There’s no Mo this week, so that means no sense, just the usual nonsense from me.  I didn’t mention the Masters last week, leaving it to Maureen, who’d been there but I have to confess that I really enjoyed it.

Apparently, judging from some of the stuff I’ve read, it was boring, lacking in excitement because Scottie Scheffler was just too good for everybody else – and, of course, the needle that is Tiger Woods finished last.  By dint of sheer bloodymindedness, unsurpassed local knowledge and no little skill he made the cut but his body can no longer cope with adverse conditions and the demands of 72-hole stroke play against players who are at or near the peak of their powers.  The needle is stranded.

On the playing front, at the highest level, Tiger is done, defeated by anno Domini (or anon domino as the computer would have it).  He’s still an influence and I wouldn’t take him on at anything, the competitive instinct will never fade.

Funnily enough, I read somewhere that Rory McIlroy said that away from the golf course he wasn’t in the least bit competitive, that he didn’t feel the need to win at everything.  Blimey.  How many top sportspeople admit to that?  They’re usually ferocious, reluctant to let their kids win at snap or whatever the modern-day equivalent is.

On The Chipping Forecast podcast, Iain Carter, the BBC’s golf correspondent, waxed almost lyrical about queuing for the shop at the Masters.  “It’s the best queue I’ve ever been in,” he said, or words to that effect.  I was so shocked that I couldn’t swear (well, perhaps I did utter an imprecation) to his exact words but he and Eddie Pepperell and Andrew Cotter then riffed on what made a good queue.  This particular one was long but well mannered and marshalled and before long Iain was in and spending $227 or thereabouts, which he later discovered was what the shop took per minute, or perhaps per second.

Maureen, who had a little list from those of us at home watching on the telly, nobly did her duty and made it through the doors once.  She bought me some playing cards as requested because they once again passed muster with the bridgers (see above).  The packs are distinguishable one from another, hooray, unlike the last lot, cleverly covered with well-observed detail but so busy being arty-farty and tasteful that the designer forgot to make it clear which pack was which.

The regular reader will know that the bijou bathroom project, longer in the planning than HS2, has outperformed that admittedly more complex white elephant in every important department, completed on time, on budget and to the immense satisfaction and great delight of the commissioner/client/me.  I am, in short, ecstatic and will soon be clean again, once all the finishing touches have dried, set or whatever it is they need to do.

Having failed to find a mirror at B&Q (all on cabinets), I trekked to IKEA for the first time in yonks.  It used to be a regular haunt and it was a bit of a treat to go back, armed with the necessary dimensions.  I WhatsApped Barry, including pics (not easy when you’re snapping mirrors):  “Thin black frame round 80 cms; 65×85 though prefer thinner frame; 65×65; 75×75 deep frame….”

“Sorry, it’s your shout on this one.”

Sensible man.  He knows.  He has a wife and daughters.

After a bit of toing and froing and consulting with the sister and a friend, we plumped for the 75×75, deep frame, birch:  Turbokastanj 505 550 97, aisle 39, location 50.

First though, suffering from decision fatigue and design overload, it was time for refreshments – very tasty and very good value.  I also loved the food trolleys, essential for people laden with goodies or trying to control toddlers rather than juggle plates.  A stroke of genius.

Pausing only to pick up a few necessities – an alarm clock, a bamboo plate rack and a plastic container suitable for the Bore Street Bakery’s sourdough muffins – I tracked down the chosen mirror and stood in the middle of the warehouse laughing.  Having picked out the trolley with the wonky wheels, I discovered that the mirror was at the outer reaches of the building; once there there was only turning back.  And the mirror, seven kilos worth, was on the top of quite a sizeable pile.  Fortunately, no breakages were incurred in the making of this blog…

I was sorely tempted but didn’t buy this octopus, made from ocean-bound plastic; for once resisting the tentacles of consumerism…

All hail again to Nelly Korda, who is enjoying a period of dominance that is Scheffler-esque; he, of course, is in his Korda period.  She won The Chevron Championship (The Dinah Shore that was), the first women’s major of the season, in Texas last Sunday, her fifth win in five starts this year.  If that’s not asserting your authority, what is?  Nelly is proving herself to be a special player, catch her when you can.

And finally and by many miles not least, many, many congrats to Tony Rundle and his daughter Kate, who completed the London Marathon and raised thousands of pounds for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of their irrepressible friend Richard Doubleday.

