I’m clearly in some kind of Golf-Hating frenzy completely at odds with a rigid daily schedule ensuring the highlights represent the most important part of my day. But that’s because of some kind of skewed partiotism, rather than an enjoyment or respect for the actual game.

Golf is for the aged. Whether those participating can be defined by physical frailty or trousers fastened just under the breastbone is largely irrelevant. It is no more an athletic sport that crown green bowling or tiddlywinks. To charactorise it, think of crochet decked out with designer polo shirts, mobile phones and self-aggrandisement. It is as artificial and contrived as football is spontaneous and accessible.

Golf has no spontaneous moments “ no sudden stretching of sinews or head first lunges into potential bone crunching tackles. It is a self conscious process with technique taught by muscle memory instead of natural movement. Short of falling from a tall story told at the 19th hole, it is hard to imagine how anything other than vanity could be injured during the previous 18.

And that’s my problem with Golf. It’s not that it’s pointless “ many, if not all, sports are. It’s not that to improve, one must replace natural instincts with torturous process. It’s not even the ridiculous class-ridden rules and penchants for baseball caps. My problem is that to play, you must be old in the mind and terribly serious to boot. A ball and a stick “ hitting the former with the latter is hardly an endeavour on the scale of say World Peace. But that is how it is treated with simple club selection bringing a frown-ridden countenance to the search for the appropriate stick from the quiver of technology at the golfers disposal. I want to scream GO ON, TAKE A CHANCE, pick any old stick and just hit the bloody thing?

Age slows you down. It blunts the extremes of personality. It replaces impulsiveness with process. To play golf you need all of these things and none of their opposites. Whether you are 11 or 111, once golf appears a sensible pastime, your youth is over.

That’s why I hate golf.

A chestnut so hoary that it’s shacked up in a hourly rented hotel room offering sexual services to young impressionable conkers. But nevertheless, it deserves a further proding after the alarming tubbiness of Europe’s twelve greatest golfers. Yes, for this week only Britain has subsumed its’ proud sovereign history to vanquish the rather trimmer ex-colonials from the United States of we’ll bomb anywhere. Interesting slice of hypocrisy this; for 51 weeks of the year, the slur of being amalgamated into a European superstate invites jingoistic spittle from Daily Mail readers everywhere. And yet come the Ryder cup, we’re all friends across the channel with an outstanding team spirit and acting as one country, well as long as that country speaks English. Last time round, we were even led by a German, doesn’t anyone read history anymore?

But great as they are at twatting a ball with a big stick, one could not, with any degree of anatomical accuracy, consider these lardy fairway perambulators as athletes. Take “Big” Colin for starters (and he’s clearly had a few, deep fried and double portioned), with his wobbly jowels and working mans club gut. Clearly still close to the top of his game at 43, but technically speaking, a bloater.

Darren Clarke is another; can smack the spheric miles and miles but has never missed a meal; the site of him chomping a Cuban cigar washed down with a pint of black gold at the end of play did jar somewhat with proper athletes re-hydrating and refusing marital sex because it may affect their playing performance.

Imagine wheeling Thierry Henry for the Arsenal on at 43 “Remember Alan Shearer in his last season at Newcastle. Still had two legs, but one was for standing on and the other for shooting, if the strip had been all white, he’d have easily passed as a goal post. Golf is almost a game for life; you can play until all sense of physical ability has been worn away by age. That doesn’t feel like sport.

It got me thinking though; there’s a few more out there even after we’ve lumped in Darts and Snooker. The first takes place in a bar, the second played with the participants dressed like Victorian butlers. It’s the slow paced asymmetric dynamic that riles; “Oh I’ve hard my turn, go on, you have a go while I have a little sit down” You wouldn’t get a boxer trying that or a footballer handing over the ball because his allotted time has expired. Sport should be about beating what’s in front of you not taking turns to best a fairway or a snooker table, or, for pity’s sake, a bloody dartboard.

So into this bucket of non sport, let’s add Cricket (the only game in the history of competition that stops for lunch) and Bowls (entry age 65, sounds like a prostrate issue). In fact anything that turtles along at walking pace or below and encourages competitors to sit and have a think. Sport should be fast, instinctive and harking back to a time when the field of play contained roaring armies and all manner of edged weapons.

Fastest. Longest. Highest. A simple principle laid down to police the boundaries of sport. Except if we’re beating the Americans or, especially, the Australians. In that case, let me be the first to idolise the athletic prowess of our Synchronised Tiddlywinks team. All bets are off when we’re beating other countries, although it doesn’t happen often enough for the rules of proper sport to apply.

