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2005-02-11 - 5:24 p.m.

Yo ho ho and a Nine Iron out of the Rough

Every year a friend organises a birthday weekend in the country. This year's took place last weekend. It traditionally involves, among other things, a short trip out on the Saturday, usually to a local coastal resort.

Given that the event takes place on the January/February cusp, we've generally been quite lucky with the weather. It tends to be cold, but dry. This year it was one of those two things. If you'd like a clue, it was not hot.

As we contemplated the possible destination for our Saturday trip, the skies above Dorset were steely grey and the light spit of rain was turning into a persistent shower. An indoor target seemed sensible. Which is why we ended up outside getting wet.

En route to the house we'd noticed a sign for the Tropical Gardens, which ticked the appropriate boxes - warm, indoors, and undoubtedly sufficiently shit to generate forumlaic contempt and a round of self-satisfied cynical sneering from a group of media wankers Down From London For The Weekend. In fact it said exactly that in the leaflet we found in the house's information pack. Also it was cheaper than Monkey World. Our friends in the other car arrived first, and reported back from the neighbouring Sealife centre. The news was not good.

The Tropical Gardens had burnt down.

Some time ago.

Thus, while once, for a few brief hours, they would have been even warmer than we'd anticipated, now they were neither warm, nor indoors, nor available for the tour of contempt. How do Tropical Gardens burn down? If it had been the California Drought Gardens or the Kindling Gardens or the National Firworks Museum incorporating Spontaneous Human Combustionworld, I could understand. But shouldn't Tropical World be innately moist? It sounded suspiciously like an insurance job. Maybe ill-conceived tourist attractions are going through a rough patch. After all, there are only so many groups of media wankers Down From London For The Weekend to go round.

While some of our party decided to go back to the house and get drunk, the rest of us, like wilful children, decided to press on and have our Day Out regardless. The Sealife Centre seemed too expensive. After all, this was Weymouth, not fucking Monterey. At best you know you're getting a manky Hammerhead, two giant turtles and a stuffed penguin. Then, on the other side of the carpark, the final windswept attraction caught our eye.

Pirate Golf.

By now the wind was starting to get up and the rain was slightly heavier. No-one in these conditions would contemplate playing pirate-themed crazy golf.

"Five please"
"We're shut, sorry"
"But someone's playing"
This was true. We had caught a glimpse of a sadistic father forcing two tiny kagouled figures up the 17th fairway as we'd contemplated whether to play or go home.
"We shut at 3"
It was about 3.08.
"We'll be quick"
"Well..."
"Go on. We're media wankers Down From London For The Weekend."
"You need to be finished by 4"

You'll be wondering how Pirate Golf differs from 'normal' Crazy Golf.

Normal crazy golf: Hit a ball up a ramp, hope it drops out of the
correct tube and lands near the hole.

Pirate golf: Hit a ball up a ramp, hope it drops out of the correct
tube and lands near the hole. While a man's recorded voice hidden in a bush goes
"Arrrr!".

NB Pirate golf is not normal golf, just poorly duplicated in Hong Kong and sold on a market stall for eight pounds.

It was a tricky par 58. And that's in High Season, not Irony Season when the ball is routinely blown off the tee and each hole features a series of ad hoc and ever-rising water hazards. Still, we took it quite seriously at first. One player immediately went right off the course and into the woodchip rough. Others lost their balls in the puddles. It fell to me to keep the score, tricky with a blunt pencil on a damp piece of card, each gripped in a shivering hand. We raced through the front nine, now barely able to look up for the rain blustering into our faces. We soldiered on, past the Coke machine, which must have felt almost as stupid being there as we were. In fact, stupider, at least we could leave. No-one was going to be vending squat from that poor Tower of Aspartame for at least another four months.

We didn't really stop to enjoy the piratical subtelties of the game, which seemed to consist of the distant sound of cannonfire, although this may have actually been coming from The Channel, some rope, and some dummies in barrels with faux-hand-drawn wooden signs introducing them as Blackbeard or Redbollocks or Captain Jizz or someone. Moreoever, the design of the holes themselves wasn't remotely associated with lawless sea-banditry. You'd expect a hole where you have to hit the ball through the prow of a galleon and wait for it to drop out of the stern. Or perhaps into the cap'n's good eye and have his eyepatch tilt up and the ball drop out of there. Or perhaps for a hole in one you'd be expected to land your Slazenger right in the cabin boys's motorised jacksy. No such luck. It was even more devoid of imagination than the parody of a tired theme park they do about every three weeks on The Simpsons.

By the end of the round, a little of the tension had leached out of the game. Two of us were on the 18th while the others struggled to finish the previous hole. Balls were clattering into other people's (from our own party, I mean - obviously there was now no-one else playing. Sadistic Dad had long since taken his kids to pet the moth-eaten penguin at Seaworld) and shots were being taken and retaken from everywhere, so that the scorecard no longer represented an accurate tally of the progress of the game, but a rather more impressionistic and virtually illegible record of the battle between genuine enjoyment and dwindling ironic value.

The birthday girl won, with a more than creditable level par. We returned the equipment dead on 4 and went home to get drunk.

We're media wankers, you see. Down From London For The Weekend.


What strikes me about this is not so much the anti-semitic nature or otherwise of Ken's comments, but the reasons people come out with to justify having a party (paragraph 4).



How am I driving?
4 pennyworths so far

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude



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