the tournament host) at The Riviera Country Club at Pacific Palisades in California.  There’s no doubt that Woods, who is revered by many of his peers (though none of them has won as many tournaments and only Jack Nicklaus has won more majors, so perhaps that makes them “fellow professionals”) is one of the best of all time but surely even he, goatish aberrations notwithstanding, deserves better than the “G” word?

Hey ho, that’s the aged BOF (Boring Old Fart) stuff out of the way for today.

Eleven years ago, on Valentine’s Day, Sue Turner (nee Jump), one of the world’s great people, golfing or otherwise, died at the age of 50.  She’s the reason for the dragon at the top of the piece (technical glitches permitting) because she was a proud Welsh woman whose passion for the game knew few bounds.  She learned the game at Bull Bay on Anglesey and ended up at Whittington Heath/Barracks in Staffordshire.  Sue went beyond golf though and those of us who knew her remember the vibrant person who transcended whatever sport it was she played and brightened up our lives – even now, years later – whenever we think of her.   That’s being a DRAGON – I wouldn’t insult her memory by calling her a goat.

The picture above was taken at a European Team Championship (junior, in Switzerland, Mo thinks, when she was Wales coach and Sue the captain).  Chatting to me, it all came flooding back.  Wales qualified eighth, so made it into the top flight (just).  That meant they played Spain, the top qualifiers, in the first round of matchplay.  Now, at the time, Wales were not in the same league as Spain but the teams got on well, not least because Marta Dotti, their coach and Mo were good pals, having played together as amateurs and professionals.

At the bar, the night before their match with Spain, who were ridiculously short-odds favourites, Sue said to Marta, “You can buy us a drink tomorrow night when we’ve beaten you.”  Everybody laughed because there was only one possible outcome.

The next day, because Spain were the leading qualifiers, they were out first (two foursomes in the morning) and Mo and Sue T reminded their players that the Spaniards, not by nurture early morning bods, didn’t like getting up too early and could be ambushed before they woke up.  Well, it worked and Wales won both of the morning matches.  Even more impressively, they hung on well in the afternoon and knocked out the favourites.

Carlota Ciganda, who went on to become one of Europe’s best professionals and a stalwart of the Solheim Cup, was a star even then but lost one of her matches when she sent her approach to the last soaring miles/ kilometres over the green, out of bounds.  Her caddy was the indomitable, legendary Emma Garcia Ogara (Villacieros), already president of the Spanish Federation and her young team were, naturally, in awe of her.  They were open-mouthed when Mo and Sue T teased her mercilessly, saying, “Emma, Emma, how could you?  You clubbed Carlota into the bar…”

What could Emma do but look hurt, horrified, consider her response, then shrug, raise her arms, shoulders, eyebrows, laugh and admit she’d made a bollocks.

When you’re a professional, the money is important, perhaps vital but for the rest of us the essence of golf is the competition and, over and above that, the friendships.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To say the blog is back by popular demand is stretching it a bit but a handful of people have said they’d like us to keep going, so here goes.

Maureen, who’s just had a much-needed break in Gran Canaria, is hanging fire for a little longer as she recovers her mojo and works out how to fit blogging in with blood-bike controlling.  I’ve always been in awe of her discipline and organisational skills and when I saw what being a controller entailed, I reeled away to lie down in the darkened room.  It’s always wise to recognise your limitations…

Many years ago, when I thought I was smart, I rather fancied being foreign secretary or a diplomat but the diplomatic corps didn’t want me (wise decision – a friend nearly passed out laughing at the thought;  “you’re the least diplomatic person I know,” she said) and I never trained on in the other regard.  Just as well, really.  You think the world is in a state now?…

Fortunately, my delusions of grandeur are long gone and I even thought long and hard about continuing with this weekly guff, some of it golfing – be patient, golfers – most of it random ramblings.  Truth is, even though I enjoyed all those non-thinking Thursdays, I enjoy chatting away to my friends more.  When you all stop reading and responding, we (Mo and I) will stop writing.

If you would, please keep an ear and an eye out for the dread phrase, “It is what it is.”  Aaaaagh.  My first hearing/sighting of the year was from Patrick Reed in Dubai, talking about his spat with Rory (no need for the McIlroy in this company, surely?).  If you’re not a devotee of twitter and the like, you may be baffled but because I was baffled and had no clue what everybody was wittering on about, I had a look and, lo, all was more or less revealed.

There was Patrick wandering over to Rory on the range, shaking hands with Harry Diamond, Rory’s caddy but being ignored by Rory, who was fiddling with his bag and didn’t look up.  Patrick took the hint and walked away but semi tossed a tee peg (LIV variety, apparently) in the vague direction of Rory, one of LIV’s sternest critics, who remained oblivious.  It was all grist to the preview mill, ahead of the Hero Dubai Desert Classic and led to enjoyably nonsensical items like “23 questions about the Rory-Reed feud, answered in 23 one-sentence responses”.  That’s from the supposedly respectable (am I so old that that just means ignoring the bollocks?) Golf Digest.  I suppose 24/7 online stuff makes fools of us all.

Anyway, it turns out that on Christmas Eve somebody had turned up on Rory’s doorstep (well, presumably there were a few gates to go through first) and issued him with a subpoena (roughly, more or less, ignoring the precise legal niceties, related to Reed and LIV versus the PGA Tour).  So Rory wasn’t inclined to say hail fellow, well met when Patrick ambled over in Dubai.  “If roles were reversed and I’d thrown that tee at him, I’d be expecting a lawsuit,” he said, perhaps not entirely flippantly.

The phrase “immature little child” popped up somewhere.  Which one would that be, do you think?  Why, Rory of course – according to Patrick. The blog couldn’t possibly comment – but only because one of its resolutions is to moderate its language…

Back in the real golfing world, down at the original, amateur level, it’s the centenary year of The Staffordshire Union of Golf Clubs (men) and the culmination of years of planning and hard work.  There are lots of competitions and celebrations in the diary and Andrew Dathan, a member of Whittington Heath who has been involved in Staffordshire golf for nearly 60 years, is the centenary president.  Many congratulations to him – and to the committee that worked so hard to organise everything in plenty of time, not an easy task.

However, the blog would like to pay tribute to and cheer and roar its approval of and admiration for the person who laboured long and hard to produce the centenary book, a woman no less.  Pippa Dathan, please stand up and take a well-deserved bow.

I know how tricky these centenary books are and my admiration knows no bounds.  The Staffordshire Union of Golf Clubs could not have found a better, more qualified chronicler, diligent, knowledgeable and steeped in the subject and its characters.  A dentist by profession, with a scientist’s attention to detail, Pippa was a decent golfer and having been married to Andrew for more than half a century, there’s not much she didn’t know about Staffordshire golf.  Now, after all her research, there’s nothing she doesn’t know!

Here’s to a memorable centenary and some good times in 2023 and to those of our family and friends who’ve had a shitty (no other word for it) start to the year, our hearts are with you.  Bonne chance and bon courage.