Sally-Part 72. 'THE' COMPLETE GUIDE TO GOLF FOR BEGINNERS.DEDICATED TO MY TWO SONS< JONATHAN AND JULIAN BUT ESPECIALLY FOR JONATHAN !

THE CALLY PALACE HOTEL PRIVATE GOLF COURSE. THERE WAS NO-ONE ELSE ON THE COURSE AT ALL ! PERHAPS THEY'D HEARD I WAS ON MY WAY !

Well, amazing as it seems, I won at golf today playing on my own at The Cally Palace's private and immaculate course !

I WAS SEARCHED BEFORE I WAS ALLOWED IN FOR A COFFEE AND ESCORTED BY THREE BURLY DOORMEN  WHO SEARCHED ME AGAIN WHEN I LEFT !

Although I lost about thirty balls, I didn't add these to my score card or penalise myself for any poor tee shots, balls in lakes, rivers or forests or balls that travelled less than two feet, went backwards, air-shots, multi bunker shots or missed putts !

Had I done then my score would have been more like an acceptable 200 rather than the perfectly respectable 160 that I declared !

 Par was 72 !

WARNING-THE REST OF THIS BLOG IS A LESSON FOR NEW GOLF PLAYERS AND IS A SIMPLE AND HELPFUL GUIDE WHICH WON'T INTEREST ANYONE ELSE !

Firstly there are words and expressions borrowed from the English language which I hope to explain as I go along.

The first one, as mentioned above is 'Par' which is a word that someone made up to mean the number of shots a decent player should complete the round of eighteen holes in .

I don't know who decided on eighteen holes rather than twenty or fifteen.

Personally I prefer about three before coffee, twenty or so biscuits and the opportunity to hand out my Blog cards !

You will regularly see areas with GUR written on a signboard or spray-painted on the ground. These are NOT , as Jonathan told me and I believed for several years, places to go when you've hit a terrible shot for jumping up and down in whilst snapping clubs over your thigh and shouting Grrrr! which is the sound Dennis The Menace made in my childhood comics ! GUR stands for Ground Under Repair and you shouild NOT enter them under any circumstances !

So where do you go to break clubs and shout Grrrr! ?

 The answer is ANYWHERE ! 

Golf cognoscenti ask each other what they 'play off' and this means the number more than 'par' that they average when they play on their own and cheat. Really big cheats say they 'play off' very small or even 'negative' numbers and are really big-headed and obsessed with 'point ones' !

I will explain about 'point ones' in chapter ninety seven, ' Wife ? I think I've got one ! '

Unfortunately I must now write as briefly as I can about HANDICAPS !

In this modern world of political correctness and equality I was taken aback when I first played golf to be asked what my handicap was!

Thinking that I must have suddenly developed an obvious limp or one eye had fallen further down my face than the other or had introduced myself with some kind of speech impediment I thought quickly and came up with, " A little hayfever-induced asthma if you must know !", trying not to show how indignant I felt at the man's far too intimate a question to a stranger !

This was the first time ( actually it wasn't! ) I became aware of men whispering to each other whilst moving their heads towards me in an un-neighbourly fashion!

As it turned out being asked what your 'handicap' is means the same as " What do you play off? " and shouldn't cause offence unless asked with an obvious sense of contempt which was how I feel people speak when they ask me!

The most arrogant and insufferable men sneer at you when you dare to ask them what they 'play off' because they'll answer 'scratch' !

 If you're not feeling itchy, don't !

If you are then do and ask them how they knew ?

They'll REALLY hate you though !

They mean zero. In other words, what a decent player should be able to do...match the course 'par' !

LOST ? Or just finally stopped caring ?

Ah ! You must be a woman then ! What are you doing reading about sport ?

 Anyway, I was privileged to play on a manicured course set amongst thousands of mature proper trees ( as opposed to Scandinavian ones that blight the countryside ).

 The sun shone and the temperature climbed beyond twenty degrees for the first time in a year and the glimpsed views all around were wonderful !

But I was on my own and unhappy ! Golf is about immature men spending four or five hours together, trading jokes, insults and sharing totally exaggerated stories of female conquests !

