June already.  Can you believe it?  I did the old “white rabbits” incantation first thing yesterday, the 1st of the month – why on earth or where it comes from I have no idea – and turned over the calendar to reveal the magnificent peacock in all his glory.  Another Mary McKenna spectacular that’ll cheer up the next few weeks no end.

On Tuesday, I got my wires crossed so instead of playing in the competition I slotted into a gap and played a few holes on my own.  No card, no pencil, no pressure.  Nul points but lots of fun despite being a bit chilly for shorts.  I made myself hit clubs that usually remain in the bag, tried shots that aren’t part of my armoury – and discovered why!  I wish I could say that I found a putting stroke that will prove infallible – but that wouldn’t be true.  Some things never change.

Practice may make better but never perfect and these ageing bones steadfastly refuse to creak into any sort of shape vaguely recognisable as a golf swing.  You have to be fitter than I am to make a decent fist of hitting the ball consistently well and ten minutes on the practice ground would be about my lot.  Though the hot bath and massage afterwards hold a certain appeal.

Rooting through a pile of my never-diminishing stack of papers, I came across a VISION54 aide-memoire of Essential Playing Skills and wondered which ones I could practise in a small garden.  Emotional resilience perhaps; tension awareness and decision & commitment possibly; but I decided to try balance.  Not by standing on one leg but by hanging up a rug and beating it without falling back.  Hmmm.  More work needed.

Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott are the inspiring coaches behind this holistic approach and by pure chance I opened their book Play Your Best Golf Now (written with Ron Sirak) in the middle of the chapter called Find Your Balance.  I had to double check how to spell the authors’ names – one ‘s’ or two; double ‘r’; an ‘e’ on the end?  Daren’t get it wrong after all these years! – and you can’t pick up a book without opening it, can you?

“Balance is like fresh produce,” I read.  “It can go bad very easily.  It also changes from day to day…We are dynamic, changing human beings, and we will swing well more often if we do regular balance exercises as maintenance…

“For the sake of your golf, it’s very important that you are able to transfer stationary balance to rotational balance.  That is what you need for your golf swing.  We see many players who are able to stand on one leg with their eyes closed for thirty seconds [not me], but then when we ask them to rotate at the same time, they fall over right away…”

Did you hear the crash?  That was me falling over as I failed to master the dynamics right away.  Let me pick up the table, the lamp, the book, my glasses and mug and check that the laptop is still operational…

By all means try this at home – you’re all consenting adults after all – but my advice is not to attempt any of it without a lot of careful thought and plenty of support.  Very soft furnishings are recommended.

Talking of furnishings, my spring/summer cleaning is progressing and I’m beaming, halo gleaming as I contemplate the corners – now hidden again behind chairs, sofas, chests, whatever – that I know are clear of cobwebs, corpses (mostly slaters who can infiltrate anywhere at will) and dust.  It won’t last of course but there’ll be no early morning inspection to wipe the smile off my face.

It’s amazing what you come across under the sofa besides fluff, admittedly no coins of any sort or long-lost watches, nothing remotely useful but a photocopy of an old newspaper, date unknown.  Goodness knows why it was there but it appealed to the nerd in me as I read that “Miss Agnes B. Honeyman (Blairgowrie) and Miss Joyce Wethered (Royal Dornoch) will be unable to take part in the first round of the Girls’ Open Championship at Stoke Poges to-day.  Their places will be taken by Miss Nancy Griffiths (Sunningdale) and Miss Nancy Paull (Walton Heath), the former of whom is only 12 years of age.”

Why, I wonder, was Joyce, who became one of the game’s greatest, most celebrated players, entered from Dornoch?   Why did she and Agnes have to withdraw?  And did either Nancy train on?

By the way, don’t forget that the Vagliano Trophy match between the women amateurs  of GB and I and Europe is at Royal Dornoch at the end of this month and the AIG Women’s Open is at Walton Heath in August.

