A family golf day
Yesterday I attended the 32nd annual golf tournament of a family I know well. It’s always played at Royal Ashdown Forest, a natural and beautiful course with no bunkers.
Some 20 years ago I went there with my father. It proved to be one of his great golfing moments, perhaps even one of his lifetime ones. He was not a clubbable man and therefore uninterested in the social side of golf. Indeed I could only persuade him to participate if paired with a solicitor chum of mine (in the law firm Bodgers) of whom my father was extremely fond. It was a foursome (alternated strike of the ball) and went to the wire. On the eighteenth the opposing pair started with a bomb of a drive by the middle family brother. Our chum hit a respectable drive lagging some 40 yards behind. The second shot of the opposition was wayward . My father was not an elegant player. Someone in his golf club observed that “Douglas Bader with 2 aluminium legs had a more fluid swing”. His swing amounted to raising his club virtually over his head, taking in a deep intake of breathe, expelling that with a mighty blow of both cheeks and propelling the club far too rapidly towards the ball. Yet for all its bizarreness, once also described as “a hangman’s swing”, he was a direct and accurate low iron hitter. So it was no surprise that his second iron shot found the green giving his team the clear advantage. The opposition was on the green for three so father and chum had only to make two putts. The solicitor’s putt left my father more to do than intended. As he shuffled up to the ball a surge of filial pride coursed my veins and I really wanted him to sink the putt which he duly did. One of the opposition, whom I was not surprised to hear took the Robert Maxwell shilling, remarked that he thought my father would miss. At this the solicitor retorted:
“These are the hands that inoculated the Queen. I never doubted them”.
After the handshakes on the green my father typically and quietly remarked to his partner “We saw them off …”
Yesterday another father was at the heart of the event as were celebrating the 91st birthday of the patriarch of the family. He was presented with a chocolate cake and I gave him a bottle of Nye Timber Sussex champagne. However it was another member of the family that was for me the heroine of the hour. I arrived at 11-30 and settled in the bar to read the papers, looking forward to my first gin and tonic. Half an hour later a gaggle of jolly women arrived, one of whom (the wife of the organising brother) greeted me warmly although I could not have set eyes on her for 25 years at least. She ordered a round of coffees and to every appearance seemed the successful, well-heeled wife. She engaged all in conversation in a chatty way. Nothing usual about that you might say, just another middle class lady out with the girls enjoying a family day, until I tell you that she has terminal and untreatable cancer. She spoke proudly of her newly married daughter in the press office of the Ministry of Education and the perennial problem of young progeny in acquiring their first home. There was a very occasional reference to “my treatment” and that was the only indicator of her condition. There is a temptation, which I certainly don’t criticise, to admire anyone who reaches 91 but it’s truly inspiring to see how a person that may not make the next year’s golf day was determined not just to enjoy herself but ensure others did too.
