Having been deprived of golf for 96 hours Huttonian was up at SF and off to Duns. Despite it being bird tummy rumbling time the car park was packed with vehicles. Jags with personalised number plates, a stack of garage courtesy cars in place of vehicles recovering from road rage or/and helping the police with their enquiries. It was a NHS outing 'proudly sponsored', it appeared from notices polluting the tees,by a number of commercial concerns not necessarily unconnected with the Pharmaceutical Industry. I managed to beat the rush by racing through a mob of people waiting near the first tee-not so much to play but to finish off desperately needed cigarettes having not realised that Duns Golf Club like the rest of Scotland has banned smoking on their premises.
The medics started off at both the first and eleventh tees to get the flow going. Two principal impressions-terribly bad golfers and amazingly well built people. Fat was an understatement in many cases. The Cardiac Three were the only other local golfers I could see through the cracks in the serried ranks of health workers. They must have thought they had died and gone to casualty-so delighted to be able to do their thing and rely upon immediate resuscitation if the worst happened. They even contemplated going up the steep 12th -a hole which they usually avoid without oxygen. I heard them fairways away loudly discussing their symptoms presumably in the hope of picking up some free advice from a nearby cardiac consultant. One of that ilk was plainly identifiable-he was fat, he was smoking, he was over dressed (tweed Plus Fours for goodness sake) and he kept on taking his pulse between slices and puffs on a large cigar. I had identified his car in the car park, a Jaguar of Morse vintage, its seat pushed back almost into the boot to allow him space behind the wheel, and the gold plated stethoscope draped carelessly over his camel hair jacket. His personalised number plate BUPA 1 was another give away and I suspect like many of his fellow golfers he was connected to the NHS for purely golfing purposes.
I hope they had a good day. The way that balls were flying in every direction surely ensured that some of them would have been called upon to show of their skills at some point. I half expected to find rows of unconscious victims piled up on their golf trolleys awaiting medical attention once the 'target time' of two and a half hours for a real emergency had elapsed.
I had to escape early to push the bins out. (Actually the Wife did this, bless her) So I missed any subsequent carnage.