Well you can, but it’s properly silly. None of the local taxi firms were interested in a cash deal in exchange for some transport to the airport. Apparently their entire fleets have been firebombed or carjacked as per the macro-traffic conditions we operate under in Aylesbury. The firm stepped in and rather than a cut’n’shut minicab of dubious mechanical history, a brand new Merc whispered up the drive.

The taxi had come from London, the driver from Poland. I’ve never really understood the etiquette of taxi journey speak so offered up a non threatening opening gambit praising his rather funky SatNav. No sooner had the words left my mouth was he abandoning any semblance of road watching instead thumbing buttons and scrolling pages like a man discovering Free Britney Spears Lesbian Mud Wrestling Pictures” on the internet.

I live here” he jabbed the screen depicting some tiny Polish street brought to life by the power of technology Warsaw, lovely city, pretty girls, many many English people very happy here“. The navigation system offered a direct route via a non existent sea tunnel but lasting only 9 hours. I was on the verge of saying It’s 400 miles, we’ve got half a packet of Werthers’ originals and we’re wearing sunglasses, let’s go!”

Continue reading “You can’t get there from here.” →

Fire drills are analogous to dentist’s drills only a little more painful while adding loudhailers. That is unless you frequent a particularly old school dentist who’s dispensed with an expensive raft of tools and training supplanting them instead with shouting and pliers.

The insistent peeling of the alarm bell failed to trigger a headlong rush for the stairs because everyone knows it’s a drill. The fire marshals (basically exactly the same kind of people who feel they have unique and valuable skills suited to the Parish Council and Neighbourhood Watch) herded us exitwards grumbling as we naughty sheep finished e-mails, coffees and a sharp expose of the national Cricket team’s shortcomings.

One of the hidden benefits of being housed on the top floor of the building is the likely chance of being charred to a business casual crisp as the lower six floors disgorge onto the fire stairs. Today our future identification by dental records was further confirmed with a peopled backdraft swelling the stairs to the denseness of an illegal gathering and stopping the evacuation stone dead. Which describes perfectly our mortal state had it been a proper fire due entirely to the incident team” forgetting to open the fire doors. So a thousand soon to be crispy employees were funnelled through two tiny exit cubicles while the large exits specifically designed for keeping you alive remained locked hard shut.

Had it been a real fire, the Dunkirk spirit that bound together the stationary pre-charred on the stairs would have rapidly given way to get the hell out of my way, I’m WAY more important than you“. Colleagues would have been kicked to the ground and trampled over with high heal shoes and custom made brogues. Fairly similar to our traditional meeting etiquette except without anyone taking minutes to persecute the innocent at some later date.

Finally arriving outside some ten minutes later, a high-viz jacketed “ crazed with power “ excitedly shouted through a loudhailer Please keep to the pavement, there is vehicular activity on the road“. Firstly what kind of idiot behaviour enunciates vehicular” when in possession of the jobsworth megaphone and secondly really, traffic on the ROAD? No Shit Sherlock, how have I survived so long without your laughable homage to the highway code“

Building on their spectacular failure, the make sure everyone dies except us” fire team decided we weren’t worth counting, instead sending us back inside insisting we scanned back in. The security system then had a bit of a moment as it tried to reconcile people signing back in who hadn’t signed out. It’s gone for a little lie down and was last seen steaming and sending arrggh, eek, out of cheese error�? to the console.

We climbed seven flights of stairs rather than wait a couple of days for the lifts to become available. It took about a quarter of the time descending them had earlier. Kind of sums up the whole façade really.

Next time just let me burn at my desk, it’s not like I’m a fee earner or anything.

Camping. It’s a word to strike mortal fear into the heart of anyone who has suffered under canvas, which is statistically everyone who has tried tented life for a laugh“. It’s only funny if you’re watching other people being swept down a rain lashed hillside, while simultaneously pots, pans and the odd domestic animal are braining them through the onset of extreme gravity. Now that’s properly funny.

Four years ago, I wrote this:
Now let’s talk about tents. No, actually let’s not as it’s clear to me there are two types of people in this world, those who believe camping is a fun and healthy encounter with the rugged outdoors and the rest of us who see that as the rantings of a delusional madman. I’m sorry but there is only one agreeable night-time experience that doesn’t allow me to stand up, roll over or sleep and it’s not camping.”

I’ll not bore you with when or even why I kept it but rather place it as a marker for when camping became synonymous with misery, torment and pain. Those freezing nights in the staying awake” bag, wet on the outside, clammy on the inside with only creepy crawly night creatures birthing young in your ear for company.

Continue reading “When camping goes bad.” →