Musings On Romcoms

The Groupie and the Pig have been apart for much of the last month - this for reasons connected to the health of the Pig's materfamilias (pleased to report she's much better thank you). Anyway, last weekend the Pig's estimable brother (I only have the one) was on Mum-watch, so the Groupie and I watched Notting Hill. I've said this before but I rate this film as better than two of Richard Curtis's more trumpeted offerings, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Love Actually. Notting Hill is wry, as amusing as it is implausible (the charm easily defeats the implausibility) and sent this punter off to his bed in a right good mood. You have to admit as well that Hugh Grant very efficiently cornered the market for foppish charm. 70/100.

Pig On Tour

Well, not so much a tour as a two venue vacation. The Groupie has taken a richly-deserved week off work and we started by staying with Daughter Number One (and her husband CL) in Wanstead, which as any fule kno is in the north of That London. DN1 and spouse have a house there which can accommodate visiting parents notwithstanding that they also have two cats who, for reasons too complicated to relate, have to be kept apart. Long and short of it - we had a cracking time. Two world-class galleries attended and much dining-out undertaken. First up was Tate Britain. The Pig has to confess that despite being at university in That London he never made it as far as the Tate. Big mistake. It's excellent. Highlights: 1) Hockney's A Bigger Splash; 2) the Turner Bequest - loads of the Pig's favourite artist, most notably Snow Storm, a picture apparently panned by contemporary critics but, to the Pig's untutored eye, an undeniable masterpiece. Picture appended along with photographic evidence of the Pig admiring the Hockney.

Pig and Splash

The other gallery was the National Portrait Gallery - this one being within easier walking distance of KCL and therefore a familiar haunt of the Pig when he couldn't face afternoon lectures. We also took a diversion into Foyles bookshop, another place where I used to loiter when I should really have been studying. Lazy Pig. 

We ate out three times and all venues were more than passable but one stood out as excellent - The Port House on the Strand. A fabulous Iberian atmosphere and delicious tapas. Two bottle of cava and a glass of port each to round things off. I should explain that DN1 and CL were with us so the consumption of two bottles is excusable. The Pig recommends this to all fellow pigs out there - the Port House 

From That London to Ynys Mon for the rest of the week. Two excellent walks, firstly from Amlwch Port towards Point Lynas and, this afternoon, along Traeth llydan to Rhosneigr. Stunning. Putting modesty aside, the Pig should say that the walk was made all the more enjoyable by having been for a run prior to breakfast. Pig Glorioso.

Rhosneigr hoving into view

 

 

An Illustrated Definition of Sociopathy

 Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behaviour.

Commander-in Cheat

His mate

Californians Forgiven

BFP/OG/CC is/are rather vulgar, a fact that makes it odd that he should have dismissed Californian wines from his high estimation. I apologise to the winemakers of that arresting state for I have just finished my first bottle of Lodi's Three Finger Jack Old Vine Zinfandel. Delicious and subtler than reputation generally expects of California. I discovered it on the tasting table at Majestic. Excellent with blue cheese, richly alcoholic and a viable alternative to a bottle of port. Having said all of this, you should remember that BFP (dis)credits himself with having the palate of a stray dog. I leave you to try it for yourself.  

Are Brilliant ... Mark XXIX

Hello, Chortley Chuckles here. As the latest arrival into the schizophrenic world of The Overgraduate, I am delighted to curate this the latest contribution to the thread that recognises brilliance. And all of this comes on top of a rather brilliant day I had on Friday. My only regret is that it was a solitary day as I am in Ynys Mon on my own, as is my wont when the Open Championship is to be watched. Many moons ago, before we were fortunate enough to own Plas Piggy, I used to sequester myself away in Bert's (he was my father-in-law) house and watch the whole day of the BBC coverage. These days, commercial imperatives have asserted themselves and the coverage is to be found on Sky. Oh well. And one does have to admit that the Sky coverage is technically adroit even if my old curmudgeonly self finds fault with some of the commentators. Can someone please explain to Nick Dougherty the difference between definite and indefinite articles - his usage is affected and annoying to us pedants. I also find Wayne Riley's sad need to be loved rather pitiful - you find yourself wanting to put an arm around his shoulder and tell him he's doing just fine.

