Since I was detained for the most part of the morning at the NHS’s leisure I was not able to be a first-hand witness to the events that unfolded during the game so I have to rely on dodgy second-hand accounts but here goes.
It was another jolly Tankard day today whereby there is not a tankard in sight (thank goodness), instead the two teams were competing for some more of Ashley’s hand-picked goodies which are always good news back home. Having observed that there would be two teams of 3 players competing, Ashley had nobly turned up prior to tee-off and gained agreement that the prize fund would be £10 per head. It is normally £5 which would mean that each winning team member would only get £10-worth of goodies – that’s only a bag of Smarties in Waitrose – so £20-worth was an easy sell.
Play today was to temporary greens complete with bucket-sized holes which Ballbashers always find greatly to their liking. For a start they can actually see where the hole is and then there is plenty of space around the pin to enable inflexible fingers to have easy retrieval of the ball in the much more likely event of the ball actually being in the hole. It also makes every hole about 20 yards shorter from tee to green which is also popular with Ballbashers as it enables them to keep nasty clubs like 3-woods in their bag and out of sight. Coupled with the clement weather today, this should have resulted in everyone having a very relaxing day’s golf.
And so it would seem apart from the individual case of MikeS. The front trio of MikeW, JohnS and RobM were just relaxing on the 10th tee when a screech of brakes announced the sudden arrival of Roger (call me Lewis) Platt and MikeS in their buggy. Mike leapt out out as in the days of yore and headed rapidly to the toilet block otherwise known as Stuart’s Folly. Given that nobody can ever remember the code to open the door lock, I imagine that Mike did a Desperate Dan job on it and just walked straight through the door with splinters flying everywhere. He then apparently spent some 20 minutes in quiet contemplation – I don’t why this should be but perhaps his driving had been totally skew-whiff.
The trio then departed on their leaving Roger to keep inquisitive onlookers at bay. They had just finished their round when I arrived for lunch and they were quite anxious until they saw that Mike had safely reached the 18th green and was not still admiring the knots in the pine walls of his gaol down the hill. Clearly Stuart’s Folly does have a purpose after all but we are still unsure as to what that purpose might be.
PeterR also turned up for lunch and was able to report that, although he is experiencing a very uncomfortable amount of pain from his new knee, he could feel a slight improvement from yesterday. Nick is going for a knee replacement in 8 days time so we will be seeing two hobledy BBs at lunch for a while. We wish them both swift recuperations back to the golf course.
The Tankard games are winner-takes-all regardless of what happens on each 9 holes and the results today were close as always:
JohnS, MikeW and RobM: 41 + 47 = 88
Bill, MikeS and Roger: 45 + 40 =85
It looks like that whatever went on in that Halfway Hut, it was not beneficial golfing-wise, but the cards tell a different story since MikeS rattled up 40 points all-told, only narrowly beaten by MikeW’s 41 on an (irrelevant) individual level.
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