Hello everybody and Happy New Year.  First things first, apologies for my dearth of Christmas cards; am starting early this year in the hope that I’ll be able to work my way through my list and let my friends (most of whom are not psychic) know that I’m thinking of them.  If I write a few every month between now and December, my main worry will surely be remembering where I’ve put them.

One of my friends told me to “keep writing the bollocks”, so here we are again.  I wasn’t sure Mo and I would start up again – she’s not feeling great and has had to suspend her golf club membership, not least because she can’t cope with being in the car long enough to get to the club and I’ve been spending more time going up and down to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (think I’ll go back to calling it White Hart Lane) than on the golf course.

And much as I enjoy watching people playing golf in shirt sleeves with a sparkling sea in the background while I’m bundled up in multiple layers, I’m not that excited by a few multi-millionaires in a jostle towards billionairedom annoyed that they haven’t broken 60!  Fantastic players, some amazing shots but, frankly, at this time of year it’s the view that appeals to me.  And making full use of my season ticket.

My golf, such as it is, has been so sporadic recently and so rubbish that it’s as well that I now play for the company and the exercise – and the worse the golf the greater the exercise, so I suppose you could call that a bonus.   Then, last week, oh happy day, the new irons that I’d ordered in July arrived at WHGC.

We’d played bridge in the morning – most of us still beginners but definitely getting better and now almost sedate enough to survive a hand or two at a proper bridge club should they (and we) be desperate enough.  Anyway, the course was closed for most of the day because of fog but lo and behold it cleared just as I was about to head for home after a leisurely lunch, the sun was out and I couldn’t resist the temptation to try out the long-awaited irons (living on your own without a dog your time’s your own).

I left the driver in the locker and played a loop of five holes.  Of course I hit the new clubs beautifully most of the time because there was no score to worry about, no pressure to do anything but test them out and do my best to judge the frozen bounce.  I’d forgotten how lovely it is to play a few holes on your own on a beautiful evening simply for the joy of it and I had a bit of a revelation.

I am still a golfer.

Blimey.  That came as a bit of a shock.

Not a person who can hit a golf ball well, not even remotely that sort of golfer these days; after all a friend who was a proper golfer couldn’t believe that my new irons consisted solely of a 7, a 9, a wedge of some sort (think it’s got a U on it) and a sand iron.  No sign of proper irons like a 4 or a 3, let alone a 2.  She used to love her 2-iron, hitting it miles, especially when the fairways were dry, fast and hard-running.  Dead as the dodo now thanks to hybrids and different lofts and lies and myriad modern tweaks.

No, I’m not a golfer who can hit the ball properly, I’m just a golfer who has discovered, rather to her surprise, that she still loves golf, that the game itself is the main thing.  Weird.

Our AGM’s today (Friday) and there’s been a lot going on, what with big changes to the constitution, the move to the new clubhouse, COVID 19, loads of trees being cut down as we prepare the ground for a return to proper heathland and the monstrous HS2.  Any number of people have put in hours upon hours of time and effort to keep us going throughout the disruptions and I’m full of admiration and gratitude for their dedication and diligence – and their ability to cope with the gripes and snipes, the moans and groans of the rest of us.

We women, greatly outnumbered, still have to fight our corner as part of the whole, as all minorities do (albeit in this case a pretty privileged one) but hey ho, we relish the challenge and send our representatives in to the fray armed with a smile, a packet of paracetamol and membership of The Wine Society.

Over in Australia, where even the male chauvinists are forced to be creative (isolation, small market, small fields, economic forces, that sort of thing), they’re getting quite good at accepting that it makes sense for the women and men professional golfers to run their events concurrently.  The other week the Australian PGA Championship and Australian WPGA Championship, both sponsored by Fortinet (a cyber security firm as far as I can gather) took place at Royal Queensland, separate tournaments played together on a proper golf course.  Hallelujah.

Jed Morgan (keep an eye out for him further afield) ran away with the men’s event, smashing all sorts of records on his way to lifting the Joe Kirkwood Cup and Su Oh won the women’s championship to take home the inaugural Karrie Webb Cup.  Stoked to give her name to the trophy, Karrie apparently insisted that it be big enough to hold a bottle of wine! Slainte.

 

For some unknown reason, deep-seated, embedded, ingrained, annoying (but not annoying enough for me to do something about it), this blogger refuses to start writing until the hour is moving towards witching and long after all the studies tell us we should be in bed and hitting deep sleep.  Perhaps it’s an Irish thing?  Or, more likely, a procrastinator thing.

Last weekend I was doing my bit for humanity – not going down to watch Spurs against Leeds, that can’t count no matter how dire we were in the first half – but going up to Stockport to be scanned as part of the UK Biobank project.  I signed up in 2010 to become part of “a large-scale biomedical database and research resource that contains the genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants…

“The database, which now also includes genetic data for all participants and the heart and brain scans from over 50,000 participants, is globally accessible to approved researchers who are undertaking health-related research that is in the public interest.”