I could have been at work, staring out the window and wishing I was on a golf course !

Everything should have been perfect but I was bored without company, which in my case means somebody else to bore and carried on playing because it was free and I wasn't expected back for four hours !

SO, THIS IS HOW YOU PREPARE YOURSELF FOR GOLF !

 You spend a ridiculous amount of money on clubs which are now mostly counterfeits and spend even more on overpriced matching clown outfits that other men admire and covet!

Then spend up to £400 on waterproofs and £200 on shoes !

Another £300 on balls, tees, pitch-mark repairer, club head covers, permanent marker pen to mark your ball with your private set of dots so that you can easily identify it once it's lost forever in just over one inch of rough grass, ludicrous peeked hat, magnetic ball marker to fit onto the magnet on the previously mentioned peeked hat, all-weather golf glove for the opposite hand to whatever you are 'handed' and one for the 'handed' one as well if you are a wimp like me !

A simple bag costing no more than a hundred or so pounds will suffice to carry on your back and to hold a variety of wet and dry weather clothes, umbrella, towel for drying your ( golf ) balls, sandwiches for just before you collapse from heat exhaustion after two holes, drinks, chocalate bars and twenty balls for the eighteen holes you are about to waste many hours of your life swearing around !

Once you have discovered how exhausting carrying your own bag is after fifty yards, you might feel, like I did, that you would prefer a pull-along trolley or decide to splash out on a motorised version which costs hundreds or do what real real nutters do and buy a ' golf buggy' for thousands and tow it behind your car !

All this before you've even played a shot!

MY PREFERRED GOLFING COMPANIONS.. MY SONS JULIAN,WHO LOOKS LIKE HE MIGHT BE MINE AND JONATHAN WHO I THINK WAS A CHANGELING,.ON COLONSAY, MAY 2012. WE JUST LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND THAT'S HOW GOLF SHOULD BE !

Once you've approached the first tee for the first time, dressed in plus fours and twin-colured spiked shoes and acknowledged the admiring glances of the three other berks you're about to humiliate yourself in front of  you must select one of five different length ' tees' which are a device for holding your ball your preferred height off the ground in-line with or slightly behind the two large mock golf balls which mark the start line of all 'tee boxes' ( an area of destroyed turf from where you start  mis-hitting lots of balls ). Real men always blame a poor tee selection for a poor 'tee shot', or an unbalanced club, or blinding sun, or a camera lense clicking, or someone moving, or a pulled muscle, or, in fact, anything but themselves  !

Your ball selection is incredibly important as dimples vary between manufacturers and you must bear in mind that the wind at different heights will affect dimples in different ways and don't forget to mark your ball first with your secret choice of mysterious dots before placing it, having clearly stated to everyone which manufacturer you have chosen and which number ( from one to ten ) is printed on it !

If you place your ball even a millimetre in front of the ' start line ' one or all of the other players will cough brusquely and growl ' feet in the water !" into their rolled fist and huff whilst looking innocently at their fingernails as if they were totally incapable of such an act !

If you have actually arrived at a point where you're ready to strike your first ball someone may well remind you that you have failed to 'warm up' !

You must step off the 'tee box' to do this, much to the general disatisfaction of all around and take up a 'teeing off' position before swinging your 'driver' around your head without hitting you or your fellow's heads or spinning and falling down !

Then and this is quite hard to explain without a diagram, you wedge your driver into your elbows behind your head and looking like a mentally unstable scarecrow twist one way and the other until you are dizzy though now well 'stretched' !

Hopefully, you won't 'pull' a muscle during this process and have to withdraw before you start !

Once 'warm' you retrace your steps to your ball and 'address' it. This has got nothing to do with writing but is where you place it in your stance.

For those who don't know where their stance is or how they can adopt one if they haven't got one, this is how to 'adopt' a stance which has got nothing to do with children !

You take your driver, which is the largest club in your bag and not your chauffeur and casually place it behind your ball. Be careful at this point not to knock your ball off the tee as this will count as a shot.

Now holding the other end of the club at arms length, open your legs quite wide but not so wide as to look silly.

Bend your knees slightly and move your weight towards the balls of your feet.