 

 

 

First of all, a bit of a disclaimer, in an attempt to prevent the non-golfers from running off somewhere else without giving me a chance to persuade you that the WHS (world handicap system) is something worth knowing about and can, in the right hands, be really, REALLY interesting.  That’s a lie of course.  Even in the best of hands – and we at Whittington are blessed with those – the WHS is a brain-numbing, over-complicated concoction that’s enough to put you off golf for ever.

Fortunately, when the latest iteration comes in on the 1st of April – you’ve got it, April Fool’s Day; why on earth would anyone launch something on that date?  Even I, fool that I am, would wait until the 2nd.  And, this year, the 1st is Easter Monday…Pass me the eggs please.

Anyway, we had a seminar a few days ago as Fiona, one of our handicapping experts, attempted, with the help of slides (or whatever they’re called in these ultra-techy days), to explain the changes to us.  Right away that meant nothing much to me because I’d given up trying to understand it all years ago, once handicapping became uber complicated in the interests of….what?  Standardisation?  World equality?  Mathematicians?  Statisticians?  Makers of sweet cartoons designed to simplify the complicated stuff for us swingers of clubs and compilers of (often large) scores?

And, crucially, the creators of the web sites and apps that mean all we golfers have to do is input (yuk) said scores and leave the work to the system.  Oh, how I sometimes long for the day that all the satellites fail and  we have to revert to pencil and paper.  What would we do?  Panic, I suppose.

Anyway, once I knew that I didn’t have to understand any of it (my default mode when it comes to maths and understanding anything other than simple adding up; Dai’s school report saying “Mathematics is a form of witchcraft to Davies” comes to mind), I switched off altogether.  After all when something – rounding I think – is described as “just an equation really”, that’s it for me.  It’s shameful really.  I’d be ashamed to admit that I was illiterate but being next to innumerate doesn’t seem to bother me.  After all, by some miracle I’ve made it this far by dint of the odd bit of approximate totting up.

That ignorance is one of the reasons why I was keen to go to Paul Johnson’s talk “Follow The Money…” at the Lichfield Literature Festival but, wouldn’t you know, golf got in the way.  Instead of acquiring a bit of economics knowledge I was at the Captains’ Drive In, a tradition that dates all the way back to 2014.  I know this for a fact because I was LC (ladies’ captain) in 2013 and didn’t have to go through such an ordeal.

It was fun, five nervous people teed off the 1st – two hit respectable drives that stayed on the fairway, three hit decent efforts that didn’t.  Then we all played seven holes afterwards, met new people and had a delicious carvery.   I stayed off the wine because I was driving and giving blood the next day – donation No. 65.  My ambition is to match the number of donations to my age and that’ll take a bit of effort.  I might just be able to squeeze in another three this year and at least three more next year, veins and general health permitting.

Having missed out on Paul Johnson, a friend managed to get tickets for the last event of the Literature Festival, the shocking story of the Post Office Scandal, laid out before us by Nick Wallis, the journalist who, along with others, persisted and persisted and persisted and eventually got to the  truth.  The story isn’t finished and it doesn’t get any less horrific.  We staggered out into the night staggered at the lies and duplicity of a supposedly fine and upstanding public institution.  The more you learn about the whole affair, the more disgusting it becomes.

Not remotely in the same league, merely in the bloody irritating/annoying category and mentioned only because it’s a subject dear to my heart – at the moment; even football fans may have their limits…

Our (Tottenham’s) home match against Nottingham Forest was scheduled for Monday week, the 8th of April at 2000 hours, so I decided not to go – a kick-off that late means getting home in the very early hours or paying for a hotel.  I put my seats on ticket exchange and somebody bought them.  Then, lo, this email arrives:  Dear Supporter, Due to planned industrial action and substantial travel disruption across the rail network scheduled to take place on Monday 8 April, our home Premier League fixture against Nottingham Forest has been brought forward to Sunday 7 April, 6pm kick-off.

“This decision has been taken on the recommendation of an emergency Safety Advisory Group (SAG) meeting – chaired by Haringey Council and including representatives from the Club, emergency services, transport partners and the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust – and in agreement with the Premier League, on the basis that only one of the six stations that serve our stadium will be running on April 8….”

