Hooray, happy days, it’s not only Rory and co who’ve been back out on a proper golf course at last, waving goodbye to virtual fairways.  We were also back out on Whittington Heath, very much a proper course – Harry Colt, don’t you know – if not quite as celebrated as Seminole.  And it was bliss.

Playing in ones or twos, ten-minute intervals, tee times booked, arrive about ten minutes before your tee time, 9 holes only (it’s going up to 18 on Monday, if that’s the 25th), lovely weather, what could be more civilised or hassle free?  Keeping the requisite two metres apart is easy-peasy on a golf course and there’s the joy of seeing friends in the flesh, properly, not through a screen (useful and welcome though Skype, Zoom, FaceTime, WhatsApp, whatever are).  What a joy.

Sorry, couldn’t resist the digger. This bunker was designated as GUR. I was in the one on the other side of the green – it was in play.  Mrs Marchant got a free drop.

Now, too, here in England, we can go out as often as we like – not just the once for exercise – and even have a friend round, suitably distanced.  My friends have brought their own sarnies and mugs and I’ve even been invited to an exclusive barbie – me and the host (I brought the sausages).  It was lovely not to have to cook for myself for once.  I suppose I hadn’t appreciated how often I ate out – at the golf club, at a friend’s house, at the pub, at one of Lichfield’s many restaurants.  I enjoy cooking but doing it just for yourself, day in, day out, with no prospect of going out for lunch or friends coming round for dinner, let alone family coming to stay for a night or two saps your (my) resolve to eat well and healthily.

Mind you, saying that, I’ve had only one takeaway (or carryout) during lockdown – a calzone pizza from one of the  local pizza/kebab shops.  It was delicious and I savoured every mouthful, a real treat.  But, in a vain attempt to keep the flab and self-inflicted decay at bay, I’ve been out to buy salad and veg in substantial quantities and most of the catering remains in house.  If I had the technical nous, I’d insert that emoji with the halo here but think it might be a bit tarnished by my efforts to keep The Wine Society, Worth Brothers and Tanners ticking along.  Still, in my defence, it’s important to support local businesses….

Surprisingly, there is a (slight) drawback to being back out golfing:  I’ve had to get the diary out again and make a concerted effort to remember which day is which.

The pages are filling up again. No idea where the photo of me on the phone was taken but I’m wearing what were once my favourite earrings – now, sadly, long gone.  They always reminded me – not always successfully – to try not to put my foot in my mouth too often.

As you can see, there’s not much scheduled for Friday, which is by design – blogging can be an exhausting business, especially if you’re trying to do it while keeping an eye on re-runs of Poirot, Morse and other such sources of intellectual stimulation.  That’s the trouble with self-imposed deadlines, especially in lockdown – you know you can ignore them with impunity and faff about to your heart’s content, watching rubbish, checking emails, tidying drawers.

My friends will not believe that this really is my spice drawer – surely nothing of mine could be that tidy….Admittedly, there’s no guarantee that everything’s within date.

I have to confess that I fell asleep watching the exhibition from Seminole last Sunday – playing my first 9 holes for several weeks on the Friday must have taken more out of me than I realised – but my timing was good:  I missed the appearance of the POTUS.  Seminole’s greens seemed to perplex the players, though Rickie Fowler managed to hole a few putts somewhere in the middle of the round.  The players were rusty and there was a general lack of drama – not that I can imagine anyone missing the “MASHED POTATO” plonker who inhabits far too many golf galleries – but it was lovely to have a wee look at a course that is universally admired.

In Beyond The Fairways  – almost a classic; sorry, I couldn’t resist, it’s a family joke – Dai wrote:  “The course is quite simply astonishing.  You can see most of it from the practice ground and I doubt that there is such a small tract of land with so many high-class holes packed on to it anywhere else in the world.  It doesn’t look like much at first sight, with one coral ridge to keep the sea out and another, further inland, to keep the traffic out.

“The land in between is, in places, below sea level and must have looked very unpromising.  What it needed was a genius and it got one in Donald J. Ross.  He created a course that is endlessly fascinating and always subtly challenging.

“Many of the greens are elevated and all of them are quietly but sufficiently contoured, so much so that the first-time player simply cannot make sufficient allowance for the break…….

“My notes are splattered with phrases such as “be precise; needs solid shot; excellent hole”; but, when you play a new course, it is the feeling that counts, the sudden dawning that the course has all your attention, that you are engrossed by it.  That feeling came very quickly at Seminole and Tom Doak got it spot on in The Confidential Guide: ‘Because of its popularity as a retirement capital there are more than 1000 courses in Florida today….I’ll take Seminole, you can have the other 999.'”