Finally, many congratulations to John Huggan, a Scot of an iconoclastic bent, who has been writing knowledgeably and trenchantly about golf for several decades, on being honoured at The Memorial Tournament, Jack Nicklaus’s event in Columbus, Ohio, this week.  Well deserved.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank goodness the sister has been back out on the golf course because there’s been damn all golf in this corner of the blog.  She’s been tracking the greats of the game and experiencing golf at its championship best while I’ve been watching a bit on the telly but mostly shaking the Northumberland sand out of my shoes and from between my toes. Oh, and freezing the freshly caught Amble fish.

The fishing has been a bit sporadic recently and we were lucky to catch the fisherpersons at their stall on the harbour.  There was monkfish (pieces), smoked cod and squid.  I couldn’t resist giving the latter a go because I can’t forget the memorable melt-in-the-mouth squid Dai and I had once; admittedly it was in Australia, on Kangaroo Island (not that far from Adelaide) and the squid had travelled a matter of metres from sea to kitchen to plate to palate.  Wonder how it’ll work in Lichfield…

The latest batch is now in my freezer – I only got winged by a squirt of ink as I was preparing it, inexpertly, not too bad for a first attempt (!) – so who knows how it’ll turn out when I get around to cooking it.  Fingers crossed it’s edible at least and I haven’t ruined it.

On our last full day in glorious Northumberland – Mrs M and I wondered if we could move Lichfield right a bit and up a bit (well, quite a lot really, looking at the map and then it wouldn’t be Lichfield) – I joined Puffin Cruises for the short trip to Coquet Island. It was so calm that even Maureen and Mum, veterans of innumerable ferry crossings and notoriously fussy about sea levels, would have stepped aboard without a qualm.  They might not even have needed their wrist bands because we were out for just over an hour with barely a ripple to trouble anyone’s equilibrium.

There’s no landing on tiny Coquet at this time of year, with thousands of puffins nesting and zooming about like mad things.  There are also terns, including those of the roseate variety, very rare apparently, so it’s a bird lover’s paradise.  I remember a friend going to the ends of the earth – or as near as dammit, a very long way anyway – to see puffins and seeing not a one.  I’d seen a few off the Isles of Scilly but this was puffin central.  There were also seals everywhere, bobbing up all around the boat, as curious about us as we were about them.  It was magical.

 

On the way home, we called in at Druridge Bay, where there’s another wonderful beach and a lovely country park.  It’s only a couple of miles south of Amble, which was bathed in sunshine but when we hit the beach, we could hardly see the sand let alone the sea.  The haar (a raw sea mist) had hit the shore and it took me a while to find the sea – the tide was out too – for my farewell paddle.  It was eery and very easy to get disorientated.

 

Fortunately, we’d seen the beach in its full glory the day before and it’s right up there with Northumberland’s best.  Don’t bother going, though, too cold, windy and rainy, not forgetting the real danger of haar…There’s always Cornwall, Spain, Florida, wherever!

Back home, the garden, almost entirely self-seeded and left to its own devices, had exploded, with colour everywhere.  It was a joy to see and I felt I was doing my own little bit to encourage wild life and combat global warming, especially since I’d turned the heating way down and retired the log-burner for the summer.  Admittedly, I haven’t turned the heating off and I’m still not fond of pigeons – I don’t have a garage, my car is a sitting Fiesta…Splat.

A bit of weeding, belated spring-cleaning, some shed-tidying and general footering, otherwise known as messing about aimlessly or blog avoidance, led me to shout at myself:  “Get on with it, dear.”  It was our auntie Doto’s mantra – hence the Dote Note – and eventually, every Thursday, the time comes when even I, a world class prevaricator, can’t ignore it.  You’ve just got to put the bum on the seat (Dai’s definition of inspiration, forged in a lifetime of imminent deadlines) and hit the keyboard.

