

### The Hacker - Volume One

by Phil Churchill

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Phil Churchill

Discover other titles by Phil Churchill at Smashwords.com

The Orbury Way - <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349323>

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Introduction

SECTION 1: THE ORBURY WAY (SAMPLE CHAPTERS)

The Orbury Information

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Orbury at War

Chapter 2: Emergency Council

Chapter 3: Shrimpers

Chapter 4: Bramley's Challenge

Chapter 5: Rubens

SECTION 2: THE HACKER

1: I think I know what I'm doing wrong...

2: Mad dogs

3: The honeymoon strip

4: Stop flapping

5: The more the merrier

6: Whose divot is it anyway?

7: They think it's all over...

8: Time for a round...?

9: A level playing field...

10: An athlete's breakfast

11: Bandits

12: Rule 19-6: Ball coming to rest, close to the hole

13: The gloves are on

14: G=(IFp>30,pb2,p)

15: When is a reed not a reed?

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Contact the Author

Introduction

This free ebook compilation gives you both the first five chapters of The Orbury Way (so that you can see if you like it before you purchase the rest of the book - this sample is over 10,000 words longer than the free samples offered by online retailers) as well as bringing together all fifteen columns of 'The Hacker' that were written for the Surrey Hills League. They are reproduced in full, rather than the reduced formats that were published on the Golf Monthly website.

Section 1: The Orbury Way (sample)

The Orbury Estate

Earl Orbury - _President_

The Golf Committee

Jim Chives - _Club Secretary_

Spencer Cartwright - _Club Captain_

Ian (Minty) Fresh - _Vice Captain_

Brian St. John-James (BSJ) - _Committee Secretary_

Colin Stimpson - _Social Secretary_

Charles Easter (Bunny) - _Handicap Secretary_

Bill Muir - _Competition Secretary_

Estate Staff

Brunswick - _Steward_

Vic Peters - _Golf Professional_

Cedric Abeline - _Head Chef_

Clarence Llewellyn - _Master Housekeeper_

Dave Marsden - _Head Greenkeeper_

Bert Pamphlett - _Gamekeeper_

Eric Styles - _Estates Manager_

Barry Jones - _Tenant Farm Manager_

Prologue

The old man paused to rest halfway up the steep slope, leaning heavily on the four iron clutched in his hand as his chest billowed to suck air into his lungs. He could feel his heart thudding away inside his chest and his temples throb with the gushing sound of pumped blood.

They were no more than twenty yards ahead of him and yet he watched on enviously as his playing partners reached the crest of the hill and disappeared from view.

'Time was when I used to run up to this tee' he thought sadly, reflecting on the toll time had wrought upon his body.

Once his erratic breathing had managed to calm to a wheeze, he closed his eyes to summon the energy to force on to the summit. Pushing off, the wasted muscles in his legs quivered in pain, every sinew afire with the exertion. His shoulder socket burned, the tendons stretched to breaking point as he dragged his trolley behind him. Inch by inch, step by step he slowly made his way towards the crown. With relief he finally reached the top and collapsed against one of the tall slender pillars of the old temple that stood sentinel behind the elevated seventh tee.

Despite the pain and exertion, a thrill of delight percolated through him as he looked out and feasted upon the grand vista of his estate before him. From the raised teeing ground he looked out beyond the green below and back down the line of the first fairway. This snaking ribbon of closely mown grass climbed towards what had been the family seat for almost three centuries. The yellow southern face of the building never ceased to send a thrilling shiver through his body, its splendor glowing in the autumnal sunshine. From this distance he couldn't pick out the individual columns of the portico, instead it was a dark smudge, a missing tooth in a broad smile. But as ever, the pleasure of this wonderful sight was followed by a sadness that had increasingly plagued him with the passing years. Before gloom could get the better of him, he shook his head to clear the dark, melancholy thoughts of loss from his mind.

Turning away from the hall his eyes came to rest upon the tip of the slender column that was poking over the top of the trees adjacent to the tee. The Memorial to the Unknown Airmen. That brought a smile back to his face. Not so unknown to him. That however, was another little secret he would take to the grave.

"It's your honour, Your Lordship," said one of the other men, breaking his reverie. His playing partners stood aside as he strode onto the tee and looked down at the familiar green nestled at the base of the hill. He bent down stiffly and speared his wooden tee firmly into the immaculate turf. After balancing his ball on top he stood up a little too quickly and the distant pin shimmered into a haze. To regain his senses he scrunched up his eyes and waited for the fuzziness to pass. Then, for the first time, he became aware of the stiff breeze that was blowing over his shoulder.

"Damn, wrong bloody club," he cursed as he glanced back at the abandoned trolley in the shadow of the temple. It was only thirty paces away but with his head swimming he shrugged and turned back to the green. Like it or not, a four iron it would have to be. As he took his stance, he slid his hands down the grip to take off some distance before punching a shot with a three quarter swing.

"Oh wonderful strike your Lordship," exclaimed one of the other men instantly.

"Get your wallet out your Lordship!" joked another as the ball tracked towards the heart of the green. The kidney shaped green below was made up of two symmetrical sides that were split by a central spine. The ball struck the putting surface right in its heart. For a moment the ball seemed to stick firm as if imbedded in its own pitch mark but then it started to move and trickle down to the right half of the green. The trickle became a creep, and then the creep became a crawl as the tiny speck gathered pace with every revolution. The pin was tucked hard right.

"Scotchus maximus!" cried the third man, dreaming of a free tipple as the ball rolled towards the hole. Even the ever-present sound of birdsong fell silent as the slowing ball inched towards the hole. The four-ball held their collective breath, as the ball seemed to come to a halt, teetering on the edge of the hole. They leant forward on their toes, craning their necks and willing the ball to drop.

Suddenly the group screamed as one. From their lofty perch they watched as the little white globe dropped into the cup. Their jubilant cries caused the huge black birds that had been skulking in surrounding trees to burst from cover and take to the skies, their haunting caw adding to the tumult.

But one scream cut short. As the winged carrion circled above, the world melted into a fusion of green, blue, ochre and pain as the old man crashed to the ground. His last breath burst from his lungs as he struck the turf, his club and triumphal arm the last to hit the manicured tee.

## 1 - The Orbury at War

Jim Chives stood at the central window of the Long Library and looked out onto the short par three tenth. Shifting weight from one foot to the other he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass. Instinctively he straightened his back and brought his polished white heels together with a satisfying click. Immaculate in his russet club blazer, or fur, as the members called it, the Club Secretary kept an ever-vigilant eye on proceedings from this perfect vantage point.

Just then a movement out the corner of his eye drew his focus to a lone golfer wandering on to the tee. Chives immediately clenched his jaw and thrust his double chin down on to his firmly knotted tie as he reached out his arm and pulled on a silk sash that would wake a small bell somewhere else in the hall.

Within a minute there was a rapid double tap upon the doorframe.

"You rang, Sir?" said a soft-spoken voice at the entrance to the room.

"Ah Brunswick," began the Club Secretary, his voice husky but clipped with the youthful training of public school. "Who is that man on the tee? I don't recognize him?"

The Steward entered the room, his footsteps knocking against bare floorboards before he stepped silently onto the fraying rug that stretched the length of the room.

"That's Mr. Lionel Woods," he replied. "He's applied to be a Kit, Sir. He's up before the Captain later this week."

"Fancies himself as one of the One Hundred does he? Well we'll jolly well see about that Brunswick. He won't get far at The Orbury dressed like that!"

The Steward raised one of his dark grey eyebrows before turning to take another look through the glass. The man on the tee was dressed smartly in a russet polo shirt, black tailored shorts that fell below the knee and knee length socks pulled up high to cover any rogue peeping skin. "I'm very sorry Sir, but my eyes are not what they were," he said cryptically.

"Socks!" bellowed Chives, his eyes bulging as his raised brows sent a ripple of deep furrows up his domed forehead.

"Yes I believe they are Sir, all the rage I understand."

"There's no need to be flippant Brunswick, you know full well what I mean."

"Sir?"

"Good God man, the colour, the colour. Those socks," he went on, pointing a stiff finger in the direction of the golfer, "are not regulation colour. In fact I'd go as far as to say that they are grey. _Light_ grey. You know full well that club socks are white. Yet there he is, as brazen as the midday sun, on our course in light grey. His Lordship will be screaming from the rooftops if he see's him. Get him in here at once."

The Steward consented with a bow and left immediately.

"And after him, bring me Peters!" shouted the secretary at Brunswick's receding back. "The damn pro should know better as well!"

Moving back to the window he waited for the grey haired Steward to emerge from the ground floor door below the Library and make his way over to the golfer who had just teed off across the water. As if caught prying, Chives instinctively snapped his head from sight as Brunswick pointed up to his window mid conversation. Daring one more peek he inched his way around the drapes and saw that the two men were making their way back towards the hall. Abandoning stealth he ran towards a door at the far end of the Library to go into his office. At speed he leapt into the chair and pulled himself to his desk before rummaging through the scattered papers and organizing them into random piles. Once the desktop was neat he checked that the knot of his tie was firmly in place, smoothed back his hair and ran a licked forefinger through his errant eyebrows. In the glow of the mid-morning light he looked down at his club fur and brushed away the highlighted flotsam and jetsam. Picking up his pen he pulled a blank piece of paper from his drawer and waited. As soon as he heard approaching footsteps he bent to the sheet and started scribbling away.

"Mr. Lionel Woods," introduced Brunswick.

The secretary kept his head bowed and continued to write as he raised a finger for pause. Estimating the delay in his head for maximum effect he eventually laid down his pen and looked up.

"Ah Woods, may I call you Woods?" he began.

"Y-Yes of c-course er..."

"Mr. Secretary," offered Chives.

"Thank you, yes, Mr. Secretary."

"I understand that you have applied to join the Kits?"

"Indeed Mr. Secretary, I have been proposed and seconded and I'm just waiting for my formal interview with the Captain," replied the new applicant.

"One hundred members are at this club Woods. No more, no less. The Orbury One Hundred is a rare band of gentlemen and his Lordship runs a pretty tight ship. He is very particular about who gets in, which means that we police the reserve list most keenly. To gain a place in the One Hundred it is very much a case of dead man's shoes, do you understand?"

"Of course, as a Kit I can play twice a week in the afternoons and there is a ballot between those chaps in the Kits on the unfortunate occasion of a place becoming available," replied Woods.

"Well you know your stuff, I'll give you that. However I wouldn't hold your breath. It is my job to maintain standards."

"Standards Mr. Secretary? Have I done something wrong?"

"You are wearing grey socks, Woods. His Lordship doesn't want to see grey socks. If he wanted to see grey socks he would have made grey the club colours. As it is he wants to see white. If we allow grey socks then tomorrow some roughneck will wear cream. From cream you get yellow. Allow yellow and you encourage green and if we are going to encourage green then you may as well allow red or pink! Ergo, anarchy. Grey is not what we do here Woods, grey is not the Orbury way, do you understand?"

"I'm sorry Mr. Secretary I had no idea. Had I realized then of course I wouldn't have dreamt of breaking the dress code. He never mentioned it in the pro shop."

"Oh don't worry about that," replied Chives, "he will be hearing about this as well. No, it is not a good start Woods. I will have to mention it to the Captain and he always follows my lead on such matters. Captains come and go each year you know, but the Club Secretary is here for life, to provide stability and continuity. That's how his Lordship likes it and that's what his Lordship ge..." the secretary stopped in full flow as Brunswick shuffled back into the room carrying a silver tray laden with a decanter of golden liquid.

"Good God Brunswick it's not even midday!" The Steward ignored the comment and placed the tray on a table by the door before retreating from the room.

"Now where were we?" muttered Chives, trying to drag his attention back to the prospective member before him.

"Socks, Mr. Secretary."

"But that's the point Woods, it's not just _socks_ , it's _grey_ socks."

"I can assure you that it will not happen again Mr. Secretary, I will dispose of them immediately after my round."

" _After_ the round?" spluttered Chives. "You can't go out there looking like that again, the old man's out there playing as we speak. One sight of grey and we will all be swinging from the rafters. Change them now or don't play on, simple as that. The pro shop is well stocked with white, chop chop!" Chives snapped his head back down to his piece of paper to bring an end to the meeting before feigning further scribbling.

Lionel Woods continued to stand in the centre of the room for a moment, unsure of what to do next. "I'll er, go and change them then. Thank you, Sir," he said finally.

"And once he's finished your purchase," replied Chives, "please ensure that Peters remembers to step this way so that I can put this mess to bed once and for all. I'll see you again at your entrance interview."

"Oh I thought that was just with the Captain."

" _Was_ being the operative word, Woods. Have a good game and..." he stopped again in mid sentence. "What are you doing Brunswick?!" The Steward had returned to place a crystal tumbler next to the decanter. "Have you lost your marbles? Since when do I take whisky in the middle of the day?"

"You have been known to take a little soother at times of stress Mr. Secretary," replied Brunswick smoothly.

"I can assure you that it takes more than a pair of grey socks to get me stressed Brunswick."

The Steward politely shrugged his shoulders. "Well, you never know what's around the corner," he said as he tucked a crisply folded newspaper under the lip of the tray. "The local paper, Sir," he added before exiting in the wake of the grey socked gentleman.

Alone again Chives put down his pen, screwed the paper he was writing on into a ball and tossed it over his desk into the middle of the floor. Going to the umbrella stand he withdrew an old rusted lob wedge and studiously applied his grip. He paused to check the alignment of his thumb and forefinger before taking his stance over the scrunched ball. With a smooth swing he launched the paper high into the air. Dipping just short of the ceiling it seemed to hover in mid air for a moment before falling back to earth and rattling into the copper waste bin by his desk.

"You asked to see me, Mr. Secretary," said the Golf Professional, his large belly distorting the diamonds on his sweater into ovals. Chives was back in the Library, awaiting the re-emergence of Lionel Woods onto the tenth green.

"Indeed Peters, one moment if you will," replied the secretary, his finger raised in an umpire's dismissal, demanding patience. The professional fiddled nervously with his habitual lop-sided bow-tie as Chives watched eagerly as the lone golfer emerged once more from the hall and made his way over the bridge to cross the lake. His legs were bedecked in a pair of crisp, knee length white socks worn to just below his shorts. Chives gave a nod of satisfaction before turning back to the other man in his presence.