You can decide to position the ball in front of and between your feet centrally or towards the front or back foot.

Now you must perform a sort of ritual courtship dance which involves repeatedly looking down the fairway in the direction you would like your ball to go whilst wiggling your buttocks provocatively and paddling your feet like a seagull hunting for worms ( yes they do do that ! ) to settle yourself into a profound feeling of balance and calm !

If you are at all like my son Jonathan, you will perform this ritual up to eighteen times, each time slightly adjusting both elbows and repositioning the club head minutely !

JONATHAN PLAYS OFF FOUR POINT SIX ! THAT MEANS HE CHEATS MORE THAN OTHER MEN !

Other people's rituals can look ridiculous and telling them so can cause offence so just do what everyone else does and join in with the other two waiting their turn to play by staring at each other and shaking your heads at one another in total incomprehension !

Under no circumstances may you call out, " Get on with it for God's sake ! "

Or drop your club 'accidentally', yawn loudly or point out the twelve other players now waiting to start their rounds !

Once settled over the ball it is impolite at this point to ask the player whether he breathes in or out or holds his breath when he takes his shot !

I ALWAYS DRESS PROPERLY BUT MY SONS HAVE SOME SERIOUS QUESTIONS TO ANSWER !

I have been asked this question many times and have found it doesn't make me play any worse than I would otherwise have played !

Keep your back straight and your head absolutely still, staring at the ball along your nose as you 'take the club away' rotating your top half by imagining that your solar plexus is the centre of your body, which it is.

COPY MY PERFECT POSE. TAKEN ON THE HEBRIDEAN ISLAND OF COLONSAY AT 9:30 PM ON MAY 25th 2012 DURING BRITAIN'S WEEK OF SUMMER ! JONATHAN IS STANDING WATCHING TO MAKE SURE I HAVEN'T GOT MY 'BALL OR FEET IN THE WATER' !

Your weight should now be entirely on your rear leg ( that is, right if you're right-handed and left if you're left-handed ), your front foot heel raised and your stomach muscles coiled around your solar plexus as strongly as possible.

That's the easy bit because you now have to reverse everything you have just done but with explosive force, maximum acceleration and control bringing the club head back to the original position it was in less than half a second before whilst transferring all your weight onto the left leg, raising your right heel ( try and remember which 'handed' you are otherwise 'strains' can occur ), rotating the ball of the foot and allowing the club head to 'follow through' ( which is not the same as the embarrassing thing that happens a few hours after eating a 'Durham Meatball ' meal when you attempt  a release of several tons of highly pressurised built-up gas ! ) to a position that in cartoon terms leaves you looking like you've rotated your entire body three times around one leg !

The longer you hold this pose, the more other men will admire you ! In fact even if you know that you have missed or mis-hit the ball, you must still hold the pose !

It's really not a difficult thing to hit a ball but unfortunately the driver tends to have a mind of it's own and may well choose to pass cleanly right over the top or directly underneath the ball without imparting any forward movement to it !

It may well decide to clip one end of the ball or the other and send it at a frighteningly fast speed at right angles to the left or right of your intended direction !

You will have no idea where it's gone but will soon appreciate your companion's lightening-fast reactions as they scream " FOUR! (or 'FORE!' I really don't know or care which)" LEFT!" or " RIGHT! " as loudly and hysterically as they can whilst whisking their heads into the safety of their arms !

When playing with deaf or dumb or deaf and dumb people, holding up four fingers whilst pointing in either direction will suffice !

If you do manage to move your ball even slightly forward feel very proud of yourself and read part two of my ' GOLFING FOR BEGINNERS-THE SECOND SHOT '  if I ever get round to writing it !

ANYONE NOT INTERESTED IN GOLF WHO HAS GOT THIS FAR DESPITE MY EARLIER WARNING NEEDS TO GET A LIFE !

Sally-Part 71. BILLY-NO-MATES PLAYING GOLF ON HIS OWN !

REAL GOLF ON COLONSAY WITH MY SONS. MY LEGS ARE NOT REALLY THIS SHAPE !

The Open Golf Championship is on at my feet in the caravan !

