Anything, Anywhere But Under Sufferance

It seems appropriate to post this here, I wrote this for a travel website a while back now and I thought those of us going away on holiday shortly may enjoy reading it, or not as the case may be... FOR THE SAFETY NOT SANITY OF PASSENGERS Going away on a long awaited holiday can be amongst the highlights of the year. Once the trip has been sorted you count the months, weeks and then days until the day of departure finally dawns amidst a sea of hastily packed suitcases and excited chatter. Often this can be the best part of the holiday, knowing that the day to day drudgery of work can be forgotten for a week or two and that stretching out in front of you is two weeks of much anticipated bliss. You cannot fail to be in a good mood as you fling your suitcase into the taxi and sit amongst the excited babbling of friends and loved ones. And then you get to the airport. Douglas Adams once remarked that you seldom hear the comparative “as beautiful as an airport” for in as much as these gat...

As you may now, I play golf. A lot. Usually quite badly. Occasionally the golfing gods may be kind and permit me a decent round or two, but this is far from certain whenever I tee the ball up, take out a club and attempt to thump the ball down the fairway (or hook/slice it into the trees, which is more usually the result of my efforts) My friend Ian and I have been playing a fair bit this year. Losing weight and the resulting improvement in my back, has resulted in me replacing my trips to the fridge and sweetie shop, with trips to the course and driving range. This is indubitably more expensive, but while it is costing me £s it is saving me lbs. We've been playing most weeks now, sometimes twice a week, since April/May time and we've both seen improvements in our game. For me that means I am shooting less in the 90's and more in the 80's, on one memorable occasion a 79. Ian's improvement has been even more dramatic. But to put that into context I have to expl...

I was at the Driving Range the other evening, paying for my son and his friend to hit golfballs aimlessly about while Ian and I gazed on in the forlorn hope that we may get a turn (Out of 100 balls, I hit about 10). When our gentle practising was interrupted by the sound of a car being revved to high heaven and then spinning its tyres in the car park. Now, I'm pretty certain that the R&A in their laws of the game of Golf, suggest that revving a car engine while people are practising is pretty poor form and liable to a two stroke penalty. One with the club across your windscreen and the second seeing your putter wrapped around the idiot drivers head. I really don't understand this macho posturing in cars. There's so many ways to do it too. You can wind your window down and play music so loud that you frighten the wildlife, not just in your local town but often in Norway. You can rev your engine aggressively at traffic lights and glance across at someone else in the car n...