In the meantime, transatlantic trips being off limits for most of us, Whittington Heath is test enough for me.

It usually takes an impending deadline (is there any other kind of deadline, am I guilty of tautology here?) to get me to sit down at my desk, open the laptop and start writing; then I’ll hop up and down, fetching the dictionary, a glass of wine, a pen, a pencil, notes; oh, and the dishwasher needs emptying, that stuff I brought off the line needs folding (not ironing, thank goodness – one of the best decisions I ever made, not having an iron or ironing board in the house) and I think I’ve left the bedroom window open upstairs, must shut it now that it’s getting beyond chilly…..It just goes on and on, this shilly-shallying…..

Blimey, the wine glass is empty, must fill it up, can’t let a good drop stay open too long, oxygenation or some such.  In any case, someone has to keep Worth Brothers (Lichfield branch) and The Wine Society going and Dai was put up for membership by John Arlott no less.  Can’t let them down at this late stage.

I’m even more antsy than usual because I’m preparing for my first game of golf for more than seven weeks and finding the sticks was the first thing – where on earth had I put them?  Looking for something else – my will or a crucial financial document (probably no longer in the least bit crucial by the time you read this, given the state of things) – I stumbled upon them and found myself looking at them blankly:  what the hell do you do with these?…

Ah, there they are, my clubs, tucked away neatly in the cupboard in the spare room.

It’s only nine holes at Whittington at the moment but that’ll do nicely and I’m beyond delighted that we’re getting going again, so antsy that I can barely sit still to type – where are my shoes? will it be too cold for a skort? have I shaved my legs? do I need to? who gives a damn? have I made the post-round sarnies?  Better set the alarm, don’t want to miss the tee time.

There’s no two ways about it, I’m getting excited – even though I haven’t swung a club more than a handful of times since lockdown and have filled the vacuum with any number of things.  Judging from the comments by my fellow golfers, they’re all like kids let loose in a toy shop on their birthday.  Alistair Tait, who played 18 holes on the Dukes course at Woburn yesterday, said, “It feels like Christmas Day!”  Read his blog at Alistair Tait Golf and catch up on all the news, keeping an eye out for his constant golfing companion, a black lab called Izzy.

Another black lab, the near sainted Alice, isn’t welcome on our course:  there’s an edict banning dogs but that wasn’t always the case and no one seems to know why the ban was imposed.  Perhaps someone got fed up because his friend’s dog was unerring and said friend never lost a ball; who knows?

Alice making a bit of a splash well away from the course.

Alice just falls short of sainthood because she can’t resist a picnic – as one of the Beacon Park keepers put it pithily the other day, “She put the nick into picnic….”   And that just about covers it.  A couple of days ago, when it was sunny and warm, Alice and I were on the early evening walk when she spotted a family, on a rug, having a picnic; whoosh, yer woman was in like a shot, foraging as though she’d never been fed.  What she’d found was an open bag of dog treats, meant for the family’s own black lab but Alice didn’t wait for an invitation and dived in in full hoovering mode.  I dragged her away, eventually and we headed home but when I made the mistake of letting her off the lead, she was off, right back to the picnic…….

And the next afternoon, the moment she was able she headed straight back to the same spot….More savvy now, the moment she set paw in the park I knew exactly where she was going to go, so I was right behind her.  She knew the goodies were long gone – she’d taken Sue, her owner, there that morning – but that didn’t stop her trying to snuffle her way to Australia, plunging her snout as deep into the grass as she could.  The next day, allowed out together, maintaining a suitable distance, Sue and I took Alice further afield, grateful that it was a bit too chilly for picnicking.

Not a picnic in sight, thank goodness. Alice is somewhere in amongst the buttercups, with the cathedral in the background.

I have to confess that I haven’t got to grips with WHGC’s new booking system yet – one minor glitch with a computer or vaguely technical gizmo and I turn into a gibbering wreck, incapable of spelling my own name, let alone remembering a password or following a simple instruction; I was really quite pleased when the system crashed because it meant I could procrastinate with impunity – nothing I could do, guv, it wouldn’t let me in…..

Fortunately my dancing partner – not much chance of that resuming any time soon, so don’t think we’ll be going to Blackpool this year – made the booking and I’m glad to report that we’re both better at golf than we are at tripping the light fantastic.  However badly we play.

Wish I’d paid more attention to Maureen’s tips though.

