Taking advantage of the first day without wind for some time I upped and offed to Duns Golf Club (MPBUI) at first light, or so. Apart from the mysterious lady golfer who stalks the early fairways I had the course to myself-even the Gnarled Old Greenkeeper was still abed. You will all know the short par 5. 'Woodend' it is called despite there being no end to the vegetable matter on the right of the fairway. Indeed it was seeking to avoid both the wood and the trees that I found myself in the field on the left of the fairway with a slightly misjudged second shot. Technically out of bounds, but as I was on my own, and the field had nice short grass and I could see the ball I decided to play my third from where it lay, excusing myself any boring penalty. The stile beckoned. Over I went. Electric Fence ,but nae bother with the stile. But then another notice: 'This field has a Bull in it.' I looked around; I don't like bulls and if it is as aggressive as the horses on the left of the second (see a long previous post) it could mean grief.

A group of ruminants were about 200 yards away. A bull may or may not have been amongst them. They were chewing away in an amiable fashion so I strolled to my ball about 50 yards from the stile and prepared to hit-out of my left peipheral vision I spottes a certain restiveness amongst the beasts, but plenty of time. I played my shot-horrors-it kept left and remained inside the fence about twenty yards from the green. Problem; would I have time to walk on 70 yards-away from the stile-recover my ball, walk 120 yards back to the stile, unbullied as it were.? The ruminants ruminated on although the biggest one was looking hard in my direction. I risked it, ran to my ball, flicked it with a 9 iron and left it 4 feet from the hole-a par could still be mine albeit with a flexible interpretation of the rule book. I turned back to return to the stile just as the biggest animal apparently had the same idea-it walked, it cantered and it broke into a gallop. I went straight to the gallop stage. I had to cover 120 yards at say 10 mph-it was in its top gear of about 2o mph and I calculated that with its greater distance from Ground Zero it would just be about a yard behind me as I reached the stile. As we converged I lost confidence in the maths-perhaps it would be a yard ahead of me-Gore Blimey, quite literally.

My nerve broke-abandoning the stile I leopard crawled (thank God for National Service) through the fence-not a spark-perhaps batteries not provided. The animal snorted to a stop-a strong fence between us. Ir was, on calmer closer inspection a gentle looking, dun coloured Cow, large swinging teats and lacking any other gender defining equipment. It mooed lovingly-a bit disappointed that the nice man did not want to play. 200 yards away one ruminant was equally lovingly mounting another. The Bull was 'in the field' all right but having it away as compared to golfer goring was just no contest.

I am sure the exercise did me a lot of good.

And I missed the putt.  ¶ 10:27 AM