When I was a boy and the sun shone all summer and cricket Test Matches were the only live sport on the television and not the 'TV' and we learned the times it was on from The Radio Times and not 'TV Quick' and policemen were 'Officers' and not 'cops' and doctors were addressed as 'doctor' and not 'doc' we watched the BBC's coverage on a nine inch black and white screen with the thick curtains drawn to reduce the ambient room light to darkness.... and life was normal !

My father sat in 'his' chair and didn't talk to any of his five sons and my mother stayed in the kitchen where she was best placed to respond to my father's regular demand for all-milk coffee which she made in 'the milk pan', an old bent thing, and always irritatingly allowed to boil and form a skin which she would then blow to one side before spooning it out and bringing it into the lounge where she would stand to my father's side testing the drink until it was at the correct temperature for him to consume!

And this WAS 'normal' !

Such a regime has not continued in my house !

Now, with technology so advanced that companies can offer more than one hundred channels which no-one but the poor inmates of prison or old people's homes or me would want to watch, flat-screen televisions are just as useless as the very early sets for watching anything in any light conditions above very dim!

And that's why the golf is on at my feet!

Of course, if I copied many of today's television watchers I would have mounted a monster forty two inch behemoth five feet up above my fireplace which I wouldn't have been able to watch because of the pain in my neck whilst watching it and wouldn't have been able to understand anything said as the wonderful surround-sound speakers require a level of concentration impossible for anyone over five to maintain!

Shirley, who has just tapped the pile of placemats in a rather authoritative manner by way of a silent instruction to 'place' one in front of me, has kindly if somewhat reluctantly cooked and brought me a sausage sandwich in untoasted bread served with Tartare sauce which is delicious!

She hates all sport and sportsmen except the tennis players Bjorn Borg and Kevin Curan both of whom stopped playing twenty years ago!

 She loves the view and won't countenance any blocking of it by curtains and watches her programmes with the set on the floor in front of a cupboard which is where it now is, completely out of my immediate view below my table!

THIS REALLY IS THE VIEW FROM OUR CARAVAN VERANDA ON AUCHENLARIE OUTSIDE GATEHOUSE OF FLEET IN DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY ! FACING DUE SOUTH AND SUN ALL DAY ! ANYONE WANT TO BE MY FRIEND NOW ?

Actually I hate almost all sport myself and haven't got a clue why I've got the golf on in the first place unless it's to try to garner a few last minutes hints before I set out this afternoon for a game for which I won a' voucher for two' almost a year ago at my golf club party night raffle which I didn't attend, to play at the area's most prestigious course at 'The Cally Palace Hotel' in Gatehouse of Fleet where you can't actually buy a round of golf because it is open to hotel guests only!

ON THE FIRST ON MY OWN !

This summer has been awful and I'm sitting here freezing, writing on the 20th of July with the skin on my hands stretched so tightly it looks like a five thousand year old Egyptian mummy's!

 I'm even about to go down to the sport's centre to have a warming sauna before setting out for far too much exercise which is why my round will end up with me exhausted and very fed up!

I will be dressed as smartly as I can which means a variety of second-hand clothes, mostly long past their best before they were donated to the town's charity shop and worn several layers thick in an attempt to keep my bones above freezing point.

This will be in marked contrast to everyone else's immaculate and very expensive golf outfits which, to me, makes them look stupidly uniformed!

I possibly also look like I might smell rather badly!

I will be playing on my own because neither of my sons could get the day off to come over and I daren't really invite any of the men from the club I used to belong to here because frankly, I don't want to be rejected by anyone I couldn't stand playing with when I belonged!

When I wrote to my club informing them that I wouldn't be renewing my membership because of other commitments, I didn't reveal the truth behind my decision which was I loathed playing with men who didn't have as much interest in me as I did in myself and never asked me a single question in three years of playing with them.

And as I find it quite within the bounds of reasonable social interaction to ask people about their own lives, I found it deeply perplexing to be constantly stonewalled by their unwillingness to tell me anything in response to fairly innocuous questions like " How are you ? " and " What did ( do ) you do for a living ? "

They were mainly retired and mostly wealthy English incomers who, like every other person I've ever tried to befriend, seemed not to like me!

