I am all out of sorts as I have hurt my back and have very limited mobility. The prospect of swinging a golf club soon seems a long way off.
My attention and focus are going to be diet and well being. I have somehow edged up to a weight of 95kg which is much too heavy for my height. So I have forgone cream as a start. First the extra thick double from Tescos which is top notch and delicious but far too much of a good thing, then the double cream and latterly the single. I am now creamless.
It is now time to attack the butter. I don’t mean eat it but abandon it too! I will stay with my cheese though as I just can’t imagine not sitting with some blue cheese alongside my morning coffee. There wouldn’t be much left to look forward to in my day, save sleeping which I’m doing about eleven hours per night.
A very nice American chap, Micheal Dach, sent me a copy of the Henry Cotton vs Gene Sarazen match played over the Old Course in 1962. It is a wonderful recording and shows many lovely vistas of St Andrews as it was sixty odd years ago, old man Auchterlonie in his shop, the old railway line etc.
It was very interesting to see the rather wristy swings of Cotton and Sarazen and especially the incredibly short follow through of the American. I think I shall be swinging in that vein when I make my comeback in the spring. It will be my post-prime swing. It has got a certain character and elegance to it I may say.
I have just paid my annual membership to the St Andrews Golf Club. One hundred and thirty eight quid for a years golf on seven courses, including the Old. Not too bad. There is some justification for living in the Auld Toon indeed. Not quite the fifteen pounds I paid when I was a student, but that was a long time ago.
The current students are doing their exams now and will be packing for home soon, which will leave St Andrews bereft of youth, but quiet and heavenly still.
Otherwise I’ve been following the nags a bit, reading a bit of Shakespeare and been quite drawn in by old Hamlet, although I think Jack Falstaff is a far better egg. Well at least for me. By old Hamlet I mean young, of course. Even though they say the ghosts the man.
My predictions for next year are that there will be a US led, world stock market crash after Trump is impeached, Jacob Rees-Mogg will take over the helm at the Tory party as Theresa fails to come back from the spring bank holiday after doing the female version of a Reggie Perrin on a Dorset beach, Jeremy Corbyn hits the bottle after being cunningly given a pseudo tonic water, masking a double babycham, at the Queen’s Garden Party. A very successful bistrot opens in the Murrayfield area of Edinburgh, house prices rocket in West Fife mining villages, I get a book advance, my Trump golf article is published in the Washington Post and my handicap comes down to 2.8.