"How are you settling in?" he asked, his back now to the window.

"I'm sorry?" frowned Peters, a nervous grin exposing two large incisors divorced by a large gap.

"It's not easy being the new boy. Big building, surrounded by hundreds of years of tradition, dozens of names and faces to remember. No not easy, not easy at all Peters."

"B-But I've been here nearly three years," replied the professional.

"Three years? That barely registers on The Orbury timeline I'm afraid. The earldom of Orbury goes back almost three hundred years. His Lordship has been his Lordship for over ninety years. Yours truly has kept this place shipshape for almost fifty. 'Meus dolosus amicus'", he quoted in his best Shakespearean voice. "Do you know what that means Peters?"

"Of course, it's the club motto; my cunning friend."

"The club motto indeed," said Chives proudly, his chest puffed out and his voice majestic. "The words of King George I himself in 1715," he turned back to the window and fixed his eyes on some imaginary distant point in the sky. Peters's shoulders dropped and his weight slumped back on to his heels, awaiting the inevitable.

"1715 Peters," began Chives pompously. "The kingdom was in peril from a Jacobite rebellion to put Queen Anne's half brother on the throne. On a bitter winter's morning, his Majesty found himself separated from his companions not too far from this very building. His horse panicked in the thick fog and bolted, throwing the King from his saddle and knocking him unconscious. How long he lay there no one knows but with each passing minute the cold would have seeped into his body and inched him nearer to a death that would have thrown this country into even greater turmoil." He paused for dramatic effect and turned back to Peters who managed to raise his eyebrows in feigned interest.

"But then something amazing happened, he became aware of an intense warmth upon his face. Regaining consciousness he opened his eyes to find himself face to face with a fox that was licking his cheek. Neither flinched. Instead their eyes locked until the distant sound of a voice drifted to them on the fog. The fox took a few steps back, never taking his eyes from those of the King before letting out a banshee cry. On and on it whined until the ethereal voices started to converge on the source of the call. The moment the first man crashed out of the undergrowth the fox fell silent and, with a last look at the King, bolted back into the dense wood. The beast's burnt russet fur, black legs and white feet were seared into the memory of the stricken monarch. The man who found him carried him back to his humble dwelling and nursed him back to health. To give thanks to his miracle rescue the King bestowed the surrounding lands and the title of the Earl of Orbury on the man on the condition that 'not a single hair of my cunning friend the fox be hurt upon these lands of Orbury."

Chives moved to stand immediately before the professional. "Russet, black & white," he repeated slowly as he indicated the clothes he was wearing with a downward sweep of both hands. "A colour scheme steeped in history, steeped in majesty and worn with pride both on and off the course."

The bow tie received another tug under the close scrutiny.

"And yet apparently despite your self-proclaimed _three_ years of vast experience, you believe you are in a position to think the colours inappropriate?"

"I-I'm not sure I follow Sir?" blinked Peters.

"It seems you think that His Majesty had been mistaken all those centuries ago and that in fact the fox had not had white feet but grey."

"Ah," said Peters at last, as the penny dropped, "the grey socks".

"Yes Peters, the grey socks."

"A simple oversight Mr. Secretary."

"Simple indeed Mr. Peters, but regardless of your accurate self assessment, his Lordship is not shy in dealing harshly with those who do not come up to his exacting standards, do you understand me?"

"Yes, of course Sir, it won't happen again I can assure you."

"It may already be too late," Chives continued. "If his Lordship has caught even the merest glance at them," he paused to look at his watch, "then I would guess you have about two hours before you are packing your bags. Now if I were you I'd hope and pray that his Lordship's four-ball never got within sight of the new man. I've got my eye on you Peters, now be on your way and make sure I have no cause for any further intimate chats."

Offering his sincerest apologies for a final time Peters eventually slithered backwards out of the room and into the corridor, passing Brunswick who was going in the other direction. The Steward was carrying a tray of tea in one hand and a dustpan and brush in the other.

"Have you gone stark raving bonkers, Brunswick?" exclaimed Chives as he watched the Steward place the cleaning utensils on the floor next to the table. "I'm getting very worried about you this morning?"

"Never mind me, Sir," Brunswick replied as he poured first milk from a small silver jug and then tea from the pot into a bone china cup and placed it on the reading table.

Chives strode over and picked up the beverage by the delicate saucer. With the china clamped between thumb and two fingers he teased the local paper from its resting place beneath the whiskey tray and with a practiced flick unfurled the folded edition to reveal its front page.

"Good God!!" he screamed, allowing the balanced cup and saucer to slip from his grasp. The china and tea crashed to the floor and shattered in a volley of ceramic shards and hot liquid.

"Brunswick!!!" he screamed, his eyes fixed on the headline as he felt the spilt beverage soak through his trousers, his normally immaculate white shoes splattered with a mosaic of Earl Grey.

By the time the Steward had rushed into the room, Chives had helped himself to a generous slug of the conveniently placed spirit. Kneeling on all fours Brunswick began to sweep up the mess with the strategically placed pan and brush as Chives helped himself to a further tot.

"Please tell me his Lordship hasn't seen it," he gasped as he gagged down a large fiery mouthful.

"His Lordship hasn't seen it," replied Brunswick dutifully.

For a moment Chives looked unsure. "Are you saying that because I told you to 'tell me his Lordship hasn't seen it' or because he hasn't seen it?"

"Because he hasn't seen it, it was delivered after he teed off," clarified the Steward.

"Thank heavens, that at least is one small mercy. It buys us a little time. What about the other copies?" he added suddenly, his mind racing.

"All taken care of Sir."

"The one in the Lounge?" went on Chives.

"Taken care of."

"The Smoking Room?"

"Likewise, Mr. Secretary."

"What about the one in the Committee Roo-"

"All!" interrupted the Steward as he got up off his knees, the contents of the dustpan rattling as he stood and brandished the brush in front of him like a wand. "All have been made to disappear, Sir."

"Excellent, well done, good man, good man. Desperate times call for desperate measures Brunswick. I need to assemble a war cabinet. Who's in?"

"The Handicap Secretary and the Social Secretary were in the Billiard Room last time I looked," replied Brunswick raising firstly his thumb and then the forefinger of his left hand.

"Excellent, that's a start. What about Spencer and Minty?"

"The Captain and Vice Captain are out playing with his Lordship. Semi-final of the pairs knockout."

"Damn. BSJ?" enquired Chives.

"The Committee Secretary is in his usual seat in the Smoking Room," replied Brunswick, raising his middle finger to join the other digits.

"Well, three plus me makes four," said Chives. "It's enough for a quorum. Now pour me another large one and then go muster the troops in the Committee Room."

Chives sat at the head of the huge oak committee table, the measured calm of his face a mask for the maelstrom in his head. The old piece of furniture dominated the elegant room, which was lit by ornate brass chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling on great chains. As well as electric light, daylight seeped in through the large arched windows that lined the western wall though the day was not yet old enough to garner direct rays from the sun. On the opposite wall was a carved marble fireplace, the creamy white stone sketched with grey veins. A range of alcoves flanked the fireplace; these inlets were filled with gods and goddesses of empires gone, their poses frozen in stone. Under the gaze of the statues Chives sat stock still, his eyes looking beyond the table, fixed on the distant marble sculpture that dominated the centre of the northwest tribune. The stunning Carrara marble rose from the floor in roughly hewn jagged cuts. As the statue rose, its ridges and crags slowly took shape, merging together until they took the form of a fox's throat, taut from the strain of the animal raising its muzzle to the heavens in a cry. The carved features of its face and fur were intricate and detailed and polished to a glossy sheen. Placed as it was the statue stood guard to the private family wing. Even from where he sat Chives could see the light dancing off the highly polished nose from incessant rubbing from his Lordship's ancestors as they sought good fortune.

The only sound in the room was the rhythmic measures of the carriage clock perched on the mantelpiece above the fire. Sitting above the ornate mechanism, in the large central alcove was a small silver goblet, its etched surface shimmering under the tungsten scrutiny of the chandeliers.

But then the sound changed. Still the regular marking of time but no longer just a clockwork cry. A deep resonant thud was added to the ticking that the secretary not only heard but also felt through the soles of his feet. As they neared, the approaching footsteps slipped out of time with the clock and the heavy flat-footed stride of its owner drowned out the timepiece. Chives didn't need to turn around to identify the encroaching man.

"Twouble at t'mill?" boomed a deep impersonating voice.

"You could say that BSJ," replied Chives. "Any sight of the others?"

"Colin and Bunny are hot on my heels," rumbled Brian St. John-James accurately as tandem footsteps came into earshot. Moments later the additional men strode into the Committee Room resplendent in their russet furs, their senses immediately heightened by the grave look upon the secretary's face.

"Gentlemen," began Chives before they had even taken their seats, "apologies for the haste but I must call to order an Emergency General Meeting in line with the club rules, which state that a minimum of four members are required to be present."

"Would you mind telling us what on earth is going on?" demanded Charles Easter, the Handicap Secretary.

Chives turned to look at the tall man. "Bunny, the impeccable name that this club has built up over one and a half centuries is at peril." He paused dramatically, causing the other men to shift forward in their seats. After a few moments Chives slipped out the folded newspaper from a manila coloured file in front of him and, holding the offensive rag by two fingers, let the paper unfurl before them.

"Wuddy hell," whispered BSJ, his thunderous voice resonating around the room.

"Wuddy hell indeed BSJ," paraphrased Chives.

"THE ORBURY AT WAR," read Colin Stimpson, squinting over the top of his black-rimmed glasses, before reading the sub-title. "Civil War breaks out at private golf club," he said in a dramatic voice.

"Yes alright Stimpson, that's enough, you're not Trevor bloody Macdonald!" castigated the Club Secretary.

"Sorry Jim," replied the Social Secretary with a naughty grin.

"Dare I ask who's involved?" asked Charles Easter in his usual serious manner. He was leaning forward and peering at the grainy photograph, unable to make out the faces of the two russet clad brawlers captured in full flow on the front page.

"Who do you think?" offered Chives.

"Not our very own Jailbird Johnnie?" suggested Stimpson.

"Correct Colin," replied Chives gravely, "and this time he's gone too far for even Viscount Waffham to save him from the boot."

"But would the old man actually kick him out?" asked the Handicap Secretary sternly. "After all it's bloody awkward, what with the chap being his grandson's right hand man so to speak."

"Oh I'm positive he would if push came to shove," said Chives. "But then that's why he's got a Committee behind him; it's our duty to do it for him. I warned his Lordship at the time Lamplighter was voted from the Kits to the One Hundred; once a wrong 'un always a wrong 'un, despite all that rubbish about turning over a new leaf. But enough is enough; today is one misdemeanor too far. Gentlemen, under our historic Club Constitution the Committee require a quorum of four members to vote on the expulsion of a member. I therefore ask for a simple show of hands on the formal exclusion of John Lamplighter from The Orbury for bringing the club into disrepute." Chives finished and abruptly thrust a ramrod arm into the air.

"Hang him!" boomed the bearded BSJ, as he shot up his arm in agreement.

"If you had your way BSJ, half the bloody country would be swinging from the main beam," said Charles Easter before sharing an anxious glance across the oak table with Colin Stimpson.

"Bloody wight an all, they'd pwobably deserve it."

"Jim," started Easter, "I'm one of the first to step forward and admit that Lamplighter isn't exactly my favourite person in the world, but I think we need a bit more information before we go gung-ho into kicking him out of the club."

"After all," supported Stimpson, "innocent until proven guilty and all that, eh?"

"You are forgetting that he's already been found guilty by twelve good and just men of Her Majesty's jury," sniped back Chives.

"Pwecisely, hang him I say!" bristled the bushy beard.

"Guilty yes," replied Easter, "but he served his time and that doesn't mean he's automatically guilty now."

"Come on men, this is it! This is the chance we've been waiting for," encouraged Chives. "We owe it to his Lordship to come down hard on him." He picked up the newspaper and taunted them with it. "Look, we are the laughing stock of the county!"

"But what is it he is supposed to have done?" continued Easter.

"Plus," added Stimpson, "unless my eyes deceive me, there are two members in that photograph."

"Hang 'em both," resolved BSJ, raising both hands to the ceiling.

"Who is the other member?" pressed the Handicap Secretary.

"The innocent party, that's who," said Chives sheepishly.

"Doesn't look too innocent to me," said Stimpson. "It takes two to tango and all that, here, let me get a closer look at that photograph," he went on as he reached across the table and grabbed the newspaper. "Oh flipping heck Jim, it's Muxcombe!"

"As I said gentlemen, the innocent party in all this," came back Chives.

"But surely we have no choice but to kick them both out Jim," said Easter.

"Don't be ridiculous Bunny. Lamplighter is an ex-con, clearly he's to blame."

"If we were going to expel all former guests of Her Majesty's pleasure then what about Viscount Waffham himself?" put in Stimpson mischievously.

"Besides, your stance would have nothing to do with Muxcombe being your doubles partner, would it?" accused Charles Easter.

"Of course not Bunny," snapped Chives.

"Or the fact that the two of you are through to the semi finals," grinned Stimpson.

"That is an outrage! All I've ever strived to do is what is best for this club. I would never let my own interests cloud my judgement. Suffice to say that Alex has ended up on the wrong end of Lamplighter's fist and I can assure you that it won't have been of his own making. The man's a bloody trouble maker and a liability and we need him out of The Orbury today!" Chives scraped back his chair and stood up, slapping a defiant fist down on the antique wood.

An awkward silence broke out, disturbed only by the sound of Stimpson turning the front page of the paper as he followed the story to page two.

Charles Easter broke the silence. "Does it say what it was over?"

"It does indeed," replied the Social Secretary, "it appears our friend Lamplighter has gone and got Muxcombe's granddaughter in the family way."

"Pwegnant! How old is she?" asked BSJ enthusiastically.

"It doesn't say. Apparently Muxcombe got wind that something was up and followed her last Tuesday and found himself trailing her to an ante natal clinic."

"Must have been straight after the swindle, he's still in his golf clobber," commented Easter.

