Waiting List

John is in his seventies - at least.  Back trouble, or so he claims when he has a bad golf shot, cancer and a dickey heart.

We golf together once a week because we play similar golf, share an outlook on life - what we have left of it – have like health problems and an illogical belief towards immortality; in my case in spite of a medical man who, when he discovered my condition, said:

“you may get a couple more years of life playing golf once a week than would be the case if we tried to do anything about it.”

Me, someone we met on the course and John

I’m nearer 91 than 90 but we manage with a buggy, although I tend towards falling over when I am  striking the ball - sometimes even when I am just standing still! We rarely lose a ball because distance is something you lose with age and we can still see them after we have played our shots.

“I’ve applied for a locker”: this was John in the changing room looking down the row of lockers.

“So?”

“There aren’t any vacant; they have put me on the waiting list.”

Golfers are invariably optimists – at least before they start to play.

Booking to play a week in advance always seems to me to be tempting fate: agreeing to go on a waiting list is really pushing it.

    

We play on Tuesday mornings which is 'Ladies Day' at our Club, Wareham. Normal male golfers rarely play on Ladies Day because few male golfers, even in these supposedly enlightened days, will acknowledge that ladies should have precedence - or even be there at all. The easiest way to accommodate such a view is not to be there on Ladies Day.

 John and I are quite happy to play behind the ladies because it means, at our pace, it is like having the course to ourselves.  

All the ladies are our friends.

For those I haven't been in touch with for some time, I haven't yet reached the following situation - quite! As most of you will not be in the first bloom of youth, I trust you are also still playing.

Summer?

Where has the summer gone?
Come to that where has the year gone?

Fortunately, one sunny September day in Dorset where someone else has kept their bit of the countryside tidy and done the gardening and made the beds, brings that wonderful loss of memory that wipes out the rainy days.








We are not far from Dorchester to visit Athelhampton House: it has been there since Tudor Times.

Take a walk down the garden and discover what lies around corners where some thoughtful soul has designed sights that make you go "aagh", or provides you with the means to sit and stare.








Turn left and here is my fellow explorer by a river. What more could you ask of a garden than a river that runs through it, with a name that has delighted schoolboys over the centuries: the River Piddle.





If  you like your gardens a little more formal, where you are not the one who has to climb a ladder to trim the trees and where you can walk in and discover a seat so thoughtfully provided in the shade, here is a fine example.










Peek through a gate and discover the back garden.
Ours was never like this!





Or even take a look inside at another kind of bed which also isn't like ours.

Or go round the front - which is something like ours in that it has windows and a door.

Whichever way you look at it, Athelhampton House is a pleasant place to visit.