There was quite a bit more but one thing’s for sure:  it’s not easy organising a game of football.  Maybe I should just stick to golf.

 

There’s nothing like friends for bringing you down to earth with a thump and ensuring that delusions of grandeur dissolve into a soggy mess and are swept down the drain, coming to nothing.  We were talking about the blog the other evening, Mo and I, with some pals and one of them said, “I don’t get it any more.”

“Technical hitch?” we said, thinking it was a recent unwelcome development.

“No.  I stopped reading it years ago.  It was full of people I didn’t know and cared less about…Sorry…”

She wasn’t really.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.  Really.

A couple of days earlier another friend warned me that he wouldn’t be reading the blog again.

“That’s a pity.  Why not?”

Turns out he thought I’d be writing reams about the mighty Spurs’s triumph at Aston Villa and gloating unbearably.  As if.  AV O TH 4 – looks a bit like a car reg.  Thank you John McGinn for the rush of blood that got you sent off.  We need all the help we can get.  I’ve had a look at our run-in and it features consecutive matches against Newcastle (away), Manchester City (home), Arsenal (h) and Liverpool (a).  Ho, ho, ho.  At least we’ll have a say in where the title goes.

My footballing friend John, aka The Oracle, informs me that Spurs are putting up the season ticket prices by six per cent.  They’re also clawing back the senior season ticket holder concession by reducing it by five per cent each year for five years…The THST (Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust) is/are – I never know – not enamoured of this hike and I agree with John that it doesn’t feel remotely reasonable and shows that loyalty counts for nothing.  The club makes/make lots of money from outside events like concerts, boxing, American football and should surely be maintaining or even reducing ticket prices, making games more affordable for fans at every level.  We can all dream.

At a bit of a tangent, the theatre, another area often plagued by high ticket prices, took precedence over football this week.  Mo and I and some friends went to see Plaza Suite, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, megastar and Matthew Broderick, her husband in real life, at the Savoy Theatre.  There’s nothing like the real thing, live, be it a performance on the stage or on the pitch.  Magical.

Back to Spurs, no new concession season tickets will be sold for next season, so it seems I got in just in time on that front.  Think I’ll keep going as long as we’ve got the sainted Ange as manager, in the hope that he’ll win us a trophy; he pretty well guarantees entertainment, so that’s a huge plus.  Though I do worry about his persistent cough.

I asked a friend for his copy of the Sunday Times sports section, mainly to torture myself with details of Ireland’s narrow – and probably deserved (God, that was painful to write) – loss to a revitalised, pissed-off England at Twickenham and after the rugby I read the rest of the section, including Martin Samuel, billed as The Voice of Sport.

We football fans have all been duped, he said and it’s hard to argue.  He says, if I understand him right, that the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), advocating strict financial controls, have led to “staff redundancies, higher ticket prices, history and tradition sacrificed, the academy produce harvested in ruthless pursuit of the perfect balance sheet….

“All can be mitigated now:  the ticket prices, the late kick-off times, the kowtowing to broadcasters.  Once football made everything about PSR, any action could be justified.  A new first, second and third strip each year, Newcastle United away to Liverpool at 8pm on January 1….”

Thanks to our Nike sponsorship I don’t buy any of the swoosh-branded kit but Martin’s words all ring horribly true.  Especially those telly-driven, hellishly inconvenient starting times.

Even so, for the moment, COYS.

We (the theatre goers minus one who had to head home early) had a lovely wander round Spitalfields Market after a visit to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, which attempts to take you inside the head of the artist.  That’s not necessarily a comfortable place to be, considering he had a lot of mental health problems and committed suicide in 1890, at the age of 37 but, boy, was he productive, at one stage producing a picture every 36 hours…  It’s a brilliant exhibition.

The Van Gogh show was full of colour, even though he was apparently colour blind – who knew how many dozens of variations of yellow one man could mix?  Back out in today’s world, there were plenty of Londoners determined to fight back against a staid world of black, navy and shades of grey.  They were on parade for all to see, brightening up a dull, mizzly day.

And finally, thanks so much to Everybody Sings! and The City of Lichfield Concert Band for a fantastic concert last Saturday, another triumph and just what this Ireland rugby fan needed after the gutting defeat at Twickers.  Thank you for the music.

