Golf in honour of Her Majesty
Yesterday I played golf. Civil servants get the day off the end of May Bank Holiday as a privilege day, meaning they don’t bother turning up for work in honour of one of the Queen’s many birthdays. I too took the day as holiday and joined two of them for a day of golf at Cray Valley near Orpington.
Now this morning, the sun is shining and conditions are perfect for a relaxing round of golf. Yesterday, there was light rain throughout the day, clearing up the moment we stepped off the 18th green. Bastard rain.
I’ve not played for a couple of years, but held my own pretty well. Actually, that’s not quite true. I held Simon’s late dad’s. His driver. And it served me very well indeed. The direction was not always spot on, but the distance and connection was there 90% of the time, which is no mean feat for someone whose last round was probably two years ago.
I went out in 56, which I was marginally disappointed with, mainly because it was tainted by a septuple bogey on the first hole—four shots of which were taken within inches of one another in a bunker. Had that been a six instead of an eleven, I’d have been ecstatic with a 51.
And I came back in 48, a remarkable feat for me, but a half-round again tainted by a hapless nine on the twelfth. My last six holes were all fives, something I don’t think my scorecard has ever seen.
And four pars in a single round is unheard of for me. (Simon disagrees, and never having played me before, believes I’m a ringer. I’ll suggest he calls my dad to vouch for my overall ineptitude for the game.)
Simon will be producing a full, Excel-driven Stableford analysis forthwith. But in the meantime, I’ll dine out on my score of 104 and my three pars. Despite the rain, I spent a great day in very good company, and here’s hoping my next round is less than two years from now.
Now, I must speak to Simon about his dad’s will, and whether the driver was in fact left to his son’s friend, one that he’d never met. I’m hopeful.
A wonderful life
Tonight I’m sat on our balcony having just devoured a delicious mountain of self-barbecued meat and scrumptious wife-prepared salad. The blackbirds are hopping around the freshly-watered lawn below in search of aquaphobic worms; and delightful engine noise interrupts the evening every 90 seconds or so, as planes make their final descent, returning holidaymakers to Heathrow.
The sun has dipped over the house and now drenches the tops of the trees and the houses opposite with its deep orange sunlight. And the breeze is sufficient to make the trees rustle and sway, but is not so strong as to interrupt my pleasure at the passage of the evening. Meanwhile my daughter sleeps soundly and safely in her cot.
Life is good.
We’re moving
So, five years after osirra.com was created as the home of Tangential Ramblings, it has moved house. Only round the corner though. Please read on if you’d like to continue subscribing to the blog.
Tangential Ramblings has moved to http://blog.osirra.com. The plan is to use the main http://www.osirra.com domain for an altogether more professional presence, advertising my company’s offerings and being the home of my less bizarre side; and there won’t be much in the way of cross-linking from the sublime to the ridiculous. For the next few days, it will continue to point to Tangential Ramblings, to allow you a few days to accommodate the change.
The new sub-domain (http://blog.osirra.com) is already working, so please change your bookmarks and subscription details so that you’re not caught looking for the old blog come the big switch. All being well, the new http://www.osirra.com site will be going live on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the domain.
Please comment if you have any questions. And welcome to the new home—grab yourself a glass, and cheese and pineapple on a stick.
Newcastle relegated, I think
For whatever reason, BBC Sport chose the last day of the Premier League season to re-arrange its live updates page. Its main new feature is that instead of appearing at the top of the main content area, the latest scores appear in the right-hand column.
While it looks fine and dandy on the web, the page has a fundamental flaw when viewed on a mobile: the right-hand modules, including these live scores, are nowhere to be seen. So you have to follow each and every textual update in an attempt to figure out what the latest scores are.
Thankfully, the fact that Newcastle lost meant that I only had one score to concentrate on.
Please sort it out for next season, BBC.
My marathon running order
I’m not sure I’m cut out to do a marathon. Which is a bit of a bitch given that I’ve entered into the ballot for LDN 2010.
I decided to get off my lazy arse last Sunday lunchtime while my daughter slept (which I just mis-typed spelt), and ran 6.32km in 32m 55s. It was my first outing in twelve months, and I ran too far, too fast.
I spent the afternoon hacking and went downhill from there. A visit to the doctor on Thursday morning equipped me with steroids and antibiotics, and fingers crossed they’re doing the trick, along with the ibuprofen, Lemsip and Strepsils. Today is the first day I’ve felt good since. Not great, but good. But don’t speak to me. My face is still hiding a wealth of ghastly goo that makes me sound like Monica in The One With Rachel’s Sister. I’m fine-d!
Anyway, I was thinking. If I am one of the “lucky” ones who gets selected in the ballot, I’ll run it (mentally) in the following order:
- 194 metres
- 2 km
- 10km (x4)
It would be very painful to do it in the reverse order, finishing four stints of 10km only then to have to do a further 2km, only to find you’ve still got 194m to run.
It’ll be tough to think of it that way, particularly with the big milestone banners throughout the route of the course. But they’re probably all in miles, so maybe easier to ignore if I work in kilometres.
Snickers. Or is it a marathon?
I entered myself into the ballot for the London marathon yesterday. I would have done it Monday had the site been able to deal with my traffic. But it couldn’t; so I didn’t.
If I were successful in securing a place, it would be my first marathon, unless I decide to go for New York in November. (That ain’t happening.) I’ve done a few 10km runs in my time, peaking at 42m 30s a good few years back, my most recent such outing taking 45m 40s a year ago in the driving, driving rain. And 15 years ago I did a half-marathon for fun on my own, catching the Metro to Tyneside with a couple of quid and my house keys in hand, and running back home to west Newcastle, an informal 13 miles or so.
Anyway, my name is in the tombola and come September/October, I’ll find out if I’ve got a place. Fingers crossed, I think.
Three thousandths of a second
Last weekend in the Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying, practice or some such, two drivers completed the circuit in times three thousandths of a second apart. I have no idea which drivers, but apparently it was significant, and led to Eddie Jordan (I think) suggesting that it was the equivalent of the width of a matchstick.
Based on Jenson Button’s pole position time of 1m 35.181s and the circuit length of 5.543km, he covered an average of 17.5cm every 0.003 seconds. Matches are generally 50mm long by 2mm square. So that equates to a match 4.36m in length.
Maybe Eddie meant one of those huge, ornamental matches that you can hang on the wall.
Lewis Hamilton is not a liar
The good ol’ I’m not a liar line from Lewis Hamilton. The statement sits perfectly whether he’s a liar or whether he’s not. If he’s not a liar, then the statement is correct; if he is, then it’s merely another lie.
The new F1 advertising model?
To bring Formula 1 sponsorship to the masses, why don’t they adopt a lottery-style approach?
They invite small companies to buy £100 "lottery" tickets,each with the chance of winning the rights to their logo appearing downthe side of the Brawn GP car when it whizzes around the Malaysian trackthis weekend.
5,000 tickets later and we have £500,000 in revenueand a lucky winner whose logo will be blazened upon TV screens theworld over.
Maybe that’s the advertising model for the cash-strapped sport that it has become.
Just a thought.
Contradictory headlines
BBC News’ headline "Adams ‘poised for administration’" is at odds with BBC Sport’s Arsene Wenger quote: Adams will be a success.
Which is it to be?