"According to a witness he waited outside the premises until the two of them came out together and he confronted them. Sounds as if Lamplighter told him to mind his own business before Muxcombe threw a punch and the next minute they're both rolling about on the floor in their club colours."

"So it was Alex who threw the first punch?" noted Easter.

"Provocation!" shouted Chives in defense. "For goodness sake the man's probably twice her age. Come on Bunny, you've got granddaughters, do you really want that man stalking around these parts preying on young girls?"

"He's got a point," conceded Stimpson to his doubting counterpart.

"Good man!" exclaimed Chives before turning all his attention on to the Handicap Secretary. "That's three yes's. It's just down to you now Bunny, we need a unanimous decision. Surely you are not going to back this animal? Getting young girls pregnant? Come on Charles, don't stand in the way of what is right."

"We'll make an enemy of Viscount Waffham," replied Easter, "you mark my words. He will not take kindly to us kicking out his stable mate and pairs partner."

"That's a point, they're still in the doubles as well, he'll have to play on two against one," put in Stimpson.

"Do we really want to go head to head with the heir to the pile?" pleaded Easter.

"Don't you worry about the Viscount, I'll make sure I sort him out with his grandfather. No doubt he'll be able to soften the blow in the usual way," assured Chives, rubbing the tips of his fingers together.

"Bail him out of his drinking and gambling debts again?" enquired Stimpson.

"Exactly," said Chives. "So don't you worry about him Bunny, it's Lamplighter we need to focus on. It is imperative that we stop him right here, right now, before he drags this club into the gutter. This isn't some back street brawling club or one of his seedy gambling joints, this is The Orbury. A show of hands please gentlemen and let us get this matter over with."

"Hang him," said BSJ again for good measure as three arms went up and all eyes fell once again on the Handicap Secretary.

"You promise to deal with Viscount Waffham?" said the lone abstentee.

"I promise," replied Chives solemnly. "His Lordship won't let us down on that front, I don't think he's ever really forgiven him over the death of his own son. What's more, he would never allow the good name of The Orbury to be brought into question, family or not."

Charles Easter continued to keep his arm down, scanning the other faces before finally letting out a long sigh and raising his hand with a shake of his head.

"Excellent. Ink pen at the ready BSJ?"

"Never dwy Mr. Secwetary," said the Committee Secretary as he strained his large bulk out of his seat and made his way down towards the marble fox. Set into the four alcoves of the northwestern tribune, surrounding the howling statue, were four inset bookcases. All were identical, with white alabaster scrolls edged in gold leaf adorning their tops and their sides trimmed with panels of carved gilt leaves. Each held four rows of large bound books, an array of crimson, claret, umber and olive hand stitched leather. But one bookcase held row upon row of identical tomes. The matching spines sat three inches thick, their copper covers glowing under the light thrown from the mighty crystal chandelier that hung from the centre of the tribune. A thumb's length from the top of each spine was a black title panel edge in gold banding. The black and gold stripe ran the width of the bookcase, flowing identically through each book. In the centre of this panel was a gold number that ran consecutively from volume to volume.

BSJ stopped in front of the bookcase and ran his finger across the numbers, stopping at number thirty-four. Teasing it out of its home with his fingertips he hefted the journal into his arms and carried it back to the table.

Out of breath from the exertion he let the book drop onto the table with a resonating thud before taking hold of the tongue of emerald silk that was poking out the bottom and turning to the correct page.

Each leaf was printed with feint horizontal lines. A single heavy vertical line split the page into two columns, the left hand margin just wide enough to write a number. BSJ reached into his pocket and withdrew a fountain pen, twisting off its cap before poising the implement in mid-air.

"Number?" enquired Chives when he saw that the other man was ready.

"Journal thirty-four. Entwy thwee hundwed and forty-five," replied the Committee Secretary as he wrote the digits neatly in the margin.

"Entry reads," stated Chives preparing to dictate, "at an Emergency General Meeting of the Committee Mr. John Lamplighter was expelled from the club by a unanimous vote by a quorum of four officers. The reason for expulsion is a consequence of his shocking behavior resulting in bringing shame and humiliation to the club through violent and threatening behavior. Officers present; Jim Chives, Club Secretary; Charles Eas-"

"Bloody hell Jim, do we have to put our names to it?" pleaded Colin Stimpson.

Chives ignored him and carried on without comment. "Charles Easter, Handicap Secretary; Brian St. John-James, Committee Secretary and Colin Stimpson, Social Secretary." Stimpson groaned at mention of his name.

"Now if you'll excuse me gentlemen, I have a phone call to make to conclude our business," said the secretary rising from his chair. "What say we reconvene on the Portico Terrace in ten minutes to celebrate once the deed is done?" With that he turned and strode from the room, his gait the walk of a happy man.

"Hang him dwy!" called out BSJ to his receding back.

A quarter of an hour later the four men stood with drinks in hand under the canopy of the portico, looking out between the supporting columns at the first tee.

"How come from up here," began Chives, still struggling to wipe the grin from his face, "it looks as though it is impossible to miss the fairway, it must be all of a hundred yards wide."

"What's more, there's acres of space on the left and yet I always end up being blocked out behind that flipping oak tree on the right," added Stimpson.

"I'm surpwised no one's got out their Black & Decker seven iron and hacked the wuddy thing down in the middle of the night," bristled BSJ.

"That's useful to know BSJ, now we know whose house to come knocking on if we find it splayed across the fairway one morning," joked Stimpson.

Charles Easter didn't crack his face. Under normal circumstances he was an extremely tall man who would tower over the others by a good six inches. However for the moment his shoulders sagged under the weight of concern. "How did Lamplighter take it?" he asked tersely, cutting through the lingering bonhomie.

Chives paused to take a sip of his drink before answering. "Not well, to say the least." For a moment the bravado had left his voice.

"Did he mention the Viscount?" continued Easter.

"He did. He said we hadn't heard or seen the last of him and that we could expect a visit from the heir sooner rather than later."

"I don't like this at all Jim," went on the Handicap Secretary nervously. "Are you absolutely positive we have done the right thing? Perhaps we should have waited for his Lordship to get in before we acted."

"We mustn't weaken now Charles. His Lordship will already be on the back nine and I'll speak to him as soon as he gets in. As long as I get to speak to him before his grandson gets a chance then all will be fine."

"And is there any risk that you might get there second?"

"None. An impossibility," stated Chives.

"I take it then, that you know the Viscount isn't around today?" enquired Stimpson.

"Correct, Brunswick said he had packed overnights so the coast is clear until tomorrow."

As the secretary finished, the sound of raised voices escaped through the open doors behind them. All four men turned in puzzlement just as the peaceful backdrop of the estate was shattered by the haunting scream of a siren.

"What the hell?" shouted Stimpson, raising his voice to be heard.

"That's the old air waid siwen on the woof!" exclaimed BSJ as the sound descended into its downward cry. Chives stiffened at the sound and stood with his mouth agape, struggling to draw breath.

"What bloody idiot has got their hands on that old thing?" complained Easter.

"It will be Brunswick," whispered Chives, "in accordance with the protocol laid down in 1940 to alert the workers in the fields and across the estate of the news." He spoke in a flat monotone, desperately trying to gather his thoughts.

"What news?" asked Stimpson.

The clamor of approaching voices reached a crescendo as both Captain and Vice Captain came flying out of the small opening onto the terrace.

"Jim! Jim!" they shouted together as they stumbled to a halt in front of the outstretched hand of the Club Secretary.

"I know," he said softly.

"Know what?" exclaimed Charles Easter angrily as the siren wailed upwards. "Spencer, Minty, what on earth is going?"

"I-It's," stammered Spencer Cartwright, the Club Captain, wiping sweat from his face and trying to catch his breath, "it's the old m-man."

"It's his Lordship," clarified the Vice.

"What about him?" asked Stimpson, Easter and BSJ in unison.

"He's dead," replied Chives knowingly.

"Wuddy hell."

## 2 - Emergency Council

On the north side of the hall the eighteenth green sat well protected. A strategically placed crescent bunker guarded the approach from long hitters who might be tempted to try and take on the green in two. But even the sensible lay up left plenty of work to do as any wayward approach, whether faded or pulled could find itself in one of the twin sandy hazards. To the left of the green lurked a pack of three evil pot bunkers whilst to the right awaited an even worse fate. It was into this bunker that a man descended a flight of worn wooden steps cut into the back of the trap. By the time he had moved off the last step his head was lower than the green.

"No pressure!" called down one of the other three men who stood with arms folded, looking down into the sandy pit. "Your partner's already had six, so it's down to you to save the day."

"No problem Bill," replied one of the players. "Pressure's his middle name, isn't that right Bob?" he called, his hand cupped around his mouth. All that drifted back up in reply was a grunt.

The player's ball had come to rest in the centre of the hazard approximately eight feet from the sheer riveted face of the bunker. Methodically the man addressed the ball and then waggled his feet so that they sank into the soft surface to purchase a firm stance, the yellow sand banking around the soles of his white shoes as he took a practice swing.

"Looking good!" encouraged his partner from above.

Once he was ready he carefully hovered his club above the surface, oblivious to the movement of his two opponents who instinctively crouched in the hope of catching him touching the sand. He stood stock still for an age before eventually drawing back the club. His backswing was smooth and confident to the tip of the arc but then, just at the start of his downward stroke there was a slight pause and he immediately decelerated on the way down. At the last moment he sensed his error and suddenly forced his wrists forward in the forlorn hope of regaining momentum. But it was too late. The sand wedge broke the surface weakly and as he snatched through the second part of the swing the club head struck the ball not just once at impact, but again as he followed through.

"Double hit!" exclaimed one of his opponents in delight as his partner groaned and put his head in his hands.

"And an Adolf, that's a reverse bit, another fifty pence," cried Bill joyfully.

"Since when did an Adolf become a reverse bit?" moaned Bob from the bottom of the bunker, his ball now resting up against the steep face.

"And another for dissent!" bellowed Bill, struggling to contain himself. "Nobody likes to see that," he teased harmoniously with his partner.

"Alright you've had your fun, now what do I do?" called up Bob, causing all eyes to turn straight to Bill.

The smile was instantly wiped from the face of the Competition Secretary as he slipped seamlessly into rules mode. "Rule 14; striking the ball. Sub section four; striking the ball more than once. If a player's club strikes the ball more than once in the course of a stroke, the player must count the stroke and add a penalty stroke, making two strokes in all."

Bob swept a pointed finger back down the course and began to count his shots. "One, two short of the fairway bunker, three in, four plus penalty stroke makes five," he concluded as he bent and took another look at his ball resting up against the bunker face. "I haven't got a hope in hell. What are my options?"

Focus again fell on Bill. "Well obviously you can try and play out sideways or evoke rule 28, sub sections a, b or c."

"In English?"

"You're buggered and we're two quid up!" jumped in Bill's partner.

Bill ignored the jape. "The player may deem his ball unplayable at any place on the course and under penalty of one stroke may either, a, play a ball as nearly as possible at the spot from which the original ball was last played."

"Which got me in this mess in the first place. Option B?"

"Drop a ball behind the point where the ball lay, keeping that point directly between the hole and the spot on which the ball is dropped, with no limit to how far behind that point the ball may be dropped."

"Too complicated. C?"

"Drop a ball within two club lengths of the spot where the ball lay, but not nearer the hole."

"Promising," said Bob as he did a rough measurement with a flip of his sand wedge to see if the edge of the bunker came within reach.

"But alas," continued Bill, with the trace of a grin on his face as he saw the hope on Bob's face, "if the unplayable ball is in a bunker, the player may proceed under Clause a, b or c. But if he elects either b or c then the ball must be dropped in," he said with emphasis, "the bunker."

Bill's partner wasn't going to let Bob off lightly. "Or of course rule 28, sub section D," he suggested.

"Which is?" asked Bob brightly, this time the optimism spreading to his voice.

"Option D, the player is plain simple buggered."

"Yes, very funny," groaned Bob, "two club lengths it is then," he concluded before flipping his club above the surface twice as a measuring stick and planting a tee peg in the sand to indicate his dropping position. Holding his ball out at arm's length he let it drop from his fingers and winced as it buried itself into the soft surface. Again he labored over the pre-shot routine before slowly drawing back the club. Then, just as he reached the top of his backswing the peace was broken by the howl of a World War Two siren. This time he thinned the ball straight into the face of the bunker. For a few seconds it seemed to stick in the wall between two sods before eventually it dropped back into the sand with a surrendering plop.

"What the blazes?!" screamed Bob as he hurled his sand iron out of the bunker. The three men scrambled for cover as the club whooped over their heads.

"If that's one of you idiots playing silly buggers then all bets are off!" screamed Bob still down in the sand.

"I'm afraid this has got nothing to do with us this time," replied Bill, looking up at the outline of a man on the hall roof. "Journal twenty-four, entry fifty-seven: Upon the death of the Earl Orbury, the Club Secretary shall call a meeting of the Orbury Emergency Council by sounding the air raid siren stationed on the roof."

For a moment there was stunned silence.

"His Lordship, dead?" asked Bob as he climbed out of the bunker.

"So it would seem. Unless of course this is some kind of drill, but I'm sure I would have known if that were the case. Gentlemen, I am afraid I must bid you farewell, I am summoned to Council." With that he left his ball and trolley where they lay and walked towards the haunting sound.

Bill Muir took the southwest stairs and climbed from the lower level changing rooms to the upper Committee Wing. He could hear the hubbub of voices as he rushed through the empty Members Reading Rooms and on into the Library. The small gathering was clustered into separate groups. He scanned the room, trying to catch sight of the secretary.

"I came as quickly as I could," he puffed.

"Thank you Bill," replied Chives as the newcomer joined him at the far end of the room, "I think you may be the last."

"Not a drill then?" asked the Competition Secretary hopefully.

"I'm afraid not, I'm sorry to say that this is the real thing."

"You have Bramley's book?" enquired Bill.

Chives nodded and pulled a small leather bound book from the inside pocket of his blazer. On the cover, embossed in gold were the words: 'Upon the Death of Earl Orbury'.

"Check the list," prompted Bill.

