Of Heroic Failures

Last week was the Graham Scott Memorial QMT golf tour. This year's venue was Hawkstone Park Hotel, our first visit and, one has to say, it ticked all of the boxes I can think of. Two courses, a well-staffed bar, decent food and, the final ingredient, excellent weather. Congratulations to PC, our new champion, but the greater part of the trip was all about our aged frailties on the course and our eternal ability to laugh at each other. Bloody great fun. 

Now I could belabour you with details of my birdie on the 6th on the Hawkstone Course, but, quite frankly, you would not believe the brilliance of it. Instead let me tell you about our last day and the Texas Scramble on the Championship Course. Big Fat Pig was on the tee ten minutes early - an atempt to live down the shame of his hung-over tardiness on the previous day. He was in a team with CC, RP and RW. The Pig had his personal moments but, then again, too few to mention. No, the highpoints of the round were twofold. First up was RW's sublime driver off the deck on the fifth hole - it went like a tracer bullet and, yes, we made our birdie. Perhaps better was RP's mishit tee shot on the short ninth which unerringly blind-sided a goose pecking at the ground to the left of the green. The bird seemed none the worse (if a little peeved) for its encounter with a scuffed Callaway. Laugh? We nearly shat. RP later redeemed himself with a sterling performance on the last par five and with some clutch putts. We came second, one under gross. Roll on next year. 

 

   

A Mad World My Masters

As the pace of change quickens, the good things can get obscured by the avalanche of the inane and the downright immoral that make up so much of modern life. You will not, of course, be surprised if I allude to Donald Trump and his wicked cohorts being at the forefront of much that is bad. However I will steer clear of pontificating on the Donald for now. If, like me, you are a gob-smacked Trump watcher, you will perhaps join me in hoping that he will be brought low by his own glaring crassness. I wish I was more optimistic.

Let us, then, steer clear of global politics. Instead let us consider the precarious state of my two favourite team games - rugby union and cricket. I was passably competent at the former and an occasional fumbler at the latter but it is cricket that I prefer watching. Both games stand at a precipice of commercial oblivion. And when I say this, I am talking about the two sports in their pure forms.

A fanciful imagining of BFP in his prime

Rugby Union Football has been worn down by professionalism to a mere shadow of the glorious, muddied oafdom that was so deliciously available to earlier generations. Fifth team rugby is now a thing of distant memories and it will never return. BDR used to say that if a game is worth playing, it is worth playing badly. This ostensibly glib remark masks a lost truth. I am partly to blame because I played and coached rugby with a distinct desire to win. However I hope I never quite lost the instinct that it does a man (or indeed a woman) no moral harm to be bested every now and again. That is part of sport/growing up. Myriad genies are out of the rugby bottle and cannot be put back: misplaced professionalism; tactical substitutions; impact players; the advancement of the interest of the paying spectator over that of the players. The latest new kid on the block is the wrteched R360, a devil-child rugby version of the woeful and divisive LIV Golf. Shame on you Mike Tindall. I am glad I played when I did, from my early efforts at prop aged eleven to my final joyous season at No. 8 for the fourths at AOE at the age of forty-eight.

As I write this I am listening to commentary of the first day of the World Test Championship between Australia and South Africa at Lord's. I am delighted to say that there is a full-house and will allow prejudice to prompt me to add that South Africa seem to be getting the better of it - I can't be doing with that Steve Smith, brilliant as he can be.

Have you ever tried to watch the entirety of an IPL game? It takes for ever. The ingenuity of the batting, I will grant you, is staggering. The fielding is sublime. But it is nothing more than glorified (very glorified) pub cricket. Pop has eaten itself. Enjoy test cricket while you can - it will not be re-invented.  

     

A Long Way From Anywhere

Every time I go to Cornwall I wonder why I don't spend more time there. It is a magical county. And then I endure six or seven hours on the M5 and I remember why we bought in Anglesey instead. Cornwall is a long way from anywhere - nothing can be done about this, nor indeed should anything be done. The otherness and remoteness are part of the charm.

This time we went all the way down to Falmouth to attend the wedding of H and S. H is my nephew - he teaches down there and has gone fully native, an enviable state. What a great day the wedding itself proved to be - the sun shone and H's speech even brought  a tear to these cynical old eyes with an affectionate reference to my late father.

The Clan Roberts had descended en masse on Cornwall for the week. The Groupie and BFP were accompanied by Daughters Numbers 1 & 2 and their respective husband and partner. We had a whale of a time. Indeed whale was one of the few acquatic species not represented on the seafood platter I gorged myself on at the Muddy Beach Cafe in Penryn. No pretensions, just good service and top food. Now I style myself a good judge of a seafood platter and I have to say this was superb. If you have the chance to try it, eschew a starter and go for the platter with optional extra of a dressed crab. Squid, scallops, king prawns, shrimp-loaded skins, mussels, crab. Superb. I never usually bore you with photos of the Pig in action but I will make an exception so that you can see the plate (or rather board) before I tucked-in. And no I didn't have a pudding. Superb.