Feeling in a shopping mood

I thought I'd have a look at Stella McCartney for Adidas. As I expected, everything is beige. Beige is such a hard colour to like, I think - who would ever say their favourite colour was beige? It's a total non-colour, so boring. It's useful, yes, neutral, functional, but it's not loveable. 

Apart from my issues with beigeness, I liked the wind jacket, but feel it ought to be waterproof as well (guessing in the region of £150, so I would want my money's worth).  And I can't help thinking that the 3/4 trousers are a dubious proposition for Autumn/Winter (maybe this is an Autumn collection and there'll be a Winter one along soon?)   

If I happen to be near an Adidas shop I will probably pop in and have a look, but I certainly won't be going out of my way. You can view the collection here (on the US site as the UK site is rubbish and doesn't seem to have any of it on). 

I love these boots though - they've got studs - wonder whether they'd count as soft spikes??

Why I'm an evil witch, but I don't care

I don't actually mind slow play that much. I don't like being held up, and I don't like holding people up, but playing slowly doesn't especially wind me up. My actions today could have been interpreted as being annoyed by slow play, but that wouldn't be quite true.

There's a particular lady who I've played with once or twice who had a stroke a while ago. She's made a great recovery and is back playing golf, so good for her. She isn't as mobile as she was, walks much slower, can't bend down so easily to pick up her ball, and her swing is a bit stiffer. So pretty much everyone is sympathetic, even though being slow isn't usually something that gains you many friends out there on the fairways.

The situation today was that I was in the last group of women, in Lady's Day (I hate that phrase) at the club. And I was in the slow gang, because I was with this particular lady. So far, so whatever. The point is when we were standing on the 4th tee, a two-ball of men was finishing out on the 3rd green. So as we walked up the fairway I mentioned letting them through.

The response was a load of bombastic balderdash, the essence of which, apparently, is that women don't allow men through on Lady's Morning because men aren't allowed out in the middle of a women's competition. It's tough cheese for them. Even though it wasn't even a competition, and we had clearly lost a hole already, and they didn't start in the middle of us but had caught us up, they aren't allowed out in the middle of us. Nope, doesn't make sense to me either. As far as I'm concerned, you lose a hole, you let people through. Whatever the circumstances. Except perhaps a match against another club.

So after a great deal of pompous empty windbagging from this lady about how it was a preposterous suggestion (without any concrete answer about why it wasn't possible) I gave up. If we weren't going to let them through, we were bloody well not going to be a hole behind the group in front.

So I walked her stiff pompous little legs off.

Now that may make me evil, because she's not a fit-and-healthy 30-something. And it may not have taught her a lesson, since she probably blamed it on me not liking the speed of her play, rather than me having a problem with her rudeness to the golfers behind. Anyway, arrogant old biddies don't learn lessons from young upstarts like me.

But it made me feel better, dammit, with the added advantage that I didn't have to talk to her much for the next 14 holes because I was mostly walking 20 yards in front of her.

Image from cinnablythe's Flickr photostream

Practicing what I preach

So the reason can be so self-righteous in my last post is that a few months ago I decided to stop moping around about not improving as much as I would like. In other words, I decided to get pro-active on my ass.

I know! Revolutionary. After all, the reason people like to proclaim proudly that they've never had a lesson in their lives is that we would all like to be natural talents who could drive 250 yards the first time we stood on a range and never knew what it was to three-putt. Who wouldn't like to give the impression that they just were good at the game, with a nice swing and good touch around the greens? I'd be willing to guess most people would like to be people who didn't have to try.

Unfortunately, I was never going to be one of them, so I've had a few lessons. One of the most important lessons was that just having lessons wasn't good enough. Apparently (outrageously) I had to practice as well.

It took me a while to come to terms with this shocking revelation, but I have made a concerted effort to go to the driving range at least once during the week, preferably twice. One of these days I might even finish a bucket of balls. And I generally try to spend 5 minutes on the putting green at the end.

It's square and a bit sad, but I have been trying to play better golf.

I've seen plenty of people who are natural sports people be crap at golf, as well as plenty of people who are naturally crap at golf. Essentially I don't think there's any shame in being crap at golf. But I thought I'd give 'trying' a try – just don't tell anyone.

Photo from macwagen's photostream on Flickr