Chives carefully opened the black cover and turned the first couple of blank pages until he came to a long handwritten list. "Gather members of the Orbury Emergency Council," he read, "made up as follows-"

"You read them out and I'll spot them," interrupted Bill.

"Key members of the Golf Committee," went on Chives, "Club Secretary."

"Check," confirmed Bill, pointing a pistol finger back at the reader.

"Competition Secretary."

"Double check," said Bill, this time with both thumbs curling back at himself.

"The Committee Secretary and Club Captain."

Bill stood on tiptoes to look over the heads of a group standing in the centre of the room, screening those behind. "Yep, Brian and Spencer over by the window."

"Excellent," continued Chives moving on down the list, "now, hall personnel. Golf Professional?"

"Check," said Bill, catching sight of the wonky bow tie.

"Steward? I can't hear the siren anymore so he should be here by now," said Chives glancing up with impeccable timing to see Brunswick enter the room.

"Head Chef and Master Housekeeper?"

Bill scanned the room, raising fingers as he crossed the men off. "Check, check."

"That just leaves the estate Staff. Head Greenkeeper?"

"Check."

"Gamekeeper and Estates Manager?"

"Double check," confirmed Bill.

"And finally Tenant Farm Manager?"

"All present and correct, Jim."

Chives took a deep breath as he prepared to address the Council. "Right then, let's get this sad affair underway," he said to Bill as he nodded across to Brunswick. The Steward picked up the prepared knife and crystal glass and brought them together in a volley of high-pitched chimes. The sound cut through the conversation and brought immediate silence to the room.

"Gentlemen of The Orbury Emergency Council, it is with a heavy heart that I confirm your suspicions and bring you grave news. This is not a drill. Earl Orbury is dead." Despite knowing that the siren was positioned to herald this exact piece of information, heads around the Library still dropped at the confirmation. Chives began to read verbatim from the little book. "The Council is hereby instructed to proceed under the endorsed statute of this journal numbered two which was ratified by the seventh Earl Orbury in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one. This statute is drafted to bring stability and leadership to the estate in the dark days between the death of an Earl and the heir taking title."

Chives felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise as he prepared to speak the words he had always suspected he was destined to utter. "By the power invested in this statute I, James Arthur Reginald Chives," these words he inserted where a gap had been left in the text, "Club Secretary, hereby take power of attorney to control and manage the estate and the title handover to the benefit of the estate. Unless rescinded since the date of the journal entry then these powers will be by way of the instrument signed under seal and held by Messrs. Raffles, Pinkerton & Daughter. It is my duty therefore to announce that as stated in the letters patent granted by King George I, the title of Earl Orbury is limited to the first Earl and his heirs male of the body and thus I hereby name his eldest grandson Viscount Waffham as his heir apparent and that he should, in seven days time, appear before Messrs. Raffles, Pinkerton & Daughter to validate his ancestry to the Earldom in order for the title to be formerly bestowed."

A ripple of murmurs spread across the room. Chives gave them a few seconds before reading on. "Under these powers I promise to follow the precedent laid down in fact and seal to ensure that the handover is conducted thus..." he turned the page. "Four days hence from this day to prepare the estate to honour the heir apparent by way of hosting Bramley's Challenge and the Feast of the Orbury Flock." Again the room bristled with low voices. Chives didn't pause this time, but instead raised his voice a few decibels. "Five days hence of this day to prepare the body of the late Earl Orbury to lay in state for twenty-four hours in the Coral Hall and install the heir apparent for the overnight vigil. Six days hence to lay to rest the body of the late Earl Orbury in consecrated ground on the estate. Seven days hence to accompany the heir apparent to Messrs. Raffles, Pinkerton & Daughter to honour the terms of proof and intent required by the letters patent. Upon inheritance of title I hereby confirm that all powers and duties under this instrument will end."

Chives closed the book, to complete and utter silence. When it broke it flipped from deathly hush to pandemonium, every man in the room firing questions at the secretary, their voices rising to compete with their neighbor. At the eye of the storm Chives felt himself being pushed back as the men clambered to be heard.

"Gentlemen, please!" he tried, unable to get his voice over the hullabaloo, "silence if you will," he continued in vain.

In the end Brunswick came to his rescue and once again tapped the goblet with the knife. The trill sound cut the room to soundlessness once more.

"I know that you all have a million and one questions that effect both you and your staff," said Chives, "and I am aware that I need to sit down with you all individually to start planning your roles and duties for the upcoming days of - of..." he struggled in the moment to find the correct word.

"Ceremony," suggested Bill at his side.

"Yes exactly, thank you Bill. The upcoming days of ceremony. I know that the coming week will not be easy as we plan to not only bid our fond farewell to his Lordship and his wonderful long, long round, but also to ensure that The Orbury moves seamlessly into the next chapter of its fine and illustrious history. To ensure that the character and tradition it has built up over centuries remain undimmed."

"With Viscount Waffham running the show?" called out one of the staff managers. "Hold on to yer hats I say, anything could happen!"

"I'm sure the Viscount will rise to the challenge and ensure the legacy of his grandfather remains true and proud for another generation," came back Chives unconvincingly, a touch of dampness rising on his forehead as the image of Lamplighter popped into his head.

"More like the last generation!" called out another, producing a chorus of knowing titters around the room.

"That's enough," said Chives, "His Lordship is barely cold. Now is not the time for merriment. I now have the unenviable duty of trying to get hold of Viscount Waffham and imparting the terrible news." That brought a sombre tone back to the Library.

"But worry not gentlemen, for we are in good hands," went on Chives, waving the small black book in the air, "we have Bramley's trusted guide to get us through these dark days. Every detail of the plan from the recipe of the Orbury Flock to the hymns sung at the funeral is all in here. He was Steward when they laid out the course and saw out six Earls himself until the damn Nazis got him. It's tried and tested. Rest assured I will follow it to the letter and sit down with you all to go over every last detail. We must start with Bramley's challenge. I will need the Competition Secretary, the Captain, Head Greenkeeper, Head Chef, Gamekeeper and Golf Professional in the Committee Room in one hour please." As soon as he finished the Library fell to clamorous chitchat.

Chives turned and placed his hand on Bill's shoulder. "Perhaps you would accompany me for the phone call," he said glancing around to check that no one else was listening before whispering conspiratorially in his friends ear, "there is a..." not for the first time he found himself struggling to select the appropriate word, "complication," he said at last.

"What sort of complication?" asked Bill.

"Shh, not here," panicked Chives, "my office," he suggested.

The secretary's office was located in the south face of the Committee Wing, just off the Library. The two men left the other gentlemen behind and slipped into the smaller room, closing the door behind them for privacy. Bill Muir accepted the offer of the seat that Chives had placed in front of the desk.

"So? What complication?" asked the Competition Secretary with a frown once both men were seated.

"One of rather unfortunate timing," replied Chives uncomfortably.

"Go on."

"Well it all started with this," said the secretary as he unlocked a drawer in his desk, withdrew the folded newspaper and passed it across the beaten leather surface between them.

"Blimey, whose that? Is that Alex? And isn't that...?" he turned the paper to get a better look at the face, "that's Johnnie Lamplighter!" He looked up to find Chives looking ashen. "What have you done?" he asked.

"We did what was right for the club," replied the secretary.

"Whose we?"

"A quorum of the Committee."

"How many?" demanded Bill.

"There were four of us, it's enough. You're not the only one to know the rules," defended Chives.

"Please tell me you haven't slung him out, not now, not right after this," said Bill, indicating in the direction of the Library.

" _This_ ," stressed Chives, "hadn't happened yet."

"So let me get this straight," said Bill, "you've just expelled the most trusted and loyal friend of the man who, on the very same day, just inherited the club, the estate, the hall and all who sail in her?"

Chives nodded mutely.

"Can you rescind it, does anyone know?"

"Lamplighter knows, I've already called him to impart the news."

"Which means he will have got straight on to Viscount Waffham, the man you've now got to call to tell him he is now the Earl."

Chives shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"You do realize that he is going to be livid, incandescent!" went on the Competition Secretary.

"I am aware of the possibility," squirmed Chives.

"Well rather you than me," said Bill, sliding over the telephone. "I suggest you get it over and done with right now."

"Agreed," whispered Chives, closing his eyes, "I have delayed long enough. After all, duty is duty."

The two men sat in silence as Chives turned the dial of the old telephone. The soft ratchet of the returning disc clicked out the digits of the mobile number listed in the open address book. Chives cleared his throat and put the receiver to his ear.

"Good afternoon Sir," he said as soon as the mobile was answered at the other end, "this is Jim Chives from The Orbury. I call with ba..." he suddenly yanked the handset away with a grimace as a tinny tirade blasted out of the Bakelite earpiece.

Tentatively he brought the telephone back to his ear to try again. "I'm sorry, you don't understand. Your grandfa..." but again his words were drowned out by the rampant diatribe at the other end.

Even from the other side of the desk Bill could hear a string of obscenities venting out of the small speaker. Chives pulled nervously at his stiff collar and tried to get some air down his sweating neck.

"Please Sir," he begged again, trying for a third time, "it's your grandfather. He's..." but there was an audible click from the other end of the line, "...dead," finished Chives in barely a whisper, knowing that the man on the other end had already gone. Still holding the phone to his ear he pushed down the pips and redialed the number.

Bill was holding his breath as he strained to hear the faint sound of far off ringing.

"Sorry," stated a familiar voice, "but I am unable to take your call at the moment. But if you leave a message-"

"Damn!" cursed Chives, putting his hand over the mouthpiece. "It's gone straight to answer phone."

"Then leave a message!" prompted Bill.

"Saying what? Your grandfather's dead? Hardly the right way to do such a thing," he said as he panicked and cut off the call.

"Jim, you've got no choice. You'll have to leave him a message. He must find out before he gets back here tomorrow."

"I know Bill, I know. I-I just wasn't prepared for the answer phone." The Club Secretary took a deep breath and then let the carbon dioxide out slowly to try and calm himself. "I'll just say that I have grave family news and that he must call me immediately. That should soften the blow."

He dialed the number for a third time, rehearsing the correct words in his head.

"If that's you again Chives then you can stick this phone right where the sun don't shine!" The angry voice made Chives jump in his seat. Bill leapt up and ran around the table to put his ear next to the telephone.

"Oh V-Viscount," stammered Chives now in a state of utter confusion, "I-I w-was expecting the answer phone."

"Save your breath Chives," came the retort before the caller had time to gather his thoughts, "I've changed my plans and I'm heading back on the train now."

"But Sir," pleaded Chives, desperately trying to interrupt.

"I'll be there in less than two hours and you'd better have a bloody good explanation for all this crap about Johnnie or you won't hear the last of this, do you hear?" At that the line went dead again.

"Bloody hell," cursed the secretary as he frantically redialed for a fourth time. This time all that came back through the earpiece was a long piercing tone.

"He's turned his phone off," said Bill.

"Bugger."

Back in the Committee Room the Captain, Vice Captain and Committee Secretary sat huddled together at one end of the long table.

"Wight then gents," said BSJ, "why don't we get pwoceedings underway whilst Bill and Jim are tied up. So, Spencer, can you dwaw the home player and Minty you dwaw the away. This is the draw for the Orbury Singles match play. Away player to offer thwee dates to the home player. In the event of the tie not being played by the deadline then the home player goes thwough. Take us away Mr. Captain, Sir."

Spencer Cartwright plunged his hand into the black velvet bag and fondled with the little balls inside for a few seconds before extracting one between his thumb and forefinger.

"Twenty-six," he said, reading the white numbers on the ball.

"Bristol Rovers," joked Minty in his impeccable voice, before plunging his own hand into the bag.

"Leonard Colesham," said BSJ meanwhile as he wrote the first player's name onto the top line of the draw sheet laid out before him.

"Will play?" prompted Spencer, waiting for his vice to select a number.

"Number sixteen."

"Notts County," finished the Captain as both he and his Vice giggled like schoolboys.

"Wing Commander Lowe," went on BSJ, ignoring their prank.

"Poor old Lennie won't be happy with that one!" guffawed Minty. "The old bugger will talk him into defeat."

"Number four," said the Captain drawing the next ball.

"Ah yours twuly," said BSJ scribbling his own name onto the paper. "Nice one Spencer, a home dwaw, thank you. Come on Minty, pick me a good one."

"Thirty-one," stated the vice.

"Uh oh, Colin Stimpson!" cried BSJ.

"An all Committee affair, that'll be an interesting one," said Spencer Cartwright before diving into the bag again. "Fifty-eight."

"Jim Chives."

"That had better be a bloody home draw," said Chives with perfect timing as he and Bill strode into the room.

"Factum indeedum," replied Minty as he waited for the Captain to place his ball into the purpose built tray before plucking out the away player, "and you will play, number eleven," he announced.

"Fwedewick Piper."

"Which one's he?" questioned Spencer Cartwright.

"You ought to know everyone, you are the Club Captain!" admonished Chives.

"You'd know him when you saw him," said Bill, "small bloke with the upside down head. Bald as a coot but with a great bushy beard. Normally plays with Benson and Charlie Wheeler."

"Not the one with the gammy leg?" Chives said suddenly, a look of horror on his face.

"Correctus guessus," pontificated the Vice Captain.

"Bugger that" said the Club Secretary, "put him back and pick out someone else."

"But I've witten him in now," complained BSJ.

"Well you'll just have to unwitten him. I can't spend four hours on my own with him. Here let me do it," he said as he picked up the ball in question and thrust it back into the bag before pulling out another. "Twenty-nine?" he tried.

"Neil Turner?" offered BSJ.

Chives shook his head and had another try. "Number two?"

"Wuddy hell," said BSJ suddenly, glancing up sadly, "I-I f-forgot to take him out. I-It's his L-Lordship." The Committee Room fell silent.

"You know, in all the commotion, it hasn't had a chance to sink in. He's gone," said Chives softly, slumping into one of the chairs, sadness etched across his face.

"What a man," said Bill.

"What a way to go!" said Minty. "Hole in one, it was a spiffing shot. It was as if the ball was on the end of a piece of elastic. Never missing."

"Did he suffer?" asked Chives.

The Captain shook his head. "It all happened so quick. I think he was probably dead before he hit the ground."