Even my endless and unremittingly hilarious tales of a small leathergoods manufacturer failed to crack their concrete exteriors and I was never privy to any of their whispered conversations which I wasn't unaware were held in such a way that one of them could keep an eye on me to make sure I wasn't about to approach them !

I am now frozen and must start my preparations for another day in my own company!

And finally a WARNING !

Don't buy and eat the pre-cooked 'Durham Meatballs' mentioned in the preceding Blog, unless you want your abdomen to swell painfully and force you to politely leave the room in a rush to avoid poisoning your family in a manner I am too embarrassed to write about !

 I actually took the decision to make up the spare bed to spare Shirley from death, though I'm not sure she would have done the same for me !

Sally-Part 70. EVEN BUYING FISH AND CHIPS CAN LEAD TO A CONFRONTATION !

DYLAN AND HIS GRANDPA ON HIS FIRST DAY HELPING ME AT MARKET. AUGUST2012.HE HATES MY FACE WITH MY GLASSES OFF ! HE SAYS IT MAKES MY EYES GO LOWER !

I TOOK MY RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY GRANDSON'S EARLY DIET SERIOUSLY !

I don't set out to insult every single living being when I write but when I find myself treated as an ageing idiot I can't help responding as if I AM a miserable old git!

When I was driving to our Scottish escape yesterday, I mentioned to Shirley what had happened the previous day at the local chip shop and her response, far from a shared exasperation, was to say that she would have kicked me out and barred me forever as well, something that has happened elsewhere in the past!

What actually occured was this. My seven year old first-born grandson, Dylan, was due to sleep at mine after I met him from school, having already had my second-born grandson, Daniel, two and a half, for the previous eight hours that day and the preceding two days as well, as well as helping my third-born child Julian, thirty one, get his new shop in Newcastle's city centre ready for opening next week by converting the ground floor and  three damp basement rooms into a Thai massage emporium for the over-stressed!

Shirley has invested our entire dwindling life-savings into packets of pre-cooked dinners from a company she discovered on the internet and delicious as they are I thought it would be a great treat to take Dylan to the beach for fish and chips and to collect those lovely little sea-washed jewel-like rounded white quartz stones to varnish and mount before they were put away, never to be looked at again.

We decided to go on our bikes, so firstly I walked back to his school to collect his bike which we had both forgotten was there!

Not really my fault as no-one told me it WAS there!

I don't actually own a bike as the bike I did once own I bought second hand from a very small man without considering just how silly I would look on what was virtually a model made for a midget!

I eventually abandoned it during a holiday in Cornwall when riding out one sunny afternoon and passing through a rough village a cruel gang of four year olds who actually on another day called out 'Cow' as Shirley walked past, shouted out " Nice bike mister! Love your bicycle clips! Are you gay?" And wolf-whistled me the whole way down their main street!

Once out of their sight I bravely gave them a two-fingered salute before bursting into tears, jumping off and recklessly throwing it over a hedge before catching a bus back to our holiday Yurt with a tale of highway robbery by illegal immigrant Romanians who also forced me off my bike because one of the gang members, an actual midget, fancied it !

"You dumped it didn't you?" Shirley sneered. " I knew you hated it from the moment I said you looked like an idiot on it and that you would one day come back with some ridiculous story! Just tell me the truth ! Did some kids shout at you?"

" No! Honestly I WAS robbed! Bound up and left to die at the side of a deserted country road by Romanian villains who swore that they would find me wherever I lived and kill me if I reported them to the police!" I  wheedled with my face turned away from my inquisitor to hide the struggle I was having to look and sound believable! A skill no man has!

" But you must go to the police. That bike cost twelve pounds! Here's the phone! I've already dialled 999, so tell them what's happened and demand an immediate response!"

My blood froze, my mouth became as dry as a desert and my legs buckled when the operator answered, requesting to know which service I required!

I held on for as long as possible, I think it was at least ten " Emergency, which service do you require caller? " before pressing the disconnect button and saying in exasperation, " Kuh ! I can't believe it, engaged! And anyway the thieves said they'll find me and kill me, so I'll just buy another bike! Now I want to rest and forget all about the experience! No! No more!"