Well, Saturday was the scanning bit, including a brain scan, so presumably there was one in there somewhere.  I thought of Dad and his dementia as I was lying there listening – and presumably reacting – to various noises, quite relaxed really, knowing that I wasn’t about to be tortured or anything brutal.  Perhaps my scan, added to all the others, will provide some insight in to Alzheimers and the like and help counteract it.  Worth a try.

On the way home, having survived the short taxi ride back to the station, tight-lipped, driven by a lad who had no clue how to drive properly and seemed to forget he had a passenger in the back, I had to change at Crewe.  That got me thinking about the old song, a wartime number I believe:  “Oh Mr Porter, what shall I do?  I wanted to go to Birmingham but they sent me off to Crewe…”

Everything and everybody used to change at Crewe (Dai was born there, the town not the station, before the war) and every time I’m there I think of Mum and her sisters and friends waiting for their connections on the way home for leave or on their way back to duty.  Must have been a lot more chaotic than it is now.

The next day it was off down to north London to watch Spurs, who are now under the charge of Antonio Conte, a man used to winning.  He’s Italian and very demonstrative and if he can’t galvanise a lacklustre, dozy bunch, no one can.  From my seat I can’t see him clearly but on the telly afterwards, after a lucky 2-1 win, he was diving in, bear-hugging his players, some of whom looked shocked at the passion, the emotion, the intensity.  “They’ll all be a stone lighter by Christmas,” a fellow fan commented astutely, clocking just how much effort the players will have to put in to match the manager’s intensity and expectations.

Fortunately, before the match, if the coach gets there in time, no mean feat given the traffic en route, the chef at La Barca caff conjures up a mean omelette (or egg and chips or whatever) and provides enough sustenance to help us cope with whatever the game throws at us.  The length football fans go to to get to games and the ingenuity of their travel arrangements are vastly under appreciated.

I was a bit alarmed when a load of noisy West Ham fans got on my train at Stafford on Saturday – they’d been playing Wolves  and had lost 1-nil but even I had the sense not to mention that.  My geography’s not great but my immediate thought was that Stafford was north of Wolverhampton (it is) and this was not the obvious way back to London.  Turns out it must have been the quickest because the only stop between Stafford and London Euston was, fortunately for me, Lichfield Trent Valley.

I nearly played golf three times this week but my partner in the winter foursomes had a Covid scare and we’ve had to re-arrange for next month, health and weather permitting.  The game is still patchy but my chipping and putting aren’t too bad – though the technique leaves a lot to be desired according to the expert observer I played with on Tuesday.    No more delusions of grandeur here then.

Yesterday I caught the tail end of one of those excellent Open films, this one about Ian Baker-Finch, the lovely Australian who won the title in such style at Royal Birkdale in 1991 before crashing and burning as he tried to live up to the hype of being Open champion.  Guiltily, I remembered following him virtually every step of the way as he struggled to a 92 in the first round of the Open at Troon in 1997.  Feeling like some sort of ghoul or a hyena stalking a wounded animal, I was part of the pack who pursued him into the clubhouse, where he took refuge in the champions’ locker room and cried his eyes out.  Not my finest hour.

The ever affable IBF has admitted that deep down he didn’t feel he was one of the best players in the world and, really, had no burning desire to be No 1 but felt he had to push himself and strive to improve even though winning the Open had been his dream.  He was a very good player in an era of very, very goods and greats:  people like Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Greg Norman and Nick Price, to mention just a few.

Baker-Finch gave up the unequal tournament struggle after Troon but stayed in love with the game and blossomed as a commentator, content with what he’d achieved, a career to be proud of and the admiration and respect of everyone he met.

 

 

 

 

 

Last week it was time to get back on the horse again.  That’s the after-dinner-speaking horse I’m referring to, not a real one.  With all dinners and lunches and subsequent speaking engagements postponed or cancelled because of Covid it has been two years since I last spoke at a dinner – it seems like a veritable lifetime ago!

Last Friday I made my way to East Berkshire Golf Club to the Berkshire Ladies’ County Golf Association dinner where the captain, Laura Webb, was finishing off an elongated term of office because of the pandemic.  Not only is she finishing off her stint as captain of the county, she is poised to move back to Norn Iron after thirty plus years in Berkshire.  It was more than a little bittersweet for her but moving to within sight of the links at Portrush will assure her and her husband Pete of a steady stream of visitors to their new front door.

Laura and I have known each other for the thick end of 45 years and first met as teenagers playing junior golf at Portrush and in Irish Girls’ events up and down the country.  Multi-talented and easy going on the course she had all the tools for success but I’m not sure even her most ardent supporters could have foreseen the absolutely incomparable golfing CV she would go on to carve out for herself.  To date Laura is the only player to have won the Irish Girls’ Championship, the Irish Women’s title and the Irish Senior Women’s Championship.  Throw in a couple of British Seniors wins and you start to get the picture of the depth and breadth of her talent.

