BANNED FROM PLAYING GOLF

I miss golf.

Yes, I really miss it and it is not just because the riveting Ryder Cup has run its course for another two years or the four majors are done and dusted, the FedEx Cup and its associated millions have been captured for this year, and that extra jewel in this golfing year, The Olympics, is over for another four years.

I miss golf for all those reasons but the biggest reason I miss golf is that I cannot currently play.  I have been banned.

I didn’t aim to get banned but get banned I did.

Those of you who know me well will vouch that I am 99.9% a boringly reliable salt-of-the-earth type.  Those of you who know me extremely well will vouch that there is a zero-point-one chance that I will kick over the traces every once in an erstwhile while and I know you’re hoping that I have done something wild – like I once laughingly declared – and run naked down the third fairway at Waldringfield just for the sheer delight of upsetting the staidly pristine world of local golf.  

I have been tempted but I have three large reasons never to do something like that - my grown-up children in the guise of one son and two daughters.  Teach your children well and they will become your most reasoned judge and jury.  Who knew they would turn out so clever?  In fact, my three can morph into a lynch mob at the mention of my name and love to dole out a punishment.  I haven’t figured out if this is revenge tactics on their part or if they feel I am entering my twilight years and they’re just trying to keep a caring eye on this miscreant parent but I am sure that if I were jailed for wild antics on the golf course, they would take great delight in not paying my get-out-of-jail card.  My only support in this department would be my little grandson who is of such an innocent age that he lacks the social understanding of the need for clothing, apart from keeping a body warm on a cold day and because his mother tells him that he must put some on before he ventures out.  That sort of support amounts to nowt.

The third fairway intersects with the fourteenth at Waldringfield so if you’re into naked jolly japes that’s the most effective maximum exposure spot at the local course but I did not avail myself of my zero-point-one urge and I still got banned.

It all began in January of this year.  With my genes steadily going south faster than the speed of sound, my age trying to take me out and that well-researched family history indelibly imprinted on my brain, I decided to up the ante on my “achievements” bucket list.  You need to understand that I have a close working relationship with my genes and I am only too well aware how much they conspire to strangle the life out of me.  In what was supposed to be a miniscule but informative background history to a mahoosive family reunion in Ireland, I wrote a piece that just kept on growing.  Two reunions later, that output comprised two books that took me back to a relative in Kilmactranny in 1749.  In between the now and way back then relatives, I discovered a common theme as I read through an Everest of research documents – they largely told the story of death by strokes, hypertension and aneurysms.  It was all too obvious that exercise was the answer.

I am easily distracted so I set targets for the year.  A half marathon run, a three-day bike ride and the need to train for those would keep me focused.  Simple.  Or not.  What I didn’t know then - and I surely know now - is that being female, middle-aged, having a bunion and increasing high impact work gives you a shoo-in to the world of microfractures.  Last time I checked, I met all of those criteria.  And how! 

That’s how my left foot and me ended up in the clutches of Mr Orthopaedic Surgeon.  He promptly banned me from running and golf.  He wasn’t wrong but he did encourage me to cycle and gave me his blessing for that super marathon ride in the hills of Donegal in September.  Since March, it was the best week my aching foot has had – non weight bearing on the pedals of a flimsy road bike crashing down mountainsides in wind and rain at thirty miles an hour.  Even the uphill drags did not hurt my foot.

But I still miss golf and tomorrow, in an effort to rescue this lefty of mine, I have a date with that back-to-front gown, beloved of the NHS, and designed to test your inner Harry Houdini.  That hospital gown has been designed to house the Pentagon at the front but with such an insufficiency of material at the back that even a hamster’s backside would be utterly exposed.  There is no hope for an adult human in these gowns and, again, the good old NHS has produced the answer in the shape of a one-size-fits-all pair of paper knickers.  One size does fit all because the measurements were taken from a sumo wrestler and their generous proportions would cover a size six from chin to ankles.  Now there’s a set of garments that should be taken out to the third fairway at Waldringfield and I would be up for that sort of modelling job but not tomorrow.  

Tomorrow, I am heading for a bunionectomy and realignment of my hallux.  In layman’s terms, that’s my big toe that’s in the firing line for a paring down of the bony lump and straightening of the bone.  The protracted recuperation time will help heal the microfractures. 

Mr Orthopaedic Surgeon has told me I will be running and golf fit by January (he hasn't seen my game) and he will lift the ban.  That is the plan and I am following it to a tee.  I will be so heady with delight by then that I may yet allow my zero-point-one percent to have its wicked way on the third.  But don’t mention it to my offspring…