"What's going to happen to us now, Jim?" asked Minty unsurely.

"Business as usual," replied the secretary.

"But what if the Viscount wants to make big changes when he takes over?" continued the Vice.

"Changes?" panicked BSJ. "What kind of changes?"

"Who knows," replied Minty, "I overheard some chaps talking in the bar earlier. What if he wanted to build a housing estate on the course, or open up the course to the public?"

"Or to women!" spluttered Spencer Cartwright.

"Vixens in the clubhouse?!" cried BSJ. "He wouldn't, would he Jim?"

"If you believe all the rumors," replied Chives, "then that is precisely the last thing he's likely to do."

"Even so Jim, a new broom and all that, he'll want to make his mark. Stamp his authority on the place," said Minty.

Chives cast an enquiring glance over to Bill who, after a moment's pause, agreed with a little nod of his head.

"Gentlemen," started Chives in a serious tone, "it's time to take you into our confidence. You see, we have a secret weapon of our own." Captain and vice put down the bag of balls and BSJ lay his pen upon the draw sheet.

"What sort of weapon?" asked the Captain.

"A very old, but very powerful one," replied Bill, walking around the table to stand with Chives.

The Club Secretary took up the thread. "One that takes us back again to the year eighteen sixty-one."

"Is it to do with Bwamley?" prompted BSJ.

"Indeed it is," conceded Chives, "Bramley was born on the estate when the fifth Earl was already in his sixties. The old man took a shine to the young boy and when the lad's father died he took him under his wing. It was the fifth Earl that decided to lay out the course and bring golf to The Orbury. Though this was much to the annoyance of his eldest son and heir and alas, when the fifth Earl died at the ripe old age of eighty-six, the course was not yet finished. The incoming Earl was always dead against golf and before his father's body was even cold he started to rip up the greens and fairways. Bramley and the new Earl's younger sibling could only watch on in horror, helpless as all the fifth Earl's work started to be undone before their eyes."

"Wuddy hell," muttered BSJ.

"However, at this point, fate had a decisive part to play."

"Some say fate. Others like to think of it as justice. An angry father's revenge from the other side of the grave," suggested Bill.

"Well, whatever it was, it was swift," continued Chives, "the new Earl was taken ill on a Friday morning and dead before Evensong on the Sunday. The estate was plunged into chaos."

Bill picked up the narrative. "The new Earl was ill equipped to run the estate. All the training and education had been given to his elder brother. However, despite being only twenty-one, Bramley soon emerged as the guiding light. The new seventh Earl trusted him greatly and he was of course only seven or eight years older than the Earl's son, the new Viscount. The three of them made a pact to ensure that the fifth Earl's legacy of golf at The Orbury should be protected for as long as the Stoke family had control of the estate."

"So it was that they hatched a scheme to guard The Orbury against the whim of a future Earl who might overturn this vision during his tenure," said Chives.

"But how can you safeguard against ancestors who haven't even been born yet?" questioned Minty.

Chives paused, milking the rapt attention of the other men. "By means of The Orbury Way," he announced dramatically.

Bill went on. "A charter signed by each Earl that hands control of the golf club over to the Committee whilst retaining the titular title of Club President."

"Why the bally hell would they do that?" asked the Vice Captain.

"Not just that, how can a flimsy piece of paper stop some future Earl who's hell bent on wiping out golf fwom The Orbuwy?"

"Aah," purred Chives, "and herein lies the brilliance of Bramley. Of course a _normal_ piece of paper on its own isn't going to stop them. But what if this piece of paper was mentioned in the letters patent itself?"

"Not sure I follow old boy?" stated Minty.

Chives retrieved Bramley's small leather book from inside his jacket pocket and flicked to the relevant page. "To honour the terms of proof and intent required by the letters patent," he read, "they are the words I said earlier, as written in Bramley's own hand. Proof and _intent_ ," he repeated with emphasis on the last word.

"Sorry Jim, but you've lost me as well," admitted the Captain.

"In seven days time I have to accompany Viscount Waffham to the family solicitors. Where, by royal declaration, he must not only prove his ancestry to inherit the title but to also prove his intent for the use of estate."

"The Orbury Way?" suggested Minty.

"Precisely. With a stroke of utter genius Bramley convinced the seventh Earl to seek an audience with Queen Victoria to have The Orbury Way added as a codicil to the formal letters patent of the earldom via an Act of Parliament."

"If you don't sign, you don't inherit," stated Bill simply.

"Utterum genium!" concurred Minty. "So the Viscount can kick and scream and spit out his dummy as much as he likes but at the end of the day he is powerless to intervene?" asked Minty.

"Even if we kick out his best mate?" asked BSJ, a toothy smile emerging from the depths of his beard.

"Exactly," grinned Chives.

"Not that we can proceed without all caution," warned Bill, "The Orbury Way covers how the estate is to be run all the time it is under the control of the Earl. He could of course sell it."

"Would he?" asked Spencer Cartwright.

"Of course he's not going to sell it!" rejected Chives. "He can't wait to get his hands on it."

"If selling is one thing he can do, then what _can't_ he do?" asked Minty.

"He can't change the usage of the land from the original vision of the fifth Earl which was to split the estate into three sections; golf course, deer park and tenant farms," replied Chives. "What's more it states that the golf club is controlled by a Golf Committee with the Earl acting only as President."

"Does the Viscount know this?" asked Spencer Cartwright.

"We're not sure," confessed Bill with a sideways glance to Chives, "I guess we'll find that out when he gets here."

Chives checked the time on the clock in the central alcove. "Which according to Brunswick will be in about an hour. So gather your bits Spencer, you and I must meet him at the station."

"Me?" spluttered the Captain, "do I have to? He's going to be very angry."

"Good God man, where's your backbone? The man's grandfather has just died and it is only right and proper that it should fall to the Club Secretary and Club Captain to break the news, so come on, chop chop!"

Reluctantly the Captain got to his feet.

"Bill, we'll have to delay the first meeting by an hour, can you let all parties know please."

"Of course."

"And we'll leave you two to complete the knockout draw," he said to BSJ and Minty.

"No pwoblem, Jim."

"And remember that your numbers don't add up now, you're a man short because you left the old man in," said the secretary.

"I shouldn't wowwy about that Jim, I should be able to find a late entwant fwom somewhere."

"Oh you needn't go to all that bother," replied Chives, "just give me a bye, I think that would be best." With that the Club Secretary led the Captain out of the room.

## 3 - Shrimpers

Within the hour Chives was standing on Folkenham Station, his eyes transfixed on the scene before him. A huge bellied steam engine was panting at the platform. From under its great iron skirt steam burst in all directions, its wheels and the rails shrouded in white lilac smog. Down the length of the platform, steam rolled out from the gap between the train and the white edged paving slabs before dancing around the high-heeled feet of the women talking through open doors and windows to unseen passengers. Kneeling before the train, a young lad in a burgundy sweater and grey shorts seemed to be scribbling down the engine number in his notebook as bank upon bank of soot-laden smoke billowed out of the main funnel. In the shadow of the carriage a peak-capped porter was loading a fat woman's trunk onto a low trolley as, on a nearby bench, an old man sat idly in the sunshine reading his paper.

"The golden age of steam, eh?" said Spencer Cartwright over the secretary's shoulder, jolting Chives from his reverie and causing him to take his eyes off the peeling railway advertisement.

"Yes indeed," the secretary replied sadly, "long gone, like most other things that made this country great. And for what, progress?" he asked as he turned to look around the deserted platform. The windows and doors to the old waiting room were boarded up with green shuttering that was peeling and rotting at the edges and the nearest thing to an employee was the stainless steel ticket machine cemented into the edge of the platform. Hanging from an old rusting bracket, beneath the once white picket eaves, the station clock was stuck forgetfully at five minutes to twelve.

"And no doubt the train will be running late as usual," he prophesied to the other half of the greeting party, both of whom were resplendent in their russet club furs, black trousers and white shoes.

"I understand that you have an upcoming entrance interview?" questioned Chives as the two of them stared down the empty, winding track.

"Indeed I do," replied the Captain, "tomorrow in fact. A Mr. Lionel Woods I think his name is. On paper he sounds a good prospective member, he has a very strong proposer and seconder."

"That may be so, but I'm afraid he has made a very bad start," said Chives, "I had to have him in my office this morning for breaking the dress code," he muttered with the severity of a murder judge.

"I'm sure it was just a mistake," excused Spencer Cartwright, "perhaps he wasn't aware of it?"

"Ignorance is no excuse for breaking the rules! I can sense a bad egg when I see one Spencer and my first impressions are seldom wrong. I would have thought that a prospective new member would take even more care given the impending entrance interview. No, we simply cannot tolerate such anarchistic flourishes. Now, perhaps more than ever, we need to show the members and the incoming Earl that the Committee remains rock solid behind everything the old man stood for. We shall have to make an example of him."

"Such as?" asked the Captain sheepishly.

"Why, turn down his application of course."

Spencer Cartwright shuffled nervously from one foot to other. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with having to do that, just for breaking the dress code once."

"You always were a bloody softy," interrupted Chives, "as usual I suppose I'll have to do it. Let Brunswick know the time of the interview and I'll sit in on it and I'll bring the sword of Damocles with me if it helps. Ah, at last..." he broke off, as the tardy train finally came into view in the distance. Both men stood with their hands behind their backs as the two-carriage train pulled into the station.

Viscount Waffham was the only person to alight from the train. Stepping down on to the platform he clutched a small holdall in his left hand and walked head down towards the exit. After a dozen or so paces he looked up to find the two officials blocking his way.

"Chives!!" he screamed across the short distance between them, his round face immediately flushing scarlet with anger. "Thought you'd ambush me at the station did you? Try and hush this up out of the old man's earshot?" he ranted. "Well you've gone too bloody far this time Chives! You haven't even taken the time to get Johnnie's side of the story, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. But oh no! Just like your bosom buddy Muxcombe you go blundering in throw..." he suddenly stopped in mid sentence as he noticed the grievous looks on both men's faces. "I'm surprised the two of you are looking so glum. You've been waiting for some trumped up reason to get rid of him for years. I thought you'd have been cartwheeling down the fairways."

"Sir," said Chives as the younger man finally paused for breath, "I am sorry to say that I am the bringer of terrible news. Your grandfather is dead," he blurted out before the Viscount could interrupt him again.

"D-Dead? B-But how? When? He was as right as rain first thing this morning." he demanded.

"L-Late this m-morning, Sir," replied the Captain, "I was playing with him on the seventh. He got a wonderful hole in one, he took a four iron, oh it was a beautiful strike, straight out the centre of the-"

"Yes, yes, that's enough, Spencer," nudged Chives. "Sir," he went on deferentially. "We suspect that it was a heart attack. By all accounts it was very swift, he wouldn't have felt a thing. Dead before he hit the ground. I hope that brings some comfort."

The Viscount's face remained impassive as he watched the train pull out of the station.

"I really am so very sorry Sir," went on Chives, "I tried to tell you earlier on the phone, I hadn't planned to tell you like this. It must be awful for you."

"Awful? For me?" replied the Viscount, as the trace of a thin smile began to snake across his face. "Not half as awful as it must be for you, eh? Good old grandpapa always did have impeccable timing. It puts a whole new perspective on this business with Johnnie, don't you think?" It was a statement rather than a question and Chives stayed silent. "The trouble for you, is that it is painfully obvious that you have gone and played your hand a tad early," he was smiling broadly now, "and oh dear Mr. Secretary, _Sir_ , it's my turn now and it looks as if I've just been dealt a royal flush."

With that he nonchalantly handed his bag to Spencer Cartwright. "I assume you have a car waiting. Shall we away, gentlemen?" he said over his shoulder, leaving the two men in his wake.

The journey back to the hall was made in silence. Spencer Cartwright drove with his white knuckled hands clamped at ten to two, unable to take his wide eyed stare off the road. They swept up the long avenue before curving around the historic lonesome oak that stood guard at the front of the hall and brought the car to a gravel crunching halt in front of the entrance.

Brunswick was standing at the door and rushed to open the passenger door to allow Viscount Waffham to climb out.

"Sir," he purred, giving a slight bow of his head, "the members and staff would like to welcome you to your ancestral home at this time of great sadness." With that he stepped back and beckoned with his arm for the Viscount to follow him into the Coral Hall.

Viscount Waffham walked slowly through the dark and gloomy anteroom at the front of the building before stepping into the wondrous spectacle of the Coral Hall. Two columns of men formed an avenue down the length of the floor, stopping at the base of the sweeping staircase that led on up to the pro shop. The plain flagstone floor was flanked on either side by high walls of exquisite pink veined alabaster. Atop these walls stood imposing fluted columns of matching stone that supported the ornate ceiling, their tops carved into intricate scrolls. The vaulted ceiling was a marvel of perspective. Bathed in the golden glow of hidden lighting, it tapered and curved upwards, its coffered stucco sides accentuated by shadow. Around the base of the columns ran an elegant wrought-iron balustrade to form a gallery that looked down onto the heart of the hall. At the point where the staircase began to rise, the end of the magnificent space drew into an apse and swept you up to the door and into the bosom of the ancient pile.

"Sir," greeted the aisle of men as they bowed forwards, keeping their heads in the lowered position as he walked slowly down the line, the sound of their harmonized voices still resonating around the polished walls. He walked up the stairs before stopping halfway and turning to address the men.

"Gentlemen, I thank you. I have barely had time to take in the news and of course my thoughts are dominated with sad thoughts of my dear grandpapa and such fond, fond memories." He paused to allow the words to rumble into silence. "And yet, seeing you here, brings me back to the here and now and reminds me of my destiny. It also reminds me of my responsibility and prompts me to think of the work ahead. The Orbury has stood resplendent for hundreds of years, unchanged for centuries, a secretive place, unknown and unhindered by the outside world. But not for much longer!" The words echoed and ricocheted off the gleaming surfaces. "I vow to bring it blinking and staggering into the twenty-first century. To throw open its doors and allow the wider public in to enjoy this precious place, this gem." The Viscount looked along the line of faces craning up at him until resting upon the Club Secretary.

