Foolishly, Andrew and myself had after much persuasion, agreed to caddie for
Gavin and his friend in a game of golf at des Anjoc D'Or golf course. The
ardour of trailing round a full length golf course pulling a heavy bag of
metal under the blazing midday sun while suffering from the night before's
excesses is not a pleasant one especially since the enjoyment of the actual
game is merely vicarious for the caddie which is fine if you are caddying for
pros but a different matter at amateur level. In fairness though, the
occasion can be a very sociable one and furthermore Gavin had promised us
some form of remuneration at the end of our graft.
We had rushed our breakfasts to arrive at the club on time but were a little
late teeing off. Mr Leech, Gavin's expat golfing companion, was club
treasurer or secretary or something and seemed fully at ease in his
surroundings while Gavin seemed a little tense. I offered to caddie for Leech
and Andrew for Gavin. And so the battle commenced. Andrew and I started to
keep scores but for one thing we kept losing count of the scores and
reluctant to attribute the wrong number of strokes to a player the
score-keeping was abandoned by about hole three. Anyway, our combatants were
playing in a seemingly relaxed and gentlemanly mode playing only for holes -
much simpler. Maybe as club secretary one is permitted certain liberties, but
Leech had a habit, which I have noticed also afflicts Sam Torrance of smoking
between shots and irritatingly placing the burning cigarette upon the green
while putting. Perhaps in Torrance's case he has a deal with tobacco
advertisers but I don't think Leech was under such an arrangement.
Two hours followed of fairly respectable calibre golf and the usual banter:
"drive for show and a putt for dough", "if you're not up you're not in", "do
you still use wooden drivers?" plus three-up-with-two-to-play anecdotes. On
the way round both players conceded a number of provisionals due to balls out
of bounds in the lake, wood, rough etc. but by the time we reached the
eighteenth tee the play was level. After decent tee shots from the players,
Gavin needed a medium length chip to reach the green which would enable him
to equalise, but in a pressure-packed moment he grubbed his chip and was
agonisingly short of the green and had to concede the game to Leech. Hard to
bear, hard to bear! Gavin then resolved to polish up on his short play but
frankly, Andrew and I were more eager to polish off a couple of Kronenbourgs
in the clubhouse. So we retired to the nineteenth for what I can safely say
was one of the finest glasses of seize-cent soixante quatre all holiday -
cheers! Over a light pizza lunch, Leech clearly yearning for his homeland
explained to an interested audience how he could, when the weather conditions
were favourable, pick up British TV from across the sea. We had had no such
success and had to be content with French music channels and other more
eclectic late night offerings (nudge-nudge, wink-wink).