Have I anything to add to the sum of human knowledge, golfing or otherwise?  Probably not.  There are opinions aplenty – on LIV (don’t care that much about the product but regret the belligerence and bitterness); the Ryder Cup (of course Brooks Koepka must play) – but most of them are best examined off paper, sorry, screen.  In the pub over a beer or at home over a glass of decent wine (The Wine Society has never let me down but I’d be a much wealthier woman if I hadn’t inherited Dai’s membership; only monetarily, though) or a cup of tea or a glass of water.  The words will flow whatever the alcohol level and temperance is no guarantee they’ll be temperate.  But if they’re not written down, they’re easily retracted, changed, modified, mulled over, reinstated, whatever.

Let’s get together soon for a proper natter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The downside of these lovely, longer, lighter evenings is that whenever friends pitch up for bridge they can see the garden and say things like:  “I know you say it’s your contribution to wildlife but there’s more grass in that border than anything else.  Those dandelions are seeding everywhere.  When are you going to start weeding?”

My friends are mostly keen and knowledgeable gardeners and my neighbours’ garden is well kept, so it behoves me to make an effort and at least stop my weeds encroaching too far onto their patch.

As the picture shows I’m pretty clueless when it comes to gardening despite the best efforts of my green-fingered advisers but I’m a willing digger and I have some special seeds to plant, to commemorate Katie and Alex’s wedding last month.

Fingers crossed, I’ll get the seeds in before they go dozed – remember the days when that happened to golf balls? – and they’ll flourish.  There will be photos.

Indoors, my plants are doing remarkably well.  I talk to them nicely; I try not to overwater them; and so far it seems to be working.  Perhaps they’re celebrating the coronation of a king who was talking to his plants when it was regarded as beyond eccentric, long before it was seen as quite normal and sensible.  His time has come…

But I need all the help I can get!

Thursday a week ago, I was at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the last time this season, to watch Spurs make Manchester United look good for most of the first half.  We conceded early, as usual, down our right, as usual and the guy beside me didn’t bother coming back after half time!  I tried a slightly different tactic, going for a cuppa just as the second half was about to start.

“We might score now,” I said to Linda next to me.  “It’s worth a try,” she said.

By the time I got back with my cup of tea, Linda was ecstatic (I exaggerate a little but not that much – we Spurs supporters are grasping at straws these days):  “We’ve got a corner!” she said.

We didn’t score immediately but, glory be, we clawed our way back to draw 2-2 and could have won…But, then, so could they…

We have two more home matches, the first against Crystal Palace this Saturday afternoon and, heaven help me and with apologies to all my republican friends, I’ve decided to stay at home and enjoy the pageantry of the coronation in comfort, with friends with more royalist leanings. There’ll be red, white and blue bunting, coronation chicken, quiche, fizz (English of course, from Cornwall) and lots of commentary on the attendees and the outfits – and puddings.   Perfect.

Last Saturday, less grandly, two friends and I headed for Edgbaston to watch Warwickshire play Surrey, the reigning county champions.  We took the train, then treated ourselves to a taxi from New Street and headed for the Tom Dollery Lounge, where the members gather.  We were in raptures!  It wasn’t grand or posh, it wasn’t particularly busy and we felt at home immediately.  It was a million miles from the football.  So much more relaxing.  As long as no one of yours is playing!

We were getting a coffee and asked a wee girl in a pushchair if she was opening the bowling.  “No,” said her mother, “but her daddy is.”  Blimey, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever be rubbing shoulders with Harry Kane’s wife and kids.  As it turned out Daddy was Dan Worrall, one of Surrey’s opening bowlers, who scored what the Warwickshire match report called “a merry 35”, to frustrate the home bowlers.

“You didn’t tell us Daddy could bat too,” we said indignantly.  “Now and again,” came the reply.

Warwickshire were walloped, narrowly avoiding an innings defeat and losing by nine wickets on the third day but we loved it all and will definitely be back.