"The era of the One Hundred is over," he said, unable to suppress a smile, his eyes fixed on Chives. "In seven days time I take on the honoured title of Earl Orbury and will disband the current Committee and form my own. Handpicked, younger men. Or women!" he threw in flippantly, delighting in the shock wave he knew his words would cause.

Chives returned his stare impassively, ensuring his face betrayed no emotion.

"One week gentlemen," repeated the Viscount, "and the new order begins. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must turn my attention to mourning the memory of my grandfather."

With that he turned and climbed the rest of the stairs two at a time.

Chives turned to Spencer Cartwright. "I think perhaps it would be fair to say that in response to our earlier question, no, the Viscount has neither heard, nor got any notion of the existence of The Orbury Way. I'm not a vengeful man and I say now that I will take no pleasure in the impending fall out when the penny drops."

"Not even a soupçon," goaded the Captain.

Chives stretched up his neck, tightened his tie knot and watched the disappearing back of the heir. "Well," he admitted, "perhaps a smidgen."

Hours later Brunswick began to close up the Committee Wing against the ever-deepening gloom of evening. From the west windows of the Library he could just make out a thick blanket of fog that had descended on the lake, already thick enough to obscure the moonlit flag on the tenth green. Checking the window locks he then pulled the thick heavy curtains together, leaving the large room illuminated by patches of soft electric light cast by sporadic lamps and the dancing flames of the fire. The room was filled with popping and cracking as the kindling was consumed by thick hungry tongues of orange that leapt up the chimney as he pushed three armchairs into an arc around the hearth at a time tested distance. Before uncorking them, he blew the dust and cobwebs from the wine bottles and then placed one on each of the three walnut lowboys. With a polish of his handkerchief and a final check against the firelight for fingerprints he placed the crystal goblets alongside the breathing bottles and waiting bowls of hazelnuts.

It was still sometime later before approaching voices neared.

"Good God, what a day," sighed Chives as they entered. "Oh that man Brunswick is a genius!" he exclaimed as he embraced the warmth of the fire with open arms and spied the wine.

Bill Muir picked up one of the bottles. "Blimey, he's raided the Chateau Lafite!"

"No doubt in honour of the old man and quite right to," approved Chives as he slumped tiredly into one of the armchairs. The other two men quickly followed suit.

For a while, the only noise in the room was the occasional crackle from the hearth as they each poured themselves a large glass before swirling the ruby black liquid in the goblets and inhaling the violet aroma.

"His Lordship," toasted Chives, closing his eyes as he took his first sip.

"Nectar, pure nectar," muttered Bill.

"Ambrosia nectarum as Minty might say!" exclaimed the Captain, before the three men allowed their memories to blend with the wine.

"What's troubling you Jim?" asked Bill suddenly, breaking the reverie, "I've known you long enough to recognize that worried look on your face. What's bothering you?"

"It's the accounts," confessed the secretary, "I must admit I haven't had time to go through them in any detail, I just managed a quick once over before the meeting. But we appear to be dreadfully low on funds."

"How low?" asked the Captain.

"Very. From a rough calculation I'd say we only have enough to get us through one, maybe two weeks. Three weeks at the absolute most."

"But that can't be right," said Bill, "there must be another holding account somewhere. Have you spoken to the bank?"

"No, not yet, and you're right, I'm sure there's a perfectly simple explanation. I'll get on to them first thing in the morning. The meeting went well I thought," went on the Club Secretary, changing the subject.

"Excellent, you certainly can't do anymore on that front Jim. Everyone knows what is expected of them and just what they've got to do between now and the challenge. You've set Bramley's plan in train to the letter."

"Indeed," confirmed Chives, as he dug out the little book and spun it with his fingers, "a work of genius."

"But will it be worth the effort? Will it turn the Viscount's head?" asked Spencer Cartwright.

"Oh no," replied Chives, "his mind is made up, it's change he wants. Not that he can do anything about it."

"There's that hint of a smile again Jim," mused Bill.

"I'll take no enjoyment from it, I told Spencer that earlier. The man has been waiting his whole life for this moment. A life that has been in the shadow of the old man, having to be at his beck and call. No doubt he cursed every brick and blade of grass from the inside of his prison cell, plotting revenge on the place. On the One Hundred."

"But how come he doesn't know about The Orbury Way. If it is so central to the running of the estate, surely his grandfather would have told him?" asked the Captain.

"I don't know, but there was no love lost between them," stated Bill.

"The old man never stopped blaming the Viscount for the death of his only son," put in Chives.

"The Viscount's father? What happened?" asked Spencer Cartwright.

Chives turned to Bill and they came to a silent decision. "I think that is a story for another day," he said eventually. "Suffice to say the old man probably took some enjoyment from keeping the Viscount in the dark about The Orbury Way."

"Bagsy I'm not the one to tell him!" exclaimed the Captain, crossing the first two fingers on his right hand and thrusting them into the air.

"No, you're spared that job Spencer," replied Chives. "So am I for that matter. That's one for Messrs. Raffles, Pinkerton & Daughter."

"The family solicitors?"

"The very same, representing the estate since 1715 and the first Earl himself. They've overseen the transition of every Earl since its creation. A proud and historic organization just like us. Very fitting. Very fitting indeed."

There was a pause as the three men turned their attention to the nuts and the sound of cracking shells blended with sporadic popping from the glowing logs.

"That thing you said earlier," began the Captain, "something about heirs of the body."

"Heirs _male_ of the body," corrected Chives, "what of it?"

"What does it mean exactly?"

Bill Muir answered. "It means that when King George I bestowed the Earldom of Orbury on the first Earl he allowed the title to be passed on to only his direct male offspring; heirs male of the body."

"So only children born to the Earl himself?" questioned Spencer Cartwright awkwardly.

"What's on your mind?" quizzed Chives.

The Captain shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Come on man, spit it out!"

"Well, I-I've heard the r-rumours," said Spencer Cartwright hesitantly.

"What rumours?" asked Chives.

"You kn-know," stammered the Captain, "about the Viscount," he said with a waggle of his hand. "You know, batting for the other side. Being-"

"Queer?" interjected Chives.

"Well, yes. Is it true?"

"I've no idea, why?"

"Well because that's my point. Heirs male of the body, you said it. If the rumours are true then there's hardly much chance of that is there? What happens then?"

"You know, I'm not sure," admitted Chives. "Any ideas Bill?"

"Should he die without having an heir then I guess there would be a mad scramble back through the family tree. The Viscount is an only child, as was his father. I'm not sure about the old man but I presume you keep going back until you find a male sibling and then follow their descendants back down in the hope that there is a surviving heir from an unbroken line."

"So we could end up with someone worse if the Viscount pops his clogs?" said the Captain.

"Blimey," said Bill, "he's not even taken over and you've got him six foot under. I'm sure he is more than aware of the ramifications of not providing an heir."

Chives's forehead was creased into a frown. "He's got a point though Bill. What if they couldn't trace any male descendants?"

The Competition Secretary shrugged his shoulders. "In that event I presume that the title would revert back to the Crown."

"And The Orbury?" pushed Chives.

"I don't know Jim, back to the Crown as well I guess for them to dole out as they see fit."

"Which would in turn mean no more Orbury Way! Ergo no protection for the One Hundred. Spencer's right, we need to give some serious thought to this issue."

"I don't think the Viscount will be too happy if we start setting him up on blind dates!" sniggered Spencer Cartwright, the corners of his mouth stained into a joker's smile by the wine.

"I was thinking more about getting someone to dig around in the past, see if we can't find ourselves an alternate heir," said Chives.

"Just in case?" suggested Bill.

"Exactly. Call it a little insurance policy."

"It can't do any harm, what did you have in mind?" asked the Competition Secretary.

"Not sure yet," replied Chives, "I'll keep it in the back of my mind for the moment. Well gents, I think that is more than enough for one day," he concluded as he drained the last dregs from his goblet.

"Don't forget we're meeting Lionel Woods in the morning," said the Captain as they rose stiffly from their comfy seats.

"Ah yes of course, I must remember to bring my hatchet. If I recall you don't quite have the stomach for it, isn't that right?" teased Chives.

"No, I took on board what you said before. And I-I," he paused, trying to stand his full height, "I'd like to lead tomorrow's meeting and do the deed myself."

"Bravo Spencer!" exclaimed Chives. "Good God, we'll make a Captain of you yet! Till morning then."

By the following morning, the fog that had started to descend the previous evening now completely smothered the hall. The mid morning sun tried desperately to pierce the thick blanket but to no avail and its ethereal glow only managed to intensify the eerie scene. There was total silence, no birdsong, no animal calls, no golfers and certainly no thwack of titanium on moulded plastic. Chives stood on the Portico Terrace, a thick overcoat wrapped tightly around him, gazing out on the chilly scene.

"Eerie, isn't it," came a voice out of the swirling mist. Chives jumped and turned to find the Viscount lurking a few feet behind him.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, trying to regain his composure. "I didn't hear you coming."

"The fog just swallows up the noise," replied the Viscount spookily, "you could scream blue murder and never be heard."

Chives suddenly felt uneasy, the fog unnerving him.

"I was hoping to catch you alone," whispered the Viscount, "and I'm going to try my best to keep emotion out of this but you've overstretched the mark with Johnnie. You have no idea of the facts."

"I think the facts are pretty obvious for all to see," retorted Chives, "splashed all over the front page! I suppose I should thank God for small mercies that your grandfather never got to hear of it. Lamplighter got what was due."

"And yet your pal Muxcombe gets away scot-free."

"He's innocent in all this, any fool can see that."

"Perhaps, but any other fool would at least wait until they'd listened to both sides of the story. It takes a special kind of fool to kick a man out without even a token consideration of justice."

"Justice?" spat Chives. "Society has already dished that out."

"And he served his time as you well know," replied the Viscount before dropping his voice to a whisper, "as have others," he added, holding eye contact with the secretary.

Both men stood their ground; it was Chives who spoke first.

"Justice is one thing," he muttered, "but the morals of the situation are something else entirely. Fathering a child with a teenager at his age? I'm surprised Muxcombe didn't reach for the shotgun let alone his fist."

"And there you go jumping to conclusions again," replied the Viscount. "But I'm not here to fight out the rights and wrongs of the case. I'm here on serious business, I need to ask for a favour."

"A favour? From me? What sort of favour?" said Chives.

"Nothing onerous, in fact it is simplicity itself."

"Go on."

"I need access to the bank account," said Viscount Waffham.

"Which I'm afraid is one favour I won't help with."

"But you have full control of the account."

"As will you in a week's time."

"I can't wait a week!" snapped the heir.

"Besides, there is a temporary problem," went on Chives.

"What kind of problem?"

"A lack of funds. Of course there will be deposits elsewhere but until I speak with the bank we are almost running on empty."

"So is it won't help or can't help?" pushed the Viscount.

"Let me keep to bare facts," replied Chives stiffly, "as we speak it is can't help. Currently I don't have access to any spare funds. But of course once I find the reserves then it will become won't help."

"For the sake of our working relationship I'll just accept the _can't_ help for the moment. When do you expect to know more about the whereabouts of the reserves?"

"I need to act fast, we can only survive a few weeks, so hopefully no more than a couple of days," replied the secretary.

"Then I will bring the matter up again on Monday. We'll deal with the _won't_ help then," said Viscount Waffham coldly, turning to leave. "Oh, one more thing," he remembered, "I understand that I'm left high and dry as a single player against you and Muxcombe in the semi finals of the pairs match play?"

Chives didn't reply.

"I also note that the deadline is the 24th, this coming Wednesday?"

Again the secretary remained mute, unsure where the heir was going with this.

"I'm sure you'll understand, but I don't feel up to playing in the next couple of days and as for Wednesday itself, well, given the circumstances."

"The circumstances?" asked Chives.

"My grandfather's funeral. I trust that you won't mind extending the deadline a little."

Chives smiled. "By which time of course you assume that you will be able to re-instate Lamplighter and play as a pair?"

"Oh," replied Waffham in mock surprise, "do you know, the idea hadn't entered my mind," he said with a grin.

"Well why not," said Chives still smiling, "extension granted. Now if you'll excuse me Viscount Waffham, I have plans to be getting on with." With that he turned and left Viscount Waffham alone on the terrace.

Chives stepped back through the gap and into the pro shop. The entrance onto the terrace was ingenious. Rather than a set of doors that might spoil the elegant feel of the large welcoming room that greeted visitors as they climbed the stairs from the Coral Hall, the wall below the window was hinged. Access to the shaded terrace was gained by first lifting the window and then opening out the wall below.

"Can you make sure you close up behind the Viscount," instructed Chives to Vic Peters before turning left and striding through the lounge, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the expectant interviewee who was seated in one of the armchairs.

"I see our man is waiting in the Lounge already," said the Club Secretary as he strode into the Captain's office. "He's prompt, I'll give him that."

"I told Brunswick we'd ring when we were ready for him," replied Spencer Cartwright.

"Then ring away," said Chives as he pulled up a second chair behind the desk. "You still happy to take the lead? You haven't lost your new found courage in the fog?"

The captain pulled on the bell cord. "Of course not, you were dead right. Now, more than ever we need to show a firm hand on the tiller."

"Bravo!"

A couple of minutes later and Brunswick gave his signature tap upon the door. "Mr. Lionel Woods," he announced.

"Thank you Brunswick," replied the Captain in as gruff a voice as he could muster. Chives meanwhile, kept his head down, with Bramley's little book open before him.

"Good to meet you Mr. Captain," said Woods, "and to meet you again Mr. Secretary."

"I'm sure," replied Chives, without looking up.

"P-Please take a seat," said Spencer Cartwright nervously, indicating to the vacant chair. "Now you see Woods, here's the thing-"

"Sorry, but before we start," interrupted Woods, "please accept my condolences on the loss of his Lordship. It must have come as quite a shock to everyone at the club."

"Thank you," replied the Captain, "indeed it did. In fact I was actually playing with him at the time. He'd just got an incredible hole in one up at the seventh. He struck a wonderful four iro-"

Chives, still looking down, coughed loudly.

"Uh? Oh y-yes," stumbled Spencer Cartwright, "of course, m-mustn't get side tracked. Now, see here Woods, it's those darned socks," he blurted.

"Socks?"

"Yes s-socks."

" _Grey_ , socks!" interjected Chives.