Anyway, are brilliant.

Sir Garfield Sobers, who died this week. It is tempting to amend the designation and say that he was brilliant, but no, that would be wrong. Sobers' all-round brilliance is a thing for the ages. By a distance the greatest all-rounder ever to have graced cricket. This opinion brooks no argument. My first ever visit to Edgbaston was when Dad took us to see him play for Notts against Warwickshire. I later learned that my dear friend ICW was also there that day, taken by his own father for the exact same reason.

David Hockney, another recent death. Also is brilliant. There are quite a few documentaries doing the rounds on streaming services - he comes across as engaging and, most importantly, hugely gifted. In later life he became mildly obsessed by painting large canvases. Chortley Chuckles has a liking for such things - this may be because Chortley is rather vulgar. Hey ho.

The Open Championship, particularly the first two days. Love it.

Related to the above - links golf. There is nothing quite like it, particularly in the parched conditions of a hot summer as we are currently enjoying/enduring. A large part of that brilliant day I had on Friday was spent on the practice ground at Clwb Golff Ynys Mon. So wrapped up in my practice was I that I decided against actually playing the course and instead went into the bar and was gratified to find that I had thirty quid of credit on my membership card. Guinness and scratchings. Brilliant, all of it.

Ynys Mon itself. I thought this for the umpteenth time as I drove back from the golf club, taking a circuitous route around the top of the island. We are blessed.

Are Brilliant ... Mark XXVIII

When you've been going through a lean patch (inspiration-wise in my case) what you can do is re-release some of your old hits, jazzed-up a bit. Seems to have worked for Taylor Swift, with whom I have never before been compared, not even by Chortley Chuckles.

Definitely not the Overgraduate

So returns the Are Brilliant thread, itself (as you may well have spotted) a limp regurgitation of a catchphrase from The Fast Show, Now there's a nice irony because The Fast Show is/was brilliant.

Definitely not Chortley Chuckles

Are brilliant ...

Beverley and East Riding Golf Club. Blasted moorland, cows wandering around, sunshine and a strong wind. This is how golf should be.

Howley Hall Golf Club. A Mackenzie course. parkland but with space to breathe and a second hole played to a green hidden behind an old wall. This, contrarily, is also how golf should be. Howley Hall and Beverley in combination cost us less than sixty quid. It's not grim up North.

The Rugby League Magic Weekend. The culmination of our Northern adventure. £41 for seven matches. Great sport. Good food. Even better company. The OG trinity was accompanied by TW, AO, BH, JS and TS. Brilliant.

Hill Dickinson

The Hill Dickinson Stadium where the aforesaid rugby took place. A model for new stadia on the just-less-than-gargantuan scale. How can a firm of solicitors afford the naming rights on the place? It wasn't like that in my day. 

Quiche. Heatwaves demand this.

 

Wagner/Polanski/Allen

The weather has been bloody boiling - successive days in the 30s and no respite on the horizon. OG/BFP/CC has been away from his desk and since his desk is at the top of Casa Piggy where the heat gathers, this gives a partial excuse for abandoning his/their public correspondence. Sorry about that - you must be in a state of grave yearning. I could bring the laptop downstairs and work there but this desk is my favourite prop. Pathetic isn't it because as that master of mischief (Lord of Misrule as GL so ably referred to him in his eulogy) Ian Marchant kept reminding me, the first thing that a writer must do (even a crap one like me) is bloody well write. So here comes something dredged up from my lousy memory.