 

*Tel’s Bid For Spurs Kicked Out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps a bit of golf to start before taking you to Crufts?  I love playing with teammates helping you out, don’t you?  On Tuesday, our competition was a waltz over 13 holes – one score to count at the first hole, then two scores, then three, then back to one and so on.  We got off to a flier with our best player hitting two crackers to about 15 feet and rolling in the putt for the birdie.  Amazingly I birdied the next, Fiona had a par and continued to hit the ball in a manner that many pros would envy.

Team on its way to glory!

I won’t make you put your spikes on but our highlight came at the short 11th, my least favourite hole on the course; if you were to guarantee me a bogey 4 there for the rest of my golfing life, I’d take it.  Anyway, to our delight Fiona and I made it onto the green, not a million miles from the pin and Jill, our third, a table tennis champion (Commonwealth Games standard no less), splashed confidently out of one of the many bunkers and two-putted for a 4, nett 3 and two points.  Fiona rolled in her putt and I followed her in and doubled up laughing.  Eight points.  Ridiculous.

We were flying.

The wings didn’t quite come off over the closing holes, we didn’t exactly crash and burn but we were less impressive and struggled to keep our score ticking over.

“How many points” I asked Fi at the end.

“Fifty-one.”

“Any good?”

“Don’t know.  Hard to tell.”

Well, it turned out to be pretty damned good and we won, by four points.

Sorry for bragging….well, not really, don’t often get the chance.

Friends flew over from Ireland yesterday to go to Crufts, which takes over the NEC in Birmingham and it is huge.  You can walk miles and miles, in little segments admittedly, because there are dogs to admire, stalls to examine, freebies to squirrel away, coffee and beers to drink, more dogs to admire, owners to chat to, from all over the world, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Scotland, everywhere.  It’s brilliant but exhausting.

I particularly wanted to see the bloodhounds, having fallen in love with them a few years ago when one of the hunts brought their puppies along to a friend’s farm for training.  They were already big but they were adorable, gentle and friendly, not at all scary, unlike the ones on the scent of escaped prisoners in America’s Deep South, with that relentless, mournful howling.

A dapper Swede, who used to have whippets, has now switched to long-haired chihuahuas because he wanted a dog he could travel with easily, almost pocket-sized!  If you’re thinking of getting a dog, think long and hard about your every requirement.  I’d love a bloodhound but they’re big, need a lot of space, lots to eat, probably slobber and have a life span of about ten years.

Show days are long and exhausting for both dogs and humans and I couldn’t resist these two examples.

 

The telly cameras are there in force – catch lots of the action and all the news with the versatile, peripatetic Clare Balding on Channel 4.

The regular reader will know that my trips to watch my beloved Totspurs (Mum’s name for them) are often long and convoluted, so I laughed out loud on the train when I opened the Metro (free paper) and read Adam Dutton’s story about Neil Hughes.

He’s a retired air traffic controller and made an 18-hour, 1,127-mile round trip to travel on the Parry People Mover tram that links Stourbridge Junction and the town centre, three minutes there and three minutes back.  Apparently it’s the shortest route in Europe.  It’s also run on flywheel technology, so that piqued Neil’s interest.  “I like oddities,” he said.

He lives in Troon, so drove to Glasgow, flew to Belfast (no direct flight at the right time), then Birmingham, got the train to Stourbridge Junction, did the Stourbridge Shuttle, train back to Birmingham International and the airport, then direct flight back to Glasgow and home.  Total cost:  £102.27.  Bargain.

“Some people may find it a dull thing to do but I had to do it,” Neil said.  “I’m certainly glad I did because it is unique.”

His wife Elaine said, “To most people it would sound barmy but that’s an average day out for Neil.”

Doesn’t sound dull to me, perfectly reasonable really and very well thought out.  Wonder if Neil and Elaine play golf…

Several of us went to see Fascinating Aida last week, their 40th anniversary tour and they were as hilarious and rude as ever, brilliant.  We laughed until everything ached.  Then, on Desert Island Discs, Rita Rae, Lady Rae, a distinguished Scottish lawyer, chose FA’s Cheap Flights as one of her records.  Somehow, miraculously, the production team managed to find a clip that didn’t require bleeps.  Dillie did it early in the show, saying, “Might as well get the fecker out of the way.”

And finally, I couldn’t resist this ad, spotted on the tube as it arrived at Seven Sisters en route to Spurs v Crystal Palace last weekend.  Look at it closely.  It’s a cracker.