"Yes, g-grey socks, i-it's r-really not on you see and well, there's only one hundred so I'm sure you understand that it really is nothing personal but we have to ensure that everyone keeps on the straight and narrow so yes, there you have it, very sorry and all that, thank you for being so understanding, perhaps another time, er, in the future, umm..." his words stammered into silence.

"Sorry, I'm not sure I follow," questioned Woods.

"I think that what the Captain is trying to say," took over the secretary, finally raising his head and looking at Woods for the first time, "is tha..." Chives stopped in mid sentence, squinting his eyes to focus on the other man.

"I'm sorry Mr. Woods but it just cannot be," went on the Captain, trying again to take control.

"I say," said Chives, "is that? Good God, that's an old Shrimptonian tie!"

"Indeed Mr. Secretary."

The captain kept bumbling on. "Mr. Woods, I'm afraid it falls to me to tell you that-"

"By Jove! I could recognize it a par five away! I was at Shrimpers fifty-six to sixty-one," said Chives.

"Sixty-four to sixty-nine," came back Woods immediately.

"Gentlemen please," struggled Spencer Cartwright. "Mr. Woods, I'm very sorry but-"

Chives turned to his Captain. "What are you blithering on about man?"

"Mr. W-Woods," stammered Spencer Cartwright looking from one man to the other, not sure who to address. Finally he turned his attention back to the applicant. "I'm sorry, but we must turn down your application."

"Turn it down?" snapped Chives. "Don't be ridiculous, Lionel went to Shrimpton. Ignore him Lionel, you're in. In fact you're in luck. We have a place available in the One Hundred right away, consider yourself a fully fledged member."

"Thank you Mr. Secretary."

"Jim, please, call me Jim."

"I take it I get his Lordship's place?" went on Woods sadly.

"No," said Chives, "neither his Lordship nor the heir apparent are part of the One Hundred."

"Then in that case my condolences again," said Woods.

"I'm sorry?" said Chives.

"Dead men's shoes, remember?" said the new member.

"Ah yes, but happily for once, no. It wasn't a death, it was a misdemeanor. I'm sure you'll get to hear about it in the bar at some stage. More importantly, was that old crow Cobbet still Headmaster?"

"Was he ever. Beware the Tebboc!"

As if on cue both men leapt to their feet and burst into song.

" _The Tebboc hears,_

The Tebboc sees,

The Tebboc's hiding in the trees.

The Tebboc snarls,

The Tebboc rants,

The Tebboc's hiding in your underpants!"

"By God I swear that man had eyes in the back of his head," said Chives.

"We used to say that he hovered. His feet never made a sound. One minute he was nowhere to be seen, the next he was standing right behind you and you hadn't heard so much as a pin drop!"

"What house?" asked Chives with excitement.

"Gibbon."

"Me too!! Did they still rule the river?"

"Unbeaten from fifty-three until I left!" Suddenly both men curled their arms under their armpits and began to hop around the room. "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!"

The Captain looked on in disbelief as they continued to monkey around his office and dance before him like giggling schoolboys.

"Er, excuse me," he said quietly, holding up his arm as if the school memories were catching.

"What?" puffed Chives, coming to a halt and leaning on the corner of the desk to catch his breath.

"I don't want to ruin the party, but I thought there was meant to be a ballot," said the Captain, "you know, to allocate membership into the One Hundred from the Kits?"

"You really can be an old stick in the mud," complained Chives. "Lionel went to Shrimpers, and a Gibbon to boot! He's in, that's how things work here. It's not what you know and all that. Now, I think a drink is in order, come to my office Lionel and let's catch up on the old place."

## 4 - Bramley's Challenge

A couple of days later and Monday morning dawned bright and crisp. The fog that had enveloped the course over the weekend had been mostly whisked away by a chill breeze, leaving only a few stubborn patches lurking around the curved banks of the lake. The yellow stone of the hall glowed amber in the low autumn sunshine as the first leaves began to flurry and dance toward ground.

The greenkeepers were out in force; manicuring perfect lines down the fairways and swishing dew from the greens like expert fly fishers.

Back in the Committee Room they were double and triple checking every detail to ensure that everything was in perfect order.

"And the Orbury Flock?" asked Chives, looking to the Gamekeeper and Head Chef.

"All in hand," replied a rugged looking man, bedecked in waxen green.

"Are we allowed to know what the blazes it is?" questioned Easter.

"A feast fit for a King, let alone an Earl," replied Chives, "a celebration of the fare found across the estate and tenant farms. Care to elaborate Chef?"

All eyes turned to the man in the tarnished white tunic, smeared with the stains of his work. "It's a flock of ten different birds. One inside another inside another and so on."

The Gamekeeper took up the story. "First comes the little woodcock which is placed inside a partridge, which is in turn put into a pigeon before all three birds are placed inside a pheasant."

"Wuddy hell, my mouths watewing alweady," slurped BSJ.

The Chef carried on the recipe. "Next comes a guinea fowl and then a mallard, all of which are placed inside a chicken. Then comes the famous Orbury Duck, which is then stuffed into a goose before the ten bird celebration is complete by encasing the lot into a turkey."

The gathered men guffawed their approval and slapped their hands on the table.

"And it's all ready to go?" asked Chives.

"All trimmed, trussed and ready for the ovens," replied the Chef.

"Then gentlemen, it looks as if we are good to go. Spencer, is the One Hundred assembled?"

"Those that can walk," replied the Captain.

"A slug of brandy to each of them Brunswick," Chives called over to the Steward, "ball spotting is a cold old sport. So, the Viscount tees off in one hour. We all know our duties, I suggest we get to our stations and let Bramley's Challenge and the battle for the goblet commence!"

Forty-five minutes later and the walking wounded of the One Hundred stood in two ceremonial lines that began up in the pro shop, then slinked down the grand staircase of the Coral Hall, across the flagstone floor and out on to the gravel entrance.

Chives worked his way slowly down the line, checking the attire of the men as he went, pausing sporadically to tighten a tie or brush down a dusty fur. Finally he got to the head of the lines and stood to attention opposite Old Bogy as Spencer Cartwright broke off from the end of one of the human snakes to join him. The two men stood in silence as the breeze caught the upper branches of the menacing tree.

"Is it really eight hundred years old?" asked the Captain, happily taking his eyes off it.

"Apparently," replied Chives, "can you imagine what sights it has seen? The building of the hall, the laying out of the course and two World Wars. Maybe even King George I himself."

"I don't like it," whispered the Captain, "it's eerie. That dark hollow in its trunk looks like a screaming mouth and the knobbly old branches at the side look like arms trying to pounce on you every time you come out of the hall. Especially at night." He shivered.

"Sounds like you need another brandy," mocked Chives before his attention was caught by the sound of an approaching car, its front wheels greeting the start of the gravel with a hungry crunch. "Here goes Spencer. Show time."

The black limousine swept around the curving drive that circled Old Bogy and came to a halt in front of the two men. Brunswick stepped forward from behind Chives and opened the car door. The Viscount stepped out resplendent in his russet fur over his immaculate golf attire; russet sweater, black trousers and white golf shoes.

"Sir," greeted Chives, shaking him by the hand, "welcome to Bramley's Challenge and may I wish you the best of luck in your challenge for the goblet."

"Thank you Chives," replied the Viscount, "I meant to check with you the other day if caddies were allowed?"

"Of course, I'm sure any of the hundred would be honoured to assist," replied the secretary with a sweeping arm to invite the Viscount to choose from the gathered men.

"Oh no. I was thinking more of my own man, someone who knew my game a little better. I presume it is acceptable to use a non-member to carry my bag?"

"I, er, Bill?" delegated Chives to the Competition Secretary who was at the head of one of the lines.

"Of course," said Bill, "it's all in line with the rules of golf."

"Excellent!" cried the Viscount, "I thought as much. It's okay Johnnie," he called, ducking his head into the back of the car, "you can come out to play."

For a second nothing happened. The men within earshot all craned forward to catch a glimpse of the rear of the car. Then suddenly, a fluorescent orange stockinged legged stepped from the car. There was an audible intake of breath. Even Old Bogy seemed to gather in its branches in surprise. At the end of the lurid legs, the golf shoes were a gleaming white and the skintight stockings stretched to his knee where his plus fours began. The white tailored cloth of the trousers was splattered with bright lurid disco balls, his legs a dazzle of crimson, turquoise, gold, amethyst, cyan and magenta circles. His sweater was white to his chest before one shoulder burst back to life with a further array of coloured balls. The arms and collar were jet black.

"Lamplighter!" exploded Chives.

"So good to see you again Mr. Secretary," said a confident sneering voice.

Chives turned to the Viscount. "You said a non member, we just agreed to a non member."

"Oh but I thought he was?" grinned the heir, his foppish grey hair stirring in the breeze from the centre parting.

"He!" shouted Chives, "he, is an ex-member! There is a difference."

"Ex-member? Non-member? I'm sure my memory serves me well but I can't recall ever seeing such terms in the rule book, eh Bill?" said the Viscount, turning to the Competition Secretary. Bill opened his mouth to speak but unusually for him found that the words just didn't come.

"Besides, he's only an ex-member for a few more days, isn't that right Johnnie? Soon be back in the fold once these old farts have been sliced into the gutter on Tuesday."

"How very apt," replied Lamplighter, "Chives about to be chopped!"

"Now Mr. Secretary," continued the Viscount, "for the sake of decorum may I suggest that we just get on with the day?"

"Very well," conceded the secretary eventually after a lengthy pause, "but can he at least get out of those ridiculous clothes?"

"And step into what," asked Waffham, "his club colours? I wouldn't want to give you a coronary like my poor grandpapa, one such death in a week is surely enough for the old place. Shall we move on?" At that the Viscount and Lamplighter set off up the avenue of the One Hundred towards the heart of the clubhouse.

Bill stood beside Chives and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. "Steady as she goes Jim. Let him have his fun, we both know who'll be laughing come next week."

Following the two men at a respectable distance, Chives let out a deep sigh as he watched them climb to the top of the grand staircase and disappear into the pro shop.

"Alright gentlemen, it is time, please make your way to the sixteenth tee. You all have your notes," he shouted, "anyone who doesn't know where they should be going then come and see me now. On your way!"

At the signal, the mass of russet blazers broke from their orderly ranks, snaked around the old tree and began to creep up the eighteenth fairway. Some of the One Hundred sped ahead, their gate sprightly and strong. Others meanwhile could manage little more than a shuffle.

"What's the collective noun for a group of foxes," asked Chives as he, Spencer Cartwright and Bill watched the migration.

"A skulk I think," replied Bill.

"Indeed it is," replied Chives, "my point entirely. Skulk by name, skulk by nature."

"Quite," agreed Bill, "they are not a happy bunch."

"And they're not alone," admitted the Club Secretary, "but alas, you're right Bill. We must bite our tongues and bide our time. We know what the final outcome will be. In the meantime we continue to do our duty to the best of our ability. We mustn't sink to their level."

"Here, here!" replied the other two men together, before the three of them climbed the majestic staircase.

Inside the pro shop, Peters was deep in conversation with the Viscount, for once his bow tie almost horizontal. Chives caught the professional's eye and the pot bellied man managed to bring the chat to a polite halt before ducking back behind the counter. Chives took a long slow lungful of air.

"Sir," he began, the words memorized from the little black book, "it is a great honour as the interim head of the estate to offer you Bramley's centuries old challenge for the silver goblet. Please follow me."

The party passed through the Lounge and on into the southwest tribune before turning into the Committee Room. Leading the march, Chives took them around the oak table before coming to a halt in front of the fireplace. All eyes now looked up to the silver goblet twinkling in the alcove above the fire.

Reverently Chives reached up with both hands and cupped the precious goblet in his palms. Turning like a priest to celebrate the Eucharist, he held the vessel up before whispering in an awed tone. "Bramley's goblet."

"Beautiful," whispered the Viscount, his hands instinctively reaching up to touch the silver.

"Magnificent," purred Lamplighter, stroking the engraved sides, "is it old?" he asked.

"Very old," replied Chives.

"Worth a few quid then?" questioned the man who was many years younger than the others present. His shortish hair was highlighted with cream streaks and clipped at the sides to reveal his darker natural colour. Two perfectly cut long side burns swept down to a sharp point, framing an equally well-trimmed mustache and goatee.

"Almost priceless," replied Chives, "it's carved with floral designs inspired by the estate and commissioned by the seventh Earl in honour of Bramley for guiding him and his son through the difficult year of 1861 to bring golf and stability back to The Orbury. It has only been played for on four occasions and each time by just one single competitor. The incoming Earl. Albeit belatedly for the seventh Earl who had to repair and then complete the great course after the damage inflicted by his brother."

Chives tried to pull the goblet to his chest but couldn't shift it from Lamplighter's grasp. The caddie had the object clamped in a vice like grip and seemed mesmerized by the dancing light from the chandelier above, flickering and flashing off the embellished surface. The secretary gave a sudden yank and finally freed it from Lamplighter's fingers.

"The challenge is simple," went on the Club Secretary, "to drive off from the sixteenth tee and to strike the ball as permitted by the rules of golf before eventually holing out on the third green. Three thousand one hundred and fifty-four yards as the crow flies. Par thirty-two."

"Par thirty-two!" exclaimed the Viscount, "bloody hell. Peters, quick, get me a score card."

"Do you accept the challenge?" pushed Chives.

"Hold on, hold on," snapped back the Viscount as he took the scorecard from the professional and turned it over to peruse a map of the course. "So, sixteenth tee," he said placing his finger accordingly at the top of the card.

"To the third green," finished Lamplighter, placing his own digit down in the bottom left corner of the illustration.

"Blimey, it's virtually impossible," muttered the Viscount.

"Nonsense," countered Lamplighter, "it's a piece of p-"

"It may appear easy," interrupted Chives, "or rather, it may be easy to complete, but is it so easy to win?"

"What do you mean win? I thought you said I was the only one playing?"

"Today, yes. But this is a competition that strides across time. Your fellow competitors are your forebears. Each Earl from the seventh onwards has taken the challenge and their scores are engraved here, on this side of the goblet."

"And if I beat them I win?" asked the Viscount.