I’ve always enjoyed this time of year, late April and then the glorious month of May, and perhaps it’s no coincidence that some of my favourite and significant moments, golf and otherwise, are from this handful of weeks.  I’ve also always enjoyed reminiscing and have an above average, detailed recall of various milestones in my life and the life of my friends and family.  In that respect I take after Dad and we jointly regarded Patricia and Mum as philistines for their mystified looks when we would announce that at that exact moment 22 years earlier such and such a person had hit THAT shot that led to this, that and the other.  How could they not remember?  Sometimes it was even Patricia who had hit the shot in question and even she couldn’t remember it!

Take a deep breath and drive on…..into the world of professional golf.

It was late April, 34 years ago, that I signed on the dotted line, turned professional and made my debut in a Pro-Am at The Mere Golf Resort & Spa, near Knutsford – less than an hour from where I currently live in Cheshire.  I was extremely nervous but remember being warmly welcomed by the other professionals before making my way to meet my team at the 12th tee where we were due to start our round.  The 12th was a fairly straightforward par 3 and to my relief I managed to hit the green before taking a swift three putts and starting my professional life with a bogey.

Mum was caddying for me, always a bit risky as I sometimes had an overwhelming desire to throttle her and this was one of those times.  With nerves already heightened, I charged my opening putt past the hole and her sharp intake of breath (which had earned her the nickname of “Hissing Sid” on the amateur circuit) did not help matters.  However, it turned out to be a great day – it was lovely weather, the course was in great condition and I had a lovely team.  All this conspired to help me settle down and I came in with a 1-under score, good enough for runner-up spot in my opening salvo as a pro.  How special it was to share that with Mum and her great friend Molly Boyd, who was with us as chief supporter.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I was presented with a cheque for £343 – for ONE round of golf!  In today’s money that’s a shade over £1000, certainly not a figure to be sneezed at.  I still have the dummy cheque somewhere.

This time of year always signalled the start of the serious golf season.  As an amateur it meant taking the road to Troon for the prestigious Helen Holm tournament which, believe it or not, was invariably played in snow and sleet.  As a pro it meant turning south and heading to Alex Hay country and Woburn for the Ford Classic, one of the best and longest-sponsored events we have ever had on the tour.

With Dame Laura Davies and Karen Lunn, two of the nicest and most talented people in the game.

Ford did a wonderful job for women’s golf and the event drew huge crowds.  For heaven’s sake, one year there were traffic jams all the way to the M1 with carloads of fans beating a path to Woburn to follow round after Dame Laura Davies, Marie-Laure de Lorenzi, Alison Nicholas, Trish Johnson and the like.  My highlight over the years there was holing in one while playing with Laura and winning a car!

Happy memories! 1994, I believe.

Many years later, again at this time of year, I received a once-in-a-lifetime invitation from the PGA.  I had stopped playing seriously and was immersed in coaching and I was both horrified and delighted to be invited to address fellow pros at a couple of seminars at the Belfry and one at Portmarnock.  That was a daunting enough prospect but I was sharing the bill with five very special people, Karl Morris, the first-class performance coach and mental skills guru and the four Harmon brothers, Butch, Dick, Bill and Craig.  We were to spend three days together, staying two nights at the Belfry and then sharing a private jet to Dublin.  To spend all this time with some of the greatest coaches in our industry was such a privilege – I really was living the dream.  Having dinner together every night was great and made all the more special because the four brothers weren’t very often all in the one place due to their busy lives and schedules.  In fact, it was probably one of the last times they all spent time with each other as Dick was to die within a couple of years.

A signed, treasured memory of a fun-filled time with the special Harmons.

And now from the sublime to the ridiculous.  This week we are celebrating four years of this piece of nonsense we are pleased to call our blog.  Many of you will know I was not in the least bit keen to embark on this and it was very much Patricia who chipped away at my resistance over a number of months.  Her trump card was to recruit my husband and Pam Valentine (she of 260-balls-into-a-golf-net-in-an-hour fame) to join her in persuading me to have a shot at it.  That is now four years ago and I’m in turn astonished, humbled and delighted that so many of you seem to get a bit of enjoyment out of our ramblings.  Thanks for subscribing.

Finally, another reason to have good vibes when the calendar turns over to these special days – my better half and I have just celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary.  We cooked a special meal and actually got dressed up for dinner – the first time since lockdown that I’ve bothered with getting any of the sparkly gear out.  It was worth it – we had a lovely evening.  No wonder I just love this time of year.

Well, how did that happen?  Another week has zoomed by and I’m beginning to wonder how on earth I managed to find time for golf.  My next-door neighbour, who’s on furlough, so is used to working, heading off to the office in the morning and coming back in the evening, has been out painting the fence, having sorted the house from top to bottom.  Now, I suspect, she’s a bit worried about having nothing to do.   That’s the impetuosity of youth for you.

