what a palaver!

I’m in the habit of getting the 7.50am bus into Edinburgh at the moment.

Yesterday, a very interesting thing happened.

A lass got on at Ferrytoll, sat on one of the side seats at the front and proceeded to apply her make-up all the way into Edinburgh (20 minutes).

Now, this was particularly fascinating from my male perspective, as I hadn’t quite imagined that so much could go into the female visage (and I do mean this both literally and metaphorically). But I also think this display was fascinating for the rest of the full bus too. In fact we were all rather captivated by this pretty, self-absorbed lady, who really acted like she was all alone.

Anyway, there was much intermittent powdering and the administration of creams and sprays and brushes and pomaders (I think they are called pomaders?) and puffing and pouting and squinting and hare-eyed staring, the most careful attention around the eyes and the neck and the forehead and several, regular, dramatic, still-camera pose moments of maybe not quite self-admiration, but certainly junctures of deep self-reflection. Kind of Picasso mid-paint like. But, I’m not sure Picasso had the want to update his self-portrait on a quotidian basis. However, maybe with such a captivated and attentive audience he might have?

I was slightly irked as I had to get off at Blackhall and couldn’t see the finale. At this stage the lipstick was being very carefully administered, the Chanel 5 was wafting, not unpleasantly, through the bus and the face was a fine and deep, smooth rouge.

The couple behind were having a wee chuckle and informed me that the procedure had started in the bus station at Ferrytoll.

God get me a train!

Apart from that highlight to the week I saw the one and only Cologne Tom out on the Old, which was cool. In years to come people will rue the fact that they came to St Andrews, saw the castle and the cathedral, Hamish McHamish, stepped on the Swilcan Bridge, posed next to the R&A, had fish and chips in Anstruther, a pint in the Jigger, but never met the most wonderful man that is now the Old Course caddie, Tom Stevenson.

He is a delightful one-off. I have never met a person with such charisma.

I once wrote an article for HK Golf decrying the powers that be in the Links Trust, and more particularly the incumbent and present caddie master, for not putting Tom on Obama’s bag when he visited a couple of years back.

That was a massive missed opportunity. It would have done wonders for the image of the St Andrews caddie and immeasurably enhanced our international relations in one fell swoop. I mean stuff all that Downing Street and Chequers nonsense. This would have been enormous and everlasting. Tom would have had Barack eating out of his hands.

I mean even that buffoon Boris Johnson would have grasped that one.

But alas not the Links Trust.

On the golf front I have scraped into the final of the Jock Hutchison over the Old. After a massive collapse with consecutive out of bounds on fifteen and sixteen and a nervous three stab on seventeen, I just held my nerve to hole a Doug Sanders on eighteen.

There is goff in the old dog yet.