Falling asleep after lunch and some threatening showers has put my good intentions of getting out with the kids on the back burner. As I am in the middle of a cycle of chemotherapy I still have to be careful to avoid cold, coughs and such like. Kitten has taken then to the local theme park on their annual passes for the umpteenth time this year and they never seem to tire of it.
As she was leaving I had just got up and was flicking through the TV channels. I stumbled on one of these "couple want to buy a house in the country" type programs and there was a scene where they were taken on the local golf course, all of them rank beginners.
It made me flash back to my only experience of golf, which was funny in a cringe worthy sort of way.
Throughout my twenties, I resisted any impulse to get involved with golf though all my friends have at least flirted with it at some stage. I invested the same time in learning how to mix house music, culminating in a few years where I played out live on a regular basis.
Naturally, my mates tried to cajole me at various stages though, after a few attempts, they eased back and realised that it wasn't going to happen.
A few years ago Notoplip bought himself a new set of clubs. I think that he was using golf as a medium for touching base with customers on a more regular basis. Anyway he kindly offered and brought round his old set encouraging me to get involved. His angle was that it would simply be good if I could join the lads on the odd golfing day out.
Naturally, the clubs sat in my garage for quite some while until Kitten bought me a couple of vouchers for lessons at the local golfing range.
Even then it was a few months before I actioned them and off I went into the garage to retrieve a by now rather cobweb ridden golfing bag.
Anyone who has played golf at all will recognise that at any golfing centre whether driving range or top notch course people seem united in wanting to project a strong sense of golfing image. Even rank beginners often have the latest clothes and the latest look. This is something that amuses me, because whilst I am aware of the impact of image I feel quite scornful towards that sort of attitude.
When Billy the Fish and I used to train regularly at a well known middle class chain of gymnasiums in our 20s and early thirties we stood out as people who were training whilst a lot of people waltzed around chatting, showing off their latest mobile phones with all the women in full makeup and everyone seemingly in the latest Nike gear. Of course our "grunt and groan" approach was not the image that the health club was particularly trying to project but we were popular with the fitness instructors and a regular core of people because they could see that we were working and were interested in what we were actually doing.
So, I'm not one to feel the need to live up to a consensus of image and neither am I one to be intimidated by it. I do conform in what I consider to be appropriate circumstances and feel that I "brush up well" when I make an effort.
So there I was getting out of my car with a generously donated but now slightly tired set of golf clubs in my jeans and T-Shirt.
I confess to feeling slightly uncomfortable as I waited to meet my instructor. The feeling being as much a product of unfamiliarity with the process as much as anything else. Sure enough though, after a bit of a delay, a bloke dressed from head to toe in "the golf look" approached me and asked if I was "Mr Swordfish".
I was quite looking forward to the lesson as I thought that if I could master the basics of the game then I knew that my mates were not of a great standard so I could get out with them for a few beers. I seem to recall that I had recently given up playing live as a DJ and so I had a lot more free time on my hands that had previously been invested in listening to and working with new tunes.
The instructor looked my golf bag up and down and asked if they were my own clubs. I said that they were and that my mate had given them to me to get me started. I said that if I got he golf bug then I would go out and invest in my own set but I thought that I was in a good place to start with.
He suggested that we started with a six iron, or at least that is what I recall. Then there was the moment that made me decide that perhaps golfing was not for me; a sign from the gods.
He pulled the club out of the bag and took the club by handle and exclaimed "Oh, it's all sticky".
Sure enough there was some kind of evil looking residue on the end of the handle, sort of brown and oily and gooey.
I really don't know what it was, or where it came from. Obviously there was something in the bottom of the bag but what it was or how it got there I couldn't tell you.
Anyone who has seen the old sitcom "The Good Life" with Penelope Keith, Paul Eddington, Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall will know that I felt like Richard Briers character Tom at that moment. Reminiscent of him feeling inadequate in front of Jerry's well heeled business associates I decided to play with "a straight bat" and asked the instructor whether he had anything to wipe the handle with.
He didn't.
So there I was with the golfing instructor, clearly dressed up to impress the ladies and anyone else who cared to notice. He was stooped and wiping the club handle back and forth along his perfect piece of artificial grass so that I could begin my lesson.
He probably hasn't experienced a similar event since. I also seem to recall that we stuck with the same club throughout the lesson.
No comments:
Post a Comment