So the bike I actually rode to the beach was Shirley's; identical to the model that I had dumped but painted pink with a lady's cross bar, a collapsed saddle that hurt  my unpadded buttocks after one minute, gears that didn't work but didn't bother Shirley and the saddle set for a very small person which I forgot to raise after blowing up the tyres which had gone flat as Shirley never rides it ! ( so that was another waste of fifteen pounds at the police ' recovered bike sale' but which I daren't mention! )

Shirley had her first rusty excuse for a bike stolen, unpadlocked, from outside the Co-op on 9:11, the very day that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the Muslim fundamentalists!

We should have informed the police but I thought that there was an obvious link with terrorism and to save Blyth from attack we kept quiet!

And with a warning to padlock the bikes and not let them out of my sight for one second ( Dylan's is also second hand and worth a fiver! ) we set out on our high speed chase to the coast, three hundred yards away which I lost easily! "

We were both starving by the time we got to the beach chip shop some four minutes later and decided to eat straight away.

The owners obviously recognised a tremendous opportunity to provide for the hordes who visit our beach and built a huge chip and ice-cream venue which is packed at weekends and during the school holidays.

Usually the smell of old fish-frying oil turns my stomach but when I'm really hungry nothing puts me off !

So, four o'clock on a  Wednesday afternoon and not in school holidays and in fact virtually deserted I asked for one portion of 'fish-bites' ( actually bits of fish fallen off but unwasted by being batterd and fried ) and chips, a paper cup of coffee with the plastic teaspoon slid handle-first through the drinking slot ready to drip onto my trousers and a tin of Coke.

I stood holding my three quid ready to pay and receive my change!

But I was asked for an amount that I thought should have bought the shop and whilst reaching for my wallet told Dylan to choose a table to eat at.

I was handed a couple of coppers change for my proffered ten pound note by a surly, ill-mannered female youth and then told loudly and contemptuously that we couldn't eat inside or rather, " You can't eat there! You've bought a takeaway! "

" And WHY can't I eat it here Miss ? "

" You can't eat takeaways inside! It says so there! " she replied pointing up at a sign on the ceiling which I wouldn't have bothered reading as when I want fish and chips I generally find it unnecessary to read signs wherever they are put and because now that I wear bifocals I would have had to tip my head right back to a point where I could look unnaturally along my nose  before losing my balance and crashing to the ground!

" If you want to eat inside you'll have to pay extra! " she continued in a manner reserved for the stupid and probably learned from months of dealing with other men just like me, out to give their grandsons a treat!

" You can eat on our outside tables if you want and that's included in the price ! "

'Marvellous!', I thought. Dylan had already chosen an uncleared table to sit at amongst several other uncleared tables and now I'd have to make him move outside to another uncleared table amongst yet more uncleared tables but with the new one covered in old and fresh bird poo and surrounded by stood-in dropped fish, chips, mushy peas, bird poo and ice cream, set right beside all the passing traffic where we would be able to breathe in their exhaust fumes! Lovely ! And me with my asthma !

Before moving outside I looked around for the tomato sauce dispenser to swamp our food in because you really need to do that with fish and chips but couldn't see it anywhere !

" Excuse me Miss, I can't see the tomato sauce dispenser anywhere . Could you show me where it is ?" I asked politely.

" Tomato sauce is extra ! " she replied in absolute boredom ! " twenty five pence a sachet ."

And that's when I shook my head in absolute exasperation and asked the question that Shirley wanted to kick me up my backside and bar me for , " Do many men shake their heads at you in disbelief at this point ? "

" Yer wot? " she said in total ignorance !

Well it was worth moving outside because Dylan got really excited when a starling landed on our table and pooed.

" Wow ! Grandpa ! Do you know that I've never actually seen a bird ACTUALLY poo before ? And there was a feather in it ! "

Oh and for the purposes of impressing my wife with my toughness, I did NOT buy a sachet of tomato sauce for twenty five pence or buy Dylan a one scoop ice cream cone after he had eaten very little fish and chips for one pound ninety!

( I bought two sachets ! .....I'm dead ! )