Phew. Thank goodness this one’s over. What an excruciating week. I refer mainly to events on Tuesday when I was out on a course. You don’t fall for it these days do you. Needing to win the 18th to square the match, having been carried and kept in the game by my partner for all of the previous 17 holes, I managed to hammer a handsome drive down the middle of the fairway on the Old at Sunningdale leaving an appetising approach to the final green. Needless to say my drive flattered to deceive. My second shot drifted lamely to the right of the green from where I flobbed a pitching wedge into the bunker and three further shots ensued before I finally got the ball into the hole. Forget whether or not Trump can cope with the nuclear codes or inflation is going to be 5% and rising by this time next year. I havn’t slept a wink since, reliving that 6 iron over and over again.
Talking about over and out I had lunch today with a cousin down from Tongue in the far north of Scotland. He is down for the fitba later today and I’ll let you into a little secret. I have put a tenner on Scotland to win at 8:1. My cousin’s father sadly died the other day. No don’t worry. This is not me being overly gloomy again. Bit whacky that’s all. I was told by Sophie at 7.00am a couple of Saturdays ago that my mother had rung the evening before with the awful news that Uncle Bruce had cancer. That was sad news indeed though not entirely unexpected and I got up and on with the usual routine. Out I went to let the chickens range free or some other such mundane chore. Came back in twenty minutes later for my coffee and some bacon to be met by Sophie who told me that Mum had just rung and Uncle Bruce had died. Well great. That didn’t take long. Way to go Bruce. He always liked to surprise.
By the way, I got home last night and there were four large cardboard boxes in the front porch. That was a nice surprise! It was a delivery I had been awaiting for some time from Italy. I told you a little about our trip in September, but I don’t think I mentioned the evening we spent having dinner with a suave and urbane retired Italian investment banker called Sebastiano who had left London some six years ago with his young English wife and two year old son to lead the good life running a “sustainable organic estate” and yoga classes from a guest house in a hillside village perched on the slopes of an extinct volcano overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Sounds idyllic doesn’t it, except his wife left him within six months and he seemed quite lonely to me, except at least he had his mother for company. I sat at dinner beside her, a formidable 85 year old Italian lady, wearing an enormous amount of make up and an extraordinarily elaborate gown. One of our party rather cruelly immediately christened her Grannie La Rue. But I had a really nice time chatting to her for three hours. I’m not sure what we talked about to be honest. Her English was better than my Italian, but that’s not saying much. We laughed a lot though. Anyway, the other day I discovered Sebastiano had a website and, in a rush of blood to the head, ordered a case of his delicious home made wine, a couple of bottles of olive oil, some myrtle leaves, eight jars of passata, some aged goats cheese and a viscious walnut liquor which had wrecked havoc that evening up the hill. I left a bottle of the wine by the Aga to drink this evening and it will be interesting to discover if it travels. Somehow I doubt it. The goat cheese definitely didn’t. As I opened one of the cardboard boxes it felt like half of rural Italy leapt out at me so that was 36 Euros down the drain.
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