Making Dreams Come True

The DP World tour (or European tour as I still call it in my mind) has come to the end of an exhilarating season with a nail-biting finish out in the desert at the Earth course in Dubai.  Matt Fitzpatrick (above) eased through on the first extra hole against Rory McIlroy to lift the DP World Championship trophy while Rory won his seventh Race to Dubai Order of Merit title.

For me last Sunday morning was divided between the dusty desert that is my new, emerging kitchen and running in to the sitting room to catch up on proceedings in the final tournament of the year.  The reason for the multi-tasking was the arrival of the painter on Monday morning and my endeavours to provide him with a clean, dust-free canvas on which to work his magic.  Ceilings, walls and skirtings all need to be done – who knew there were so many shades of white? – and I’ll do anything to help hurry the process along.

Meanwhile, the mountains of glassware, crockery, cooking utensils, recipe books and all the paraphernalia of a kitchen and utility room litter the rest of the house and at this point everything has the air of being very forlorn and unloved – and, oh yes, dusty.  We’re eight weeks in since I first started shifting stuff in preparation for this project and in that time we have felt like we’re camping in our own home.  Lacking anything to cook on we invested in an air-fryer – and suffered through a few days of overcooked food.  No one told us how seriously fast it is to cook this way.

It was at this point that our builders appeared from the war zone that was the kitchen and confessed that they had mistakenly taken our hob (which we intended to keep) off to the tip along with the old dishwasher and sundry other things.  “I guess I owe you a hob,” they said, to which we agreed and then we promptly forgot all about it.

So, last weekend, in the lull between builders and painter, we decided to celebrate by christening the new hob……..and discovered that (unlike the old one) it was an induction one.  Now, which, if any, of our pots and pans were going to be compatible?  A quick scour of the instructions informed us that if a magnet sticks to the bottom of the pan then you’re good to go.  Just who has a magnet handy when you need one?

I had a minor brainwave, recalling my golfing days and the times I put my ball marker on a magnet on the brim of my cap.  Cue scuffling around in the bottom of golf bags for such a device but all I came up with were pitchforks with markers adhering to them.  Trouble was the magnets were all recessed slightly so not fit for our purpose.  Fortunately, hubby decided to continue reading the instructions (not one of his usual forms of behaviour) and learned that if the pan were unsuitable the hob would switch off after a minute.  Phew!  We now don’t have to replace all of our pots and pans – just some.

Exciting as the new hob turned out to be it was as nothing compared to the real highlight of the week, which was a return visit to the UK for Sri Lanka’s first-ever female professional golfer, Tiru Fernando.  Tiru was an early member of the tour in the eighties and I was fortunate enough to have overlapped on tour with her and last week this marvellous year of reunions continued apace.

Liz Kahn, that formidable trailblazer for women in sports journalism, hosted the most delicious lunch at her home for a get-together of some of Tiru’s erstwhile colleagues.  It was a lovely, relaxed atmosphere and fascinating to learn something of Tiru’s life over the last three decades or so.

Golf played no part at all after her marriage to a minister as she downed clubs in order to aid him in his work, caring for his flock and cooking lunch and dinner every day for huge numbers of needy people.  Sadly, her husband was a very early casualty of Covid in 2020 and slowly Tiru felt it was time to return to the game she loved and to a dream she had nurtured since a young woman – that of finding land and building a golf course in her own country.

Well, she has now found that land – a beautiful, coastal plot – up in Jaffna towards the northern tip of the country, where her husband was from.  She has her investors, she has a very renowned course architect on board and she has her dream.  Undoubtedly, big challenges lie ahead.  The locals, who are predominantly Tamil, don’t like change and there’s nothing like the proposed resort near them.  They want to keep “their” land for future generations.

It will take every bit of Tiru’s diplomacy to smooth the way and to get everyone on board.  It certainly won’t be her style to railroad anything through but I can’t think of anyone better placed to be successful.  She has the serenity, the gravitas and the desire to see this project through – and to take everyone with her.

I can still see in her eye that same ambition and sense of adventure that made a young girl golfer travel thousands of miles from her home and all she knew to become her country’s first female professional golfer.  It’s going to be so interesting following her story to what I’m sure will be a stunning outcome.

The European tour, after all, doesn’t have a monopoly on stunning outcomes.