My dad gave me his old clubs way back in 1960s, and I dutifully went on to play at a reasonable schoolboy standard, until more important issues (like beer) prevailed, and I gave them away!
Well, nearly all of them, except my mum's putter, and also another putter, which was a gift from a lovely lady in our village, and I didn't have the heart to lose it! I often made my own game up, using a tractor ball bearing (quite a size those chaps), and a cup on the lounge carpet), and that club was just perfect!
But I also kept the dreaded six-iron...
I don't know why, as dad had never ever hit a decent shot with it, and neither did I, even on the perfect hole on Brecon Golf course, the first, uphill, because a four iron was more accurate, and as I was smaller then, it was my mum's old set, and ladies' clubs were perfect for growing limbs!
So this bloody club has been lurking in various sheds for about sixty years, and it still sneers at me every time I go in to get some work done! It's become the sort of golf club you love to hate really, until last week...
Like lots of folk, we have an open coal fire, on which we burn quite an expensive, but worthy fuel, known as Wildfire. It's a combination fuel, made from all sorts of coal waste, but incredibly efficient. During the summer, it dries out to a tinder dry piece, well suited for the first winter fires. The trouble is, that during the winter and the following spring, the bits of dust accumulate at the bottom of the five-bag bunker, and it all settles into coally solids!
Not any more, a six iron is the perfect tool for dragging the dusty coals forward, and enabling an ageing Scrobs to fill the scuttle as nature intended!
Job solved, and the six iron must be sitting there fuming at the job it was always intended for!
Never played golf in my life but I know a few names like mashy niblick (is that another name for a meat and potato pasty?) then there's the term "A Hole In One" meaning the grate we got last year hasn't lasted because they don't make them like they used to do so it's got a big hole in the middle, then there's the ever-useful ash and fire debris scraper which is made from a metal pole with a hoe-shaped end which you insert under the grate to rake out various bits of whatever's stopped your ash pan from going under the grate. The stuff you find when you retrieve said tool will make you wonder what sort of fuel you bought!
ReplyDeleteI gave up on our ash pan, as it just got in the way, and made the dust go everywhere, as I usually knocked it at some stage! Wildfire really is great stuff, and while more expensive, it can easily stay in all night usually without making up last thing at night!
ReplyDeleteAs for the golfing terms you mention, indeed, a Mashie Niblick is a 7 iron, which is a fabulous club in the right hands!
There are many other names for clubs, and 'bastard' applies to most of them in my case...
I've only played golf once or twice because I never could get hold of a club which didn't send the ball into the rough.
ReplyDeleteAK, have you tried aiming for the rough? If you have and it sill went in the rough, try the nineteenth hole and see if that works!
ReplyDeleteThey all do that, Mr H!
ReplyDeleteIt's a well known fact that 98% of all golfers buy clubs for that purpose. It gives them an excuse!
Goosey, see the above comment!
ReplyDeleteThe nineteenth hole is where you start the excuses, and everyone will agree that you're right, so it never matters!
After six doubles, nobody cares a toss anyway, and orders a taxi...
Is golf like shooting a gun where you have to consider the direction and speed of the wind? As far as I know, shooters have a scope they use to see into the distance to locate their target be it 1,000 yards or even 3/4 of a mile and the experienced ones like my OH take that into account before aiming. Maybe lying prone may help those who have tight trousers so they don't get blown off the course, but then when they get back there would be so many excuses that the club waitress has heard so many times before that she just shakes her head, wipes the froth off her pinny, goes to retrieve the various un-emptied glasses, tips them into the sacred club trophy for which she is one of two trusted with the key, gets rather bladdered, orders a take-away then gets a taxi home. What her hidden camera reveals is a possible source of promotion as long as she keeps a copy somewhere not known to man ie, either the washing machine or the vacuum cleaner!
ReplyDelete"Maybe lying prone may help those who have tight trousers so they don't get blown off the course"
ReplyDeleteThis is, of course, an occupational hazard, Goosey...!
I use a wedge for slicing.
ReplyDelete… and I prefer to use a WEDGE of either lemon or lime in my G's & T's because it hits the SWEET SPOT beFORE the partaking of various comestibles in the local pub quaintly known as the CHIP Inn. This is supposedly where Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner (and no, I haven't mis-spelt it). He used to BUNKER down with the landlady until she got TEED-OFF by falling over endless pots of Papaver somnalis, so she chucked him and his ragged clothes out of the door and onto the street. It wasn't the FAIRWAY to do it but, as she said in her later statement, she had no opium and couldn't spell either!
ReplyDeleteGood idea, Elecs! I cured my slice by facing 90 degrees away from the hole!
ReplyDeleteSeemed to work!
Quite a lot of 'intimate' discussion there, Goosey!
ReplyDeleteI now rate golf as about as interesting as Formula 1, only with more boredom...
Don't watch sport at all unless it's the football World Cup. Don't know why but I just do. At least there's more action and I always support the under-dog, but now it's got rather racial so I'll see how it goes next time. As for golf I must say I find crazy golf much better because you don't have to deal with pars, fores (unless you're wearing fore-plus trousers that keep falling down), no cabbie to assist you unless the 19th hole proved too entertaining and you can't drive hole) and there's no exorbitant fees.
ReplyDeleteThat's you sorted for your hols this year then Goosey!
ReplyDeleteWhich beach are you and Squire Gander going to grace this season?
I bet you've already bought the bathing costume - pics please...
Mr G and I will not be lounging on any beach this year because you always get sand in your choc-ice when someone's errant dog decides to shake, rock, and then roll all over, you plus the mums and dads and kids are unable to switch off their mobile phones because removing the glue from their ears would cause so much pain the at the local casualty department would be completely over whelmed. At the end of June we're going on a little Hebridean cruise to celebrate my 71st birthday. Mike, do I REALLY need a bathing costume in a spa bath? Pah!!!
ReplyDeleteGoosey, I'll email ya...
ReplyDeleteYou just get the kit organised please..;0)