I was tempted to copy and paste Robert M’s detailed email concerning the story of his battles with adversity to finally have his hip re-tread in his choice of London Hospital but nine of us enjoyed a public reading of said email at lunch today – slightly reminded me of Hofnung’s tale of meeting a barrel of bricks coming in the opposite direction – and everyone’s got their own personal copy of the email now just in time for bedtime reading.
There again, if I had included Robert’s tale, I would also have needed to include Roger’s from his luxury stay at Princess Margaret’s in which he seems to promote the idea that we should all have our hips replaced just to enjoy a stay there.
Other Ballbashers who have recently experienced joint replacements were inclined to remark that Robert and Roger were still clearly high on whatever drugs they were administered for anaesthetic purposes (possibly cannabis-based?) and that we might hear a different song in a couple of days time.
For those six of us who turned out to play golf, other strange events occurred:
For some completely unknown reason I suddenly developed a yip in my putting stroke on the practice putting green whereby all I could do was a right-hand driven yank at least 3 feet left of the hole from 4 feet away in place of smooth roll of the ball. I set off down the first with a heavy heart believing that this new affliction was here to stay which was a reasonable assumption given that I had just yanked my drive left into the trees never to see the ball again.
The six of us were divided into PeterR, JohnT and me versus Nick, MikeW and Stuart and, to be honest, we were not optimistic about our chances of victory looking at the firepower they could muster.
Our cause was not helped by the fact that I had to check in for a BA flight at 10:55am by which time we were just starting down the 7th hole. I was intent on using the BA app on my phone for this which I am sure that I had successfully done a few months ago. I got off to what seemed like a semi-successful start by checking myself in and even moving my seat but somehow I had left Pam out of the process – while doing this I lost ground on my playing partners and having to hit my 3rd out of the bunker while worrying about the latter issue resulted in a thinned shot from which no recovery points-wise was possible.
I battled with the BA app while en-route to the 7th tee and realised that I needed to add in Pam’s passport details to check her in. Since I did n’t have these to hand, I made them up but BA did n’t seem to be too happy with that approach. I took a little time off from BA to play my tee-shot down the 8th without any great thought. Fortune occasionally favours the thoughtless it seems, because my tee-shot ended 4 feet from the pin, from where I scored a birdie before scampering back to my mobile phone to continue the battle with BA down the 9th where the distraction cost me a blob.
Halfway up the 10th I sent a text to Pam asking her to text me the details of her passport which arrived halfway down the 11th. Halfway down the 12th I managed to enter them and when I left the 13th green I managed to check her in. In the meantime my playing partners displayed the greatest patience imaginable, and apart form my birdie, scored all of the team points in those 6 holes including 6 on the 10th.
By the end of the round Peter had put a decent score of 34 together but John’s and my contributions were in the mid-20s and we feared that we were going to be thrashed by the opposition with our team score of 36 + 36 =72.
But very strange things seemed to have afflicted Nick, Stuart and Mike for they all had what can only be described as most uncharacteristic low scores whereby they totalled 23 + 28 = 51 giving us a clean sweep of the BashCoins and also a clean sweep of the 1st 3 places in the league result.
We all enjoyed our lunch in the company of the a group of 4 recuperating Ballbashers – MikeS, JohnH, Pete and Bill (recuperating from golf) who had all managed to drive to Temple giving hope that we might see them back on the course before too many months have passed. Given the emails from Robert and Roger and the make-up of the lunching team, it was no surprise that the chat was given over to the A to Z of medical procedures but a jolly time was had by all. The new Ballbasher is very much a caring, sharing modern man.
Just for the record the league scores were PeterR (34), Richard (26), JohnT (25), MikeW (20), Stuart (19) and Nick (17).
Another absolutely brilliant epistle. Wonderful. Thank you.
When I sent the email from King Edwards it was, indeed a high for me, as someone so perceptively remarked: it all went downhill from there. The ballistic-grade suppositories were quite a surprising and frightening experience, barely leaving the back of the pan in one piece and after 5 only minutes from insertion.
At 10.30 am on Thursday one of the keepers told me that the surgeon had said that I could leave that day, so I had to be out of the room by 11.00 am as they now needed the bed. My brief response seemed to help them find an alternative solution pretty quickly. I had decided to take advantage of an extra day and get to the bottom of what the hospital was actually charging £990 per day for, on top of the surgeon and anaesthetist. I decided that, by the law of averages if nothing else, it must at least be able to produce at least one decent meal, so on Friday I arranged for Pauline to pick me up at 2.30 pm after I had consumed said meal. Unfortunately their thrice-salted, high -density Macaroni cheese slab, although no doubt eco friendly due to high U value and minimal energy input, just did not seem to hit the spot for me: someone ought to invent a spittoon for food. Luckily Pauline arrived an hour early and I was able to barge my way out quite quickly.
The actual surgery seems to be going well: yesterday I was surprised to find that, with very little movement, I could have a few short chips and puts in the garden. Funnily enough, it seemed to go better than normal so at least I should be able to keep my handin a bit.