We were lucky because the rain held off – we’d left our brollies at home – and we didn’t have to sit there looking at the covers.  We could take drinks, alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic, to our seats outside and it was all very laidback and civilised.  No doubt test matches and one-day games are very different, with the ground packed, full of raucous fans and no need for the players to create their own atmosphere and excitement.

Another difference from football was that there were announcements to let the spectators know what was going on!  The floodlights were put on near the end and we were immediately told why in some detail, what was allowed and what wasn’t.  How refreshing.  No keeping these fans in the dark.

It was local election time in these parts and you’ll be delighted to know that I got my postal vote in in time, having put my X in the appropriate places.  I found it amazingly tricky to find out much about the people who were standing, trying to delve behind the names on the leaflets but perhaps it was just my lack of technical expertise.  The party websites were woefully short of detail, so in the end I took a punt and am hoping for the best…

Think it’s time for a new picture of Alice, living in the moment.

 

 

 

It’s refreshing to be out in America surrounded by, well, Americans.  It’s an opportunity to listen to their take on all things golf and to remind yourself there really are a host of different opinions on just about everything.

Take Rory, for instance.  He’s universally loved stateside and seems to be generally lauded for his stance against LIV golf and for becoming the voice of the PGA Tour (along with Tiger, of course).  His decision to miss last week’s tournament at Hilton Head has resulted in a loss of $3 million for the Irishman due to new rules regarding the number of appearances required by the top players.  Unfavourable comparisons to Jon Rahm who honoured his commitment to play, despite post Masters exhaustion, also abound.  There is now an understandable distinct lack of sympathy for Rory.

However, I was talking last week to a friend of Rory’s who had some text communication with him after the Masters and he told me Rory was “below basement level” mentally at his ninth, failed, attempt to complete the career Grand Slam.  Accepting that, it’s no wonder he pulled out of Hilton Head.  My friend continued, “Rory’s tried everything he can over the last nine years.  He’s turned up early; he’s done his practice early and turned up late-ish; he’s treated it like a normal tournament; he’s prepared forensically;  he’s talked down the importance of winning the Masters; he’s talked it up; he’s tried everything.”

When I reported this conversation to Patricia she unsympathetically snorted and said, “He hasn’t tried starting well!”

Whatever your opinion, I think it may be some time before we see the McIlroy bounce and swagger return.

If you haven’t dipped into your reserves of sympathy yet, I urge you to spare a thought for Will Zalatoris, the cocktail stick of a player who came to prominence in the 2021 edition of the Masters when he finished second.  In 2022 he was 6th in the Masters, then lost to Justin Thomas in a play-off for the PGA title and then finished runner-up to Matt Fitzpatrick at the US Open – and all of this achieved by a player yet to win.  That win came in August last year and one week later the back problems started in earnest.

Last week his troubles culminated in a withdrawal from the Masters and on Saturday of Masters week he underwent back surgery and the 26-year old is out for the rest of the season, including the Ryder Cup.  That’s tough for a young player who has just begun establishing himself.

Meanwhile, life for me this week is the sanctuary of a cabin in North Georgia.  We decided against all the travel to Florida we had expected to do and opted instead for R&R and getting “off grid” for a few days.  Good decision!  The days are filled with nothing more taxing than the wonderment at the size of the portions in the restaurants and the size of the beds.  Is there a correlation, I hear you ask?  Who knows?  What I can tell you, though, is I’m six feet tall and can sit on the side of the bed with my feet dangling a good 12 inches off the floor!  I have several friends who’d need a mini trampoline just to retire for the night!

As I write I am really looking forward to The Chevron Championship, the women’s first major of the year, which is taking place in Texas for the first time.  I have discovered the requirement for multiple degrees just to be able to work the television out here.  Alas, I don’t seem to have graduated just yet, so wish me well in that endeavour.

If I’m unsuccessful, I’ll just have to continue enjoying the stunning walks in the vicinity of the cabin.  I met a chap this morning who in reply to my question told me it was really quite safe indeed as there was “very little bear activity!”

Hope to be writing again soon.