Big Fat Lazy Pig in the sun

Those of you who have been paying attention (believe it or not I encountered one such last week) will know that Overgradutae/Big Fat Pig/Chortley Chuckles together constitute this writer's unholy trinity. Some of you knowing my less than modest grip on life might have prepared yourselves for the OG to compare himself to the three cancelled artists listed in the title of this piece. Well, stand down, even CC isn't that self-involved. No, what brought this infamous trio to mind was reflecting on watching Hannah and her Sisters again (see this blog 27 June). I can offer no answer to the old conundrum of whether we must tie an artist's oeuvre to his/her morals and censor our enjoyment of them. I will say only this: I love driving my precious Jag with Wagner blaring on the stereo; Chinatown is possibly the greatest colour attempt at film noir; Woody Allen is indisputably very funny. I am weak.   

Powerful Dialogue

The Groupie and the Pig are making their way through The West Wing for the umpteenth time. It seems strange to be back in a time when pagers were still a thing and mobile phones were not so powerful, but the basic brilliance of the show still stands. It may be my advanced age and my carefully nurtured cynicism but I occasionally get weary at the perfectly formed liberal diatribes that pass for dialogue, but just when one wonders if Aaron Sorkin is not perhaps the genius one had thought him, he reels you back into the game (the thinking game I think we should call it) by puncturing the self-righteousness of the major characters. If you want to know what I mean then check out episodes 1 and 2 of Series 3. Toby and Josh are in full and seemingly unchecked arrogant spate until a minor character (Doug, a political consultant) finally cracks and lacerates them with a dose of angry realpolitik. Well done Doug and, of course, well done Aaron. A serious show about serious matters. A great game to play is to watch The West Wing and then to switch to CNN to witness the evil, witless drivel that emanates from the Trump White House (and, I'm afraid to say, from the bulk of the compromised GOP) - if it wasn't so important it would be funny.

Whilst I'm on the topic of television, we've found another show that we like. It rather more than tips its hat to the tropes of film noir and it is, of course, no secret that Big Fat Pig loves a good film noir. The show is Sugar. We're only a couple of episodes in but it all looks very promising.

Moving on - from television to film. The cancellation of Woody Allen is a topic on which I don't have strong opinions beyond the vague unease that, no matter the state of the criminal law, there are some things you don't do when in loco parentis. But Allen remains one of my favourite film-makers, one who deserves the over-applied label of 'auteur'. We watched Hannah and her Sisters last night. An excellent movie with superb dialogue (better than Sorkin). 86/100.

       

The Pig Is Falling Apart ... But Not As Quickly As He Had Feared

I was at Plas Piggy over the weekend, doing some thinking and writing. Nothing very creative, just some stuff (technical term) for the King Edward VI Foundation. As ever the island proved a starter for my writing muscles. God, I love that place. Just to make things better, the flying vermin seagulls aren't yet bouncing around on the roof. I know they are nesting (apparently they are monogamous and return to the same nest for up to twenty years) but the chicks and noise haven't started yet. Small mercies.

Which is not what I am going to tell you about. No, my latest little melodrama commenced as I drove the precious Bigster back to Casa Piggy on Sunday - an enjoyable journey listening to Leonard Cohen on Spotify. The only thing that discomforted good old Chortley Chuckles was a growing awareness of a large floater in the left eye - a sort of spider's web hampering my vision. It didn't take long on the old interweb thing to diagnose myself as having a detached retina. Thus was Chortley (Knuckles was left at home) subject to a mild panic. So he joined the queue at the Birmingham Eye Hospital at 8.30 yesterday morning. It opens at 9.00. I was thirteenth in the queue. All was efficient and everyone (except two over-lively children) was on their best behaviour. I was triaged (I assume that's s verb) swiftly and then saw first a nurse and then a doctor within two hours. All thorough, all reassuring. When it works like this the NHS really is a thing of wonder.

PVD

Upshot? Chortley the manic depressive now has another diagnosis to drag around with him - Posterior Vitreous Detachment (PVD). This is much less serious than a detached retina although the symptoms are similar. Basically the jelly behind the eye has detached itself from the back of the eye. Apparently my brain will adapt and learn to live with it although this may take a few months. Phew. Just another signifier of getting old.

