CRAZY GOLF

You should wear white socks with tailored shorts..................................................................I was invited to a round of golf in deepest leafy Surrey on Saturday. I haven't played a full round for at least three years. I managed not to make a complete idiot of myself I even parred two holes. My friend Ian partnered me. We were up against another team also Ian and David, which made life simple. Dave was a builder, Ian a chippie (carpenter) . Dave told us he had recently played a round of golf with a disabled player and was impressed by the man's ability to hit a golf ball. I remarked you should've asked what his handicap was.  But the comment flew over the heads of the alternative Ian and David, just like one of my wayward hacks. It was such an obvious comment to make I couldn't resist. Still my partner Ian laughed.

Another friend hit's sixty. God it's depressing. Celebration in a restaurant in Holland Park. I met up with Ronnie a former editor of Hello. I don't really know her that well but we meet up at intervals of I don't know of five maybe even ten years but I always enjoy seeing her. We first met in the offices of Options magazine in the early 80's I was working at Granada Television Studios in Manchester and she was suitably impressed that I knew several members of the cast of Coronation Street at the time. When I say knew it was more like I can remember exchanging small talk to Len Fairclough in the next urinal cubical one afternoon, I think he was later arrested at his local swimming baths............... chatting with Vera Duckworth in the bar while she fed the fruit machine that sort of thing......... Ronnie was a fan, so I think we hit it off. Somehow it seemed the perfect position for Ronnie when she was offered the editorship of Hello Magazine several years later. Not before she had worked in a funeral parlour for a number of years, interesting  CV. 

Sunday morning made a pilgrimage to Cookham to see Stanley Spencer and his war paintings of shipbuilding on The Clyde. Interesting small exhibition but I was disappointed with Cookham I expected to see resurrected souls clambering from the graveyard, spotty Dalmatians peeing up against lamposts fat naked torsos lingering behind upstairs net curtained windows. Instead mobs of daytrippers every other one talking into their mobiles.  And a head full with blank intervals of the previous night and serious self hatred.........I was going to inflict my memories of that day 10 years ago but really who cares what I think.