Being retired and a bit of an old hand at finding ways to fill the time, I’ve been pacing myself during lockdown.  The bases of the footstool and swivel chair – which I decided didn’t go well with the new flooring – remain untouched, the sugar soap still in its box, the sandpaper squares still a mystery, the paint unopened.  Plenty of time to take on the messy business of painting, not forgetting the uncoupling of the bases, it won’t be a quick job and shouldn’t be embarked upon lightly; and in certain lights the current colour doesn’t look too hideous….

The Venetian blinds, which I once thought were at the very top of my list of things to do, remain as grimy as ever but it only really shows in a certain light and since I’m the only one here, they’ve slipped way, way down the to-do list.  Time enough to start scrubbing once my friends and family are allowed out again.  And according to my aged adaptation (free with, whisper it quietly, The Sunday Telegraph in the dim, distant past) of Reader’s Digest’s “Extraordinary Uses For Ordinary Things”, I need some surgical spirit.  Phew, not worth making a special trip for….

Is it any wonder I’ve been putting it off……

It’s amazing how much time WhatsApp takes up – all those videos, jokes, all that laughing, all that commenting.  Too much sitting is bad for you, so I have to stand up and deal myself a few bridge hands, bop about a bit to the radio – not a very edifying sight but, then, there’s no one to see the eject creaking about – and join in with Helen’s Quarantine Choir on YouTube.  Sadly, there’s no getting away from it, if there’s a musical bone in this body, it’ll take a team of archaeologists to find it.  I sang Happy (100th) Birthday to Captain (now Colonel) Tom but think it was drowned out by the Spitfire and the Hurricane and you’ll be glad to know that “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is beyond attempting.  Bashing a saucepan for everyone at 2000 on a Thursday, creating a charivari, is about my musical limit.

I did manage to give blood on Wednesday, making the trip to the donor centre in Birmingham.  I usually go by train but this time, greatly daring, I drove.  As suspected, the problem wasn’t the traffic – not too much – but the parking.  A couple of loops and my sense of direction is like my singing – rubbish, non-existent.  In the middle of a normally hectic thoroughfare I waved down a police van to ask for help and we had a suitably distanced discussion about car parks without anyone interrupting us.

Lockdown’s a Brummer:  Central Birmingham at lunchtime on a wet Wednesday.

Off I set, got disorientated again and ended up in a quiet street that turned out to be next door to the Hippodrome Theatre.  And, lo, another police van (different occupants, thank goodness) appeared and was quite happy to be flagged down.  Yes, I could park there but it was a bit of a walk to the donor centre, up hill, in the rain.  No worries, the directions were so simple even I could follow them:  turn first left and straight on, up and over the tram lines and I knew where I was.  Even better, donation done, I found my way back without mishap.  Miracle.

The Hippodrome, closed for the moment, says thanks.

My route home took me past Costco, so I thought I’d nip in to get a few supplies.  How naive was that!  Goodness knows where exactly the queue started but there were people standing patiently in the rain just outside the underground car park and I knew the path wound up hill for quite a distance.  Ah.  Nipping in was not an option.  Waving nonchalantly at the police car that was patrolling the car park, I returned to my vehicle empty-handed and managed to get back without further alarms, no mean feat given that I hadn’t driven anywhere for weeks and was sticking religiously to the speed limit.  Apparently people have been speeding madly, claiming that the lack of traffic means that they’ve lost their points of reference – and  their speedometers;  like Mr Toad they’re revelling in the open road.

People are champing at the bit to get out and about and get going again, with professional golfers as keen as anyone to start swinging in earnest.  Mike Whan, commissioner of the LPGA Tour, considered as ever, issued a statement – read it all on lpga.com – and what jumped out at me was this:  “Resuming sports safely isn’t a race.  It’s a responsibility.  A responsibility not just to our athletes, sponsors, volunteers and fans but also to the millions who have sacrificed their personal safety to battle this pandemic or put their lives on hold to stem the spread…..

“So, will the LPGA resume our season in mid-July?  It’s too soon to say.  If I’ve learned anything about COVID-19, I’ve learned that no matter how well I plan, the virus will set the ultimate timeline…..there are still many unknowns and variables, including progress in screening, tracing and the spread of the virus itself.

“Today my planning horizon is 30-45 days out.  Beyond that, all bets are off….”

Finally, a proper picture, courtesy of Mary McKenna, painted by the incomparable Geraldine Costello, who died a few days ago.  Mo pays proper tribute to Gerry and I have to admit that I was always in awe of the doc (with good reason).  Looking at this painting, what strikes me now is not just how good it is but how legible her signature is……

Ar dheis De go raibh a hanam.

May her soul be at the right hand of God.  May she rest in peace.