They had put some drops in my eyes for the examination by the doctor and warned that my vision would be blurred for several hours. They weren't kidding. I'd had the good sense not to drive (train and taxi in) but it was only when I exited the hospital that I realised I couldn't read my phone well enough to order an Uber. Thus Chortley embarked on one of his tragicomic routines. He phoned the Groupie but she (as Chortley should have remembered) was working and also waiting in for the carpet fitter (Groupie's office - it looks great). No matter, Chortley Chuckles was feeling quite chipper (he had been more scared of the possible diagnosis than he had admitted to himself) and so decided to get a bus into Town and then to get a train. He started towards where he thought the hospital entrance/exit could be found. He got this wrong and was soon in a building site. He turned his blurry eyes back to the hospital and then a blinding (see what I did there - puntastic) idea came to the boy Chuckles. From the dissolute past of rugby Saturday nights, the Chuckles memory dredged up the phone number of that saviour of many a weekend - Star Cars of Erdington. They got him home.  

Phew What A Scorcher!

BFP was quite clever when he arrived at the golf club this morning, at least he thought he was. He parked in the lee of a tree because even at 7.45 it was what we meteorologists call bloody hot. The resultant shade would keep the precious Bigster as cool as might be possible. Not if the sun goes the opposite way to that you had imagined. So when BFP came off the course at midday, feeling not a little sweaty and knackered (the Pig always carries his bag - it's point of principle), he opened the boot and was greeted by a wall of captured heat. When he clambered into the driver's seat his legs and back burned. The Pig is a fool.

What of the golf? Well, acceptable since you ask. Not stellar but acceptable. Let's leave it at that and move on.

That bloody hotness. Record-breaking apparently - the old records for May heat dating from 1944. Does this prove anthropogenic global-warning or is it just an outlier? The Pig doesn't know. Probably he should. He drives a hybrid but would not seriously consider going fully electric until the refuelling infrastructure is up to scratch. But which, comes first, the chicken or the egg?

And here's another thing that's bothering me. If the Pig fleeced his employer of £400k, one thing that is certain is that the Groupie would notice pretty quickly, particularly if both Pig and Groupie had the same employer. So what's wrong with Nicola Sturgeon. All this proves is that, as we have known all along, the Groupie is a lot sharper than La Sturgeon. 

    

Weird World

It's a bloody good job that I inhabit the same skin as Chortley Chuckles and am ensconced in marital bliss with the Groupie. The great triumvirate (that's OG, BFP and CC in case you haven't been paying attention) finds itself wound up in the paradox of modern living, wherein the good things are very good and the bad are frankly dreadful. As we (the triumvirate - for today I am all three at once) sit here typing we are listening to Maddy Prior's heavenly voice. This is a good thing. On the wall are various movie posters and an Aston Old Edwardians club shield. These are good things. Fresh in Pig's memory is yesterday's golf when he actually played quite well. This is a good thing. Rather than play again this morning (my shoes are letting in water and there was a drizzly fug) the Pig went for a gentle run in the rain and felt the better for it. This is a good thing. The OG then took to his keyboard and ordered a new pair of golf shoes (rather an overdue purchase), a new golf bag (zip bust on the old one), and some golf balls (didn't lose any yesterday but supplies are looking a tad thin). Such retail therapy is a good thing.

So we feel quite well. A state of mind that makes me feel a little guilty because the world outside Casa Piggy is going to hell in a handcart. The Labour Party seems intent on self-evisceration as a quite unlovely cast of characters hovers over the near-carcass of the mass of inadequacy that is Keir Starmer, each member betraying a revolting ambition and a lack of political morals. The Conservative Party, well what can we say about them? You're right - nothing. They are a quivering mass of nothingness. Lurking in the shadows is the curious beast of Reform - an inchoate sub-moral sliminess. The Greens? If you're going to tell me that Zac Polanski is a potential PM, well, sorry, you need your bumps feeling. Anarcho-syndicalism anyone? 

The triumviarate is bipolar - does that mean there's six of us? It's getting crowded in here. 