We worked out that we would have played on one Irish team together – the 1985 Irish home international side at lovely Waterville.  That was my last one before turning pro in 1986 and Laura’s first outing at full International level.  So, it was an auspicious occasion for us both, very special indeed – but not, it appears, special enough that either of us could remember the first thing about the other one being there!  Ah, well, I guess that’s what the decades do to you!

If I’d had any misgivings about jumping back into the speaking world, I needn’t have worried.  The Berkshire ladies were a lively lot and I was sent away with a long list of dos and don’ts to pass on to Rory McIlroy at next year’s Masters so that he would “get back on track”!  If Rors starts winning majors again, it’ll be all down to the wise words and no-nonsense approach of the Berkshire second team captain Sally Collier.  Remember, you heard it here first.

This week I’ve had a quick catch up with my newly minted MBE friend, Pam Chugg, who had a wonderful day out last week at Windsor Castle receiving her gong for services to women’s golf from Princess Anne.  Beautiful weather and a beautiful setting added up to a very special day – a selection of snaps are below.  The official ones are to follow later.

Editor’s note:  Mo, who always did her homework the night she got it, likes to have her blog finished early in the week, which is just as well because she is now laid low with Covid and in no fit state to talk let alone write anything.  The good thing is that Black Friday should pass her by without a penny leaving her bank account!  Get well soon sis.

 

This week marks a first for the blog – not a very distinguished first admittedly but a first nonetheless:  it was started after the shipping forecast (North Utsire, South Utsire – or is it Utsera?  Too late to delve in to the correct spelling forensically but they’re wee islands off the western coast of Norway apparently).  Anyway, that’s a pretty late start even by the standards of a world-class prevaricator.

The reason is that I had very important visitors, who required, nay, deserved my full attention, so I waited until they’d gone to bed and I’d done the clearing up (see above, fingers crossed) – and made my own bed, having taken advantage of a decent day to wash and hang out my sheets – before settling down to write.

I was going to write about golf for once but even Rory swinging sublimely in to an early lead in Dubai didn’t get the fingers tip-tapping.  It’s great to see him getting back to his best and bouncing up the fairways full of joie de golf but I think the truth is that I’m ready for a rest, longing for an off-season, waiting for events that really matter.  Or, even, an event near me that I can go and see in person.  That would do.  The last event at The Belfry, which isn’t too far from me, was still restricted and good though the telly guys are and hard as they try, there’s still a feeling of same old, same old.

There’s not much point writing about my own golf at the moment because there isn’t much of it and what there is is ordinary in the extreme – not always dire but always threatening to head that way.  That said, on Tuesday, in our stableford comp, I putted quite well but didn’t amass very many points, even allowing for it being over the winter distance of 15 holes.  It was, however, a joy to play with Bev Chattaway, who makes the game look easy and is one of those rare competitors who treats the twin impostors  just the same (Tyrrell Hatton take note!)  Whenever I’m playing with Bev, I try, rarely successfully, to suppress my groans and moans and tuts and ochs – after all who am I, hardly a haunter of the practice ground or a visualiser par excellence, to have any expectations whatsoever?

Oops, made a mistake there:  went and had a glass of water, sat down and dozed off….Could be a long night.

All being well, we at Whittington Heath will be playing throughout the winter, kept on our toes by a variety of routings as holes are taken out of commission because of tree felling or other housekeeping tasks.  Fifteen holes proved more than enough for me this week because I’d had my booster jab the day before and felt cream-crackered after what turned out to be nine holes – I had to check the temporary card to see just how many we’d played and was glad to discover later that I wasn’t the only one discombobulated by the changes.

At least we’ll have time to get used to them on the hoof, so to speak.  Last week, my Swedish friend Lena, who has lived in Helsinki for years, played her last game of the season and has put the clubs away for the next five months.  That could explain why she’s pretty good at table tennis!

I haven’t seen Lena in person for years but she tells me she’s put in an application for a new passport, so with a bit of luck will be testing her golfing skills at WHGC before too long.

Given that my golf isn’t bringing me much joy at the moment – even my new woods seem to have developed some disconcerting shots of their own (nothing to do with me guv, obviously) and there’s no sign of the new irons – it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas before hope can spring eternal once again.  Anyway, ever optimistic, I was rather relying on my bridge to take a turn for the better and give me a much-needed confidence boost but it looks as though that will have to wait too.

I was going to explain why but then realised that that would be giving too much away to the people I’m playing with – on Zoom – this evening.  I’ve said too much already.

Hey ho.  Perhaps somebody’ll give me a weekend with Andrew Robson for Christmas….Then again, that’s unlikely.  Bridge is as small a world as golf and he’s probably been forewarned and booked himself up for the next decade or two.  More chance of a game with Rory and Gerry McIlroy at Seminole….

Now there’s a thought to gladden at least one heart.

Oops, did I just hear “No bid” in an Ulster accent?