Advent 8

I was with Viperjohn, Mikey B and Big Willy yesterday, drinking and eating curry. Seeing that formidable threesome put me nicely in mind of today's nominated place. Dunmore East was our destination for the final week of April during twenty over-indulgent years.

Whether it be in The Strand or The Haven (our two favoured drinking holes) fun was always on the menu. The golf was a mere incidental. Most memorable of all are those days when we stayed up to see the dawn and walked back up the hill in the weak morning light before catching a couple of hours of sleep and then starting all over again. Great days indeed.

One of Dunmore's most estimable citizens, Tony Boland, was fond of describing his home as a drinking village with a fishing problem. Amen to that. 

Advent 7

May 1st 1978. This is an important date. A very important date. OG, still then a callow youth, and the Groupie, even younger (she still is - funny that), went on their first date. The plan was to see Saturday Night Fever but that had sold out so insead we watched a superior film, Annie Hall. Venue - Sutton Coldfield Odeon. I still get a warm fuzzy feeling every time I drive past this mildly dilapidated picture house.

In all its monochrome glory

Advent 6

The city of my first university. The city of Hyde Park. The city of Sam's Bar at Imperial College. The city of the Zetland, my local pub for two years. The city of the National Theatre. The city of the Globe. The city of 2012. The city of the National Gallery. That London. Love it.

Chapel at King's College London - OG did not spend much time here

Advent 5

I am a Brummie and not even vaguely ashamed of it. This great and much derided city gave me my education to age eighteen and then (in a very different atmosphere from that prevailing today) paid for my first university experience.

Form and function perfectly married

A great civic building should be functional and, ideally, ceremonially good to look at. Today's place answers that description - the Birmingham Symphony Hall lifts your heart and expectations as you enter. Some things are all the better for aiming beyond the merely functional. I believe the 2022 Commonwealth Games weightlifting is to be held at the Hall. Brilliant.

Advent 4

There has to be a golf course in this list. From a peak, many years ago, of near competence, my personal golf game has descended to the point of farce. Sometimes I think I should walk away from the game altogether and spare myself the embarrassment inherent in my uselessness. But that would be to deny myself the compelling atmosphere of the game and the playground of people watching that is the clubhouse.

Guess where Big Fat Pig put his ball?

And nowhere is the game more fun and the watching more pleasant than at Cavendish Golf Club in Buxton. Not the greatest test of golf (though estimable) but the place and its denizens are rather lovely - an old-fashioned adjective for an old-fashioned place.  

Advent 3

It won't come as a surprise to anyone to hear that I am a big fan of Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank. However if you pressed me to name the best place I have watched Shakespeare, I would point you to Southern Oregon and the town of Ashland, home to the ten month long Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Groupie and I visited as part of a blissful Holiday and we even got to see my favourite bit of Bard - Antony and Cleopatra. Favourite that is until the next time I change my mind.

 

Advent 2

Let me take you back to the Summer of 1981. The Overgraduate does not yet exist - he is an undergraduate waiting for his degree result. On  a June morning he bids a tearful farewell to the Groupie (she of course is not yet the Groupie but she and OG are already together) and heads off on a great adventure. He is to work as a counsellor at Camp Half Moon, Great Barrington, MA, USA. He coaches basketball, acts as a lifeguard and works hard, playing even harder at Graham's Bar in Barrington on nights off. He makes life-long friends and learns to love the USA, a country with optimism at its benevolent heart. He returns to Thatcher's Britain to an uncertain future (he has not yet determined to be a lawyer) but is an important step closer to being a man.

The picture is of beautiful Lake Buel, on which stands Camp Half Moon. God Bless America, Trump or no Trump.