Eating Out And Coming Down

That well known trinity of OG, BFP, and CC has returned to leafy Sutton Coldfield after what can only be described as a magnificent week on Mon with the Groupie. None of us (meaning Overgraduate, Big Fat Pig and Chortley Chuckles) can recall being happier. We had a great time. Back home and there is a slight sensation of let-down but we did have a very fine Chinese take-away on the evening of our return and that helps - indeed there is still enough left for my supper tonight.

Conwy Marina

We ate out twice last week and both were noteworthy, cementing the conclusion that pub food is these days really very good. After our visit to Bodnant we called in at Conwy Marina and had a meal at The Mulberry, which sits at the edge of the marina. I was slow to twig that the pub name is on account of the D-Day Mulberry Harbours being developed and tested at Conwy. My meal was by way of a nautical pun, the 'Big Buoy' burger - it had a portion of most burgerish things within and even BFP was satisfied.   

The Breeze Hill

Our last night was even better. We wandered up the hill from Plas Piggy to our local, the Breeze Hill. A good test of any pub kitchen is whether they can handle a request for a steak done medium-rare. The Breeze Hill can. The Pig was very satisfied. and the side-order of onion rings was epic. The Pig is a connoisseur when it comes to onion rings and these were large in number and quality. Decent beer as well.

Introducing A New Persona

You will know me as the Overgraduate (OG) or possibly as Big Fat Pig (BFP) but today I want to introduce you to another of my split personalities. Chortley Chuckles has emerged from my subconscious and will now take his place in these ramblings. He was beckoned to the front of my mind when the Groupie amiably commented that she liked the way I laugh at my own jokes - a sort of chortle cum chuckle. Thus was Chortley Chuckles brought to life. He is a down-at-heel entertainer. He entertains all ages but his act for children also comprises his unseen but faithful dog Knuckles. Thus he has a theme song, its precise tune known only to OG, BFP, and to Chortley himself - the refrain runs 'Chortley Chuckles with his prize dog Knuckles'. This line is by way of an oblique tribute to the briliance of Clive James' haunting chorus, 'I have the only cure for life, and the cure for life is joy, I'm the crying man that everyone calls laughing boy'. 

Chortley Chuckles and his prize dog Knuckles

If you encounter Chortley Chuckles (CC) please be gentle with him - as with many clowns there is a serious man hidden beneath.

Living La Vida Loca

I read a translation of the phrase I have used as today's heading and I note that la vida loca is exemplified by spontaneous debauchery. Well, I am neither young enough nor energetic enough for such behaviour but I haven't entirely given up hope so I'll stick with it as way of laying down click-bait.

Actually what I wanted to convey is that I am having a splendid time with my soul mate. The Groupie had been working ridiculously hard on a big commercial transaction that threatened (as these things do) to get totally out of control. She eventually stewarded it over the line and, I am pleased to relate, she has been properly rewarded. Upshot - we are in our beloved Ynys Mon for a week of rest and recuperation - For her that is - I have been doing the better part of bugger all as usual, which is surprisingly wearying.

On Monday we walked at Treborth, the botanical gardens of the University of Bangor - an underestimated attraction. Yesterday was even better. We were at Bodnant Garden. We have been there countless times before but this time we hit a sweet spot. The famed laburnum arch is not quite in full flower but the rhododenrons are in their pomp. Superb. So superb that I am attaching pictures, taken, of course, on the Groupie's superior phone.

Today we walked at Porth Lynas - rugged and magnificent, rather as BFP appears on the appended selfie. The Groupie, naturally, just looks magnificent. Immodesty compels me to mention that I had earlier been for a run round to Red Wharf Bay.

I have revived myself from the earlier walk with a cup of damned fine coffee and next on the agenda will be a stroll down to Benllech beach, just to emphasise to ourselves how bloody lucky we are. Cymru am bloody byth.

Sartre A Parfois Tort

'L'enfer. c'est les autres'. This is one of my favoured borrowed maxims and that fact goes some way to illuminating my misanthropy. It came back to me as I took the train to Brum last Saturday with the Groupie and Daughter Number Two. Deftly avoiding the puddle of puke on the exit stairway from the platform did nothing to divert me from my usual snobbish reaction to the late Saturday denizens of our city centre. DN2 is particularly scathing about my attitude on these occasions so I kept my counsel and treated only myself to my shafts of Wildean wit about modern life. The news is this - DN2 has a point - of course she does.

Why this Damascene conversion on the part of the Pig? To a small degree I have to acknowledge that I was a young tearaway myself (in a deeply ironic manner you have to understand) and have been an elderly disgrace at times. But no, the major balm to my disaffection on Saturday was the event that took us to town that night. We saw To Kill a Mockingbird at the Hippodrome. Brilliant. This was the Aaron Sorkin adaptation - wordy (as is Sorkin's way) but quite brilliant. Deeply humane, deeply moving. The production is still on tour for another couple of months and it will be well worth a journey to see it. The acting is excellent, the writing is clever enough to wring humour out of the tale's inherent tragedy, and, oh, just as an aside, the staging is jaw-droppingly clever. The full house erupted into proper cheers at the conclusion - quelqeufois l'enfer ce n'est pas les autres. We were united by an uplifting production - it is proper to get out and remind ourselves how plain bloody clever human endeavour can be and how generous can be the reception for that endeavour.       

Apologies For Absence

I have been away from this blog for a few weeks. I apologise. The world has been in a catastrophic mess. It still is. It has not really seemed that I can add anything to the commentary on Trump's war in Iran. By calling it Trump's war I am probably doing a disservice to Netanyahu. Hey ho. I will say only this: this war has been prosecuted on a vainglorious whim boosted by a misunderstood Zionist zeal; the Americans have not come even close to articulating a proper reason for their attack; Iran is a crazed theocracy but the way to deal with it is not Operation Epic Fury.

Enough of such things. Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three. Last week BH, MS and RW were kind enough to let me join the Appleby Renegade Tour, a golfing trip of sheer fun. The history would bore you, suffice to say that Appleby was the venue for the early QMT golf tours - I have blogged about that before and, as I always say, it's a long story so I won't weary you with it.

Immodestly I have to relate that the Pig won the golf. Not through any great competence but by sheer obduracy. Enough of that. The courses. First up was Bentham, comprised of nine old holes and nine newer. I'm glad to say you could not really see the join. The Pig got the tour off to an inauspicious start by blasting two out of bounds from the first tee - thereafter a degree of sanity and good fortune came to his rescue.      

A god meal and a few pints were followed by a goodish night's sleep (I'm not as good as I used to be with an unfamiliar bed) and we even went for a walk around Appleby on the second morning before our afternoon outing at Appleby Golf Club. I had played Appleby twice before and thought it adequate. I was wrong - this is a fine golf course on wild moorland. We played through a blessedly short but biblical storm and under high winds. I should also record that the Pig produced an improbable clearance break of twenty-two to clinch a frame on the clubhouse snooker table. Great moments in sport.

More food. More beer. Another truncated night's sleep and then an early start on the journey home. We broke the journey at Breadsall Priory which is where QMT Tour is to be held in June. Very much a hotel/resort set-up with two courses. We played the Priory course. A perfectly decent lay-out but very hilly. Not remotely as memorable as Appleby but a good end to the trip. I slept well back at home and woke as stiff as a board. I was till sore on Sunday morning but dragged myself out for a thirty minute run and that made me feel much better. You're not getting any younger Pig but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Evil That Men Do - And An Uplifting Coda

Harriet is a biopic about Harriet Tubman, an enslaved woman who fled to freedom and became a ferocious activist in the liberation of many others. It is a tale of heroism and of human bondage. It is decorated by two stellar performances - Cynthia Erivo in the title role and Joe Alwyn as an adamantine slave-owner.

The film does nothing flashy or overtly clever - it lays the true story before us and if this sort of thing doesn't make you ponder man's propensity for evil, then you have a heart of stone. Find it on iPlayer. 70/100.   

6N 23.5

Here's a thing - Sean Edwards' much-vaunted France defence shipped ninety-six points in their last two matches of the Six Nations, fifty away to Scotland and then forty-six to the previously impotent England attack. That France still won the championship and, of course, the match against England says much for their searing pace and almost as much for England's imbecile indiscipline. Leaving aside my frustration (this puts it mildly) at the brain-dead behaviour of England's finest, we do have to concede that the two matches (Scotland v France, and France v England) did serve up proof that rugby union can still be thrilling even when it falls into the hands of the mirthless pragmatists. Mind you I could do without advertisements popping up in the middle of play - ITV, stop it please.

Here's another thing - England won only one match. The stirring effort in Paris should not disguise this.  

6N 23.4

On 23 February I blogged about England's brain-dead capitulation to Ireland. I said that I might have a potentially consolatory bet on Italy to beat England. I did. They did. I'm still angry though. Italy are a decent side but I thought the sheer emotion of what they were doing (they had never previously beaten England) actually hampered them - England were so predictably shite that Italy did not have to be anywhere near their best to win. I've said enough.

Let's concentrate on a match that revived the love for the game. Scotland 50 France 40. Rugby - bloody hell. As far from England's constipated box-kickathon as one might imagine. And remember this is a Scotland team who also lost to Italy. I told you Italy were good. 

Pride Comes Before A Fall

Big Fat Pig is nothing if not an entertainer. Yesterday he slopped around the golf course in the mud and the puddles - for once it wasn't raining but we are going to need a very prolonged dry spell to get Royal Pype Hayes back into shape. Now the Pig's game has been in pretty shabby order for the past couple of years. Much of this is down to age and an inherent lack of talent but I do also have the excuses born of my own clumsiness. First I fell down the stairs and damaged my back. Next up was the infamous bike crash when I cycled into the back of a stationary Merc and wrecked my knee. Finally I somehow ricked my foot so that I could hardly walk. These misfortunes meant no running and no cycling for a lengthy spell but I persisted with the golf and got progressively (quickly in truth) worse at it. Only recently do I detect some green shoots of recovery. This may not be totally unrelated to an encouraging amount of running and the resultant mental wellbeing.

So here's the story. By my low standards, I started yesterday's round well. By the time we reached the ninth tee I was playing comfortably under my handicap and feeling rather good about it all - the ball was under control and the company was excellent - GB and JW thank you. Hole 9 at PH is stroke index 18, that is to say it is the easiest hole on the course. The Pig had the honour after a deft up-and-down for par on the 8th. All was well in Pig World. No need for any heroics so the driver stayed in the bag and Pig aimed to lay-up with a calm 2 utility. It is at this point that Pig's recollection becomes blurred. The tee shot travelled all of a yard and nestled in front of the tee mat. No matter, Pig would take his medicine and lay the second shot short of the ditch at the front of the green. From there he would make a five. The problem was that Pig then pulled his second shot miles right (the Pig is left-handed) onto the roof of the greenkeepers' hut, off which it bounced back but settled down three yards out-of bounds. Sharp intake of breath. Repeat. The next swipe took the ball even further out-of bounds. By the time the Pig had effected that sensible lay-up he had already played seven. There was more playing indignity to come, but we will park that for a moment. You see the first ball out-of-bounds was findable, perched on a muddy mound. The Pig retrieved it nonchalantly having scrambled the mound still with his golf bag slung across his shoulders (the Pig always carries). This is where it gets worse because the Pig then slithered down the other side of the bank and landed on his back. Have you ever tried to rise from a prone position with a golf bag pinioned on your back? The Pig has to tell you it's bloody difficult. So difficult that if there is a nearby bed of nettles, one might roll into them. This the Pig promptly did. One might go so far as to say that the Pig looked not unremotely like a bit of a fool. Brushing the dirt off his back and legs and trying to get some undergrowth from out of his belt-line, the Pig returned to the ball in play - I would remind you it had taken him seven strokes to get that far. Never mind, down in two more and the indignity of a ten is avoided. Pig therefore, took a deep breath, swung slowly and ... deposited the ball into the ditch. By the time he finished he had used a dozen strokes. You ought to get some sort of award for such persistence.

As I say, pride comes before a fall. For the record, I played neatly for the rest of the round.