"Sort of. You see the beauty of this challenge is that you have never truly won. After all, you might end up getting beaten by those who follow in future times. Instead you get the honour of knowing that you are the current leader, and your name and score get engraved on the leader board on the other side of the goblet. As the current holder you would then be eligible to drink from it at the banquet of the Orbury Flock this evening," replied Chives.

"What if he loses?" asked Lamplighter.

"Then there is a forfeit."

"Which is?" asked the Viscount nervously.

"You have to provide the wine at the banquet."

"For the whole top table?" asked the Viscount cautiously.

"No, for the whole One Hundred!" replied Chives.

"B-But that would cost thousands," bemoaned the heir apparent.

"But surely that is but a small price to pay for immortality," teased Chives. "So, Sir, do you accept Bramley's challenge?"

"C'mon Bertie," encouraged Lamplighter.

"But what if I lose? I'm not sure that I can afford that."

"Are you mad? Look around you," cut in Lamplighter, "you said yourself, in four days time all this will be yours. What feels like hundreds now will become pence and the thousands will feel like pounds."

Viscount Waffham glanced around nervously at the expectant faces.

"Well?" prompted the secretary, extending the goblet towards the heir, "immortality?"

"I accept!" blurted Viscount Waffham suddenly as the exquisite goblet shone before him.

"Excellent," replied Chives as Lamplighter laid a congratulatory hand on the heir's shoulder, "then let us waste no more time. The game is afoot gentlemen. To the tee!"

Chives led the way, accompanied by Bill and Spencer Cartwright with Viscount Waffham and Lamplighter, a golf bag strapped across his back, bringing up the rear. The rattling of the club heads clanked in time with their strides as the five men marched in unison. As they made their way back up the eighteenth fairway, the ground began to rise slowly up towards the tee. The trees closed in to form a narrow corridor, a tight drive when playing the hole. Just before the tee the trees suddenly stopped to allow a panoramic view of the whole estate. Raised up from the ground around it, the huge tee, accessed by a grand staircase, also shared the lofty perch with the slender memorial to the fifth Earl Orbury. The decorative finger towered over the surrounding land, reaching for the skies. Immediately behind the tee, away towards the east, a wood began to close in with the great boughs and gnarled branches of the interlocking trees cutting out the daylight. Skirting around the perimeter of this dank brooding woodland, a path linked the eighteenth tee to the seventeenth green.

The party continued on down the seventeenth and eventually made their way to the start point at the sixteenth tee. Lamplighter eased the bag from his back and placed it next to the white tee markers, two spindly legs snapping out for support as the bottom touched the ground.

"Any chance of playing off the senior's tee?" pleaded the caddie, pointing to the yellow tee blocks some twenty yards ahead, "every little helps."

Bill Muir was ever ready with a ruling. "I'm afraid not, the rules of the challenge are very clear. Play is to be from the white tee."

"Oh well," shrugged Lamplighter, "you can't blame a caddie for trying."

"Sir, some other rules," continued Bill, "firstly to make things as even as possible, you are allowed the use of the same document that all previous competitors had at their disposal. Namely the original plans of the course." He pulled out an old cream folded map and a scale rule.

"Oh I don't need that, Johnnie has got his satnav gizmo," replied the Viscount, his caddie holding up the device.

"Sadly not," said Bill as Chives snatched the device from Lamplighter's fingers.

"Hey!" cried the caddie, trying to retrieve it.

"You'll get it back," said Chives, "but rules are rules, no matter how old they are."

"Secondly, there are no areas of out of bounds. So down the left of the first between that and the ninth is in play. You can play the ball anywhere you like. Outbounds, inbounds, indoors or outdoors. And lastly, please be aware that rule 27-1c does not apply."

"And for those of us who haven't swallowed the rule book?" snorted Lamplighter.

"The five minute rule for finding a lost ball does not apply," answered Bill, "you can take as long as you like."

The Viscount eyed up the Competition Secretary suspiciously. "It's most unlike you to willfully allow one of the rules of golf to be disregarded so readily."

"Yes it does stick in one's craw. But we are just trying to ensure parity. Suffice to say that when the seventh Earl took up the challenge we think that the rules of golf were probably a little woollier. We doubt they had a time limit on a lost ball. But other than that, we're happy that the rest of the rules of golf should apply. I will keep the score as we go and if you want any rulings then please just ask me for help. May I wish you the best of luck, Sir!"

"Hold on, hold on," broke in Lamplighter, "you never told him what score he had to beat."

"He never asked," replied Chives mischievously.

"Well I'm asking now," said Viscount Waffham.

"In that case you'll be pleased to know that no one has yet managed to beat par."

"Well that gives me some chance. How many over?"

"None," interjected Bill. "Whilst no one has managed to beat par, one man has managed to equal it. Thirty-two leads the way."

"Who? Bound to be dear old grandpapa," said the Viscount sarcastically.

"No, he failed I'm afraid," said Chives. "The year our leader played was 1861, the first man to take on the challenge, the seventh Earl."

Lamplighter gave a snort. "Cheating bugger, I bet all these trees were only about four feet high then."

"Right then, Sir," said Chives, "I've marked up a ball for you. All the One Hundred have been told of the mark so they will be able to easily identify it when spotting. So, over to you," he concluded, tossing the ball to the heir.

Viscount Waffham caught it and tossed it on to Lamplighter who proceeded to polish it like a cricket ball on his trousers.

"So," whispered Waffham to his caddie, "what do you think?"

The two men stood on the tee and took a look around. Just off to their right the long thin green of the fifteenth curled around the edge of the lake.

"Going right is not an option," said Lamplighter. He pointed to the far side of the lake, "the wood is just as thick over there as it is off to our left."

"Agreed," replied Viscount Waffham, "how far is it to the seventeenth fairway? Is there any chance that I could drive it across the edge of the lake and then right over trees?"

Lamplighter opened up the old creased drawing and laid it out on the ground, tracing his fingers across the detail to locate their current position. Taking the small-scale rule from his pocket he laid it in a direct path to the centre of the seventeenth fairway.

"Something like two hundred and fifty yards, maybe even two-sixty. But it's all carry."

"Flipping heck."

"But take a look at this," said Lamplighter, beckoning his friend down to the course map as he placed the end of the ruler on the island green of the sixteenth and then lined its straight edge right down the centre of the seventeenth fairway. "If you can hit the centre of the green, according to this you'll have a clear line of sight right down the throat of the seventeenth."

"How old did you say this map was?" asked the Viscount.

"It dates right the way back to 1861 when they finished the course," replied Chives.

"Can we trust it?"

"Of course, every single tree planted was painstakingly drawn in place. Mind you, they are somewhat bigger now than they are on there," joked Chives.

"Then that's our plan," said the Viscount, "so what do we have to the centre, Johnnie?"

"All yardages on the normal card are to the centre of the green so you have exactly one hundred and twenty-seven yards. But be careful, the pin's at the back, you've got to put that right out of your mind. You could probably get away with anywhere on the front half, but start going beyond that, towards the back part of the green, and you'll start to lose the angle down the next fairway."

"Weapon of choice?"

"Well, there's a slight breeze against as normal coming down off the lake so either a softish eight or a big nine," recommended the caddie.

Viscount Waffham stood in the centre of the tee, arms by his side, chin raised and eyes closed to gauge the strength of the breeze. "It might be a nine for you, but I've got a few more years on me than you so I'll go with the eight," he decided.

Taking his ball from Lamplighter he plunged a red castle tee into the ground and placed the ball atop, noticing as he did the '11E' mark penned by Chives in permanent red ink.

"Good luck," said the secretary, as his words of good luck were echoed by numerous hidden members of the One Hundred who were skulking around in the undergrowth.

The Viscount tightened his glove with a scrape of Velcro before taking his stance. He waggled the club head nervously a couple of times before taking a last long look at the target. His backswing was perfect and as he swung through the shot there was barely a sound as the ball launched off the sweet spot and soared into the air.

"Beautiful Bertie," cried his caddie, "beautiful."

"Be the right club," encouraged the Viscount, watching earnestly as the ball seemed to hang in the air, the breeze resisting its flight. Accompanied by the sound of distant birds upon the lake the ball fell towards the island and landed with a soft thud on the front portion of the green.

A cheer went up around him as he turned and slapped the upraised palm of his caddie.

"One," shouted Bill, notching up a mark on his scorecard as they all set off round the lake to the sixteenth green. The marooned oval of land sat majestically upon the calm water. Devoid of any shrubs, trees, bushes or plants the slanted disc was a soft carpet of emerald grass. Built at an acute angle, the raised back rose ten feet out of the water whilst the front lip of the trimmed apron dipped graciously into the lake. Connecting it to the shoreline was a low wide arched bridge, wide enough for a four-ball to walk across in a line.

Viscount Waffham and Lamplighter jogged over the bridge, anxious to get behind the ball and assess its line down the seventeenth fairway. The younger, and lighter, man got there first and with the bag still on his back he knelt down and extended his arm as if aiming a rifle. Raising his thumb for a sight he closed one eye and look along his limb.

"Wunderbar!" he exclaimed just as the puffing Viscount came to stand behind him and look down the line.

"Not bad for a sixteen handicapper," he purred as Lamplighter once again opened out the old map.

"You've got two choices. First option is an iron for safety. You'll probably need at least an eight or a seven iron to make the start of the fairway, maybe a little bit more. Or alternatively you take your five wood. The gap gets wider the further down the fairway you hit it."

"If I keep taking irons I'll be lucky to break fifty. Five wood," requested the Viscount decisively.

"Good man," encouraged Lamplighter as his man took his club of choice and launched into a reckless practice swing.

Chives winced as the club sliced a three-inch wide divot out of the immaculate green. "Poor old greenkeeper will be crying in his beer when he sees that," he whispered to Bill.

Viscount Waffham stepped a few paces behind the ball to get his line. He raised the club to eye level, extended his arms to full stretch and pointed them at a distant tree on the other side of the lake. Keeping a keen eye on the faraway target he slowly stepped back to address his ball. Again a few nervous wiggles. Once more his shoulders turned square but as he began his downward stroke, fear of a bad shot seemed to get the better of him and his weight rocked onto his back foot. Off balance he opened up his body as he struck his shot, slicing right across the line of his intended target.

"Bugger!" he exclaimed immediately as he watched the ball fly left off the tee. Once over the water it just clipped a few leaves on the trees to the left of the seventeenth tee before the spin of the slice really started to take hold. Changing direction like a boomerang it started to bend out to the right towards the lake.

"Sit!" he shouted with blind hope. "Sit!" Although the ball continued to curve towards the water it was now starting to lose height. As its power started to fade the spin upon the ball increased as the light breeze magnified it. This late effect saved the ball from a watery grave. Instead it struck a mighty bough of a weeping willow, the last tree before the eastern bank of the lake turned into a grassy shoreline. Even from a distance, back on the island green, they heard the low thwack.

Chives, Bill Muir, the Viscount and Lamplighter all whipped their heads about wildly to try and catch sight of the deflected ball.

"I didn't see it drop," said Bill.

"Nor I," replied Chives, just as the seventeenth was drowned in a wave of russet clad ball spotters emerging from cover.

Scampering forward the four men joined the search as scores of eyes scanned the ground for the white ball. The minutes stretched on.

"What if we can't find it?" asked Lamplighter to Bill as their paths crossed in the gloom of the wood to the left of the fairway. "Being allowed more than five minutes is all very well but we can't spend all day out here. Besides it might have cannoned off straight into the lake."

"Thankfully that's unlikely," replied the Competition Secretary, "apparently a number of chaps said they heard a second thud in these trees so it's got to be in here somewhere."

"If it goes on too long he'll have no choice but to declare it lost," said Lamplighter.

"Aha," said Bill with an amused grin on his face, "a common error, but there is nothing in the rules of golf about declaring a ball lost. No such thing."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure!"

"Then we could be here all night then."

"He does have other another option. He can, at the cost of a penalty stroke go back and drop a ball as close as possible to the point from where he struck his last shot."

Just then they heard a muffled cry from a little way off.

"They've found it!" exclaimed Bill.

The seventeenth hole was a sharp dogleg left. It was a hole of two halves. The first half, the fairway, was at normal ground level. However the second half climbed steeply up to a raised green. All the land surrounding the memorial, and the flat plateau at the top it shared with the seventeenth green and eighteenth tee, rose sharply upwards.

Picking their way through the darkness they forced their legs up the incline trying to find the successful spotter.

"Bloody hell!" puffed the sweating Viscount as he finally pushed his way through the throng of members crowded around his ball, to find it nestled up against one of the large trunks and surrounded by dense fern. "This is going from bad to worse. What are my options if I can't play the ruddy thing?"

"Rule 28, ball unplayable," replied Bill, "you've got three options. One; take a drop within two club lengths, no nearer the hole."

"No nearer the hole?" complained Waffham, "are you taking the piss? It's almost a bloody mile away!"

"Fair enough," said Bill awkwardly, "how about dropping the ball as far back as you like as long as it is on a line with the pin and where your ball currently lies?"

"On a line with the pin? Have you got a x-ray telescope that can see through hillsides?"

"Or your third option," went on Bill optimistically, "is to take a penalty of one shot and then go back to as close as possible from where you last played it."

"Back down on the island?" said the Viscount, throwing the suggestion open to his caddie.

"That's what got you in this trouble in the first place. Besides, are you sure that's unplayable? I could easily hit that?" encouraged Lamplighter.

"How?"

"Grip right down on the shaft," suggested the caddie, "here, like this." Lamplighter took out a wedge and gripped the club with both hands about a foot away from the club head. Standing away from the ball he took a couple of short, stubby little swings, chopping down on the leaves and twigs blanketing the ground. "What's more," he continued, "you've only got to shift it twenty or thirty yards further up the hill, come and see."

The two men went on alone, struggling up the steep ground.

"Get up passed this tree and look," Lamplighter ducked and pointed through the interwoven canopy to a lighter patch in the distance, "there, can you just see the tip of the memorial? That means the eighteenth tee is more or less on that alignment. Get up to there and you'll have a clear line down to the hall."

"I'm not so sure. This bloody wood is just so dense, so steep!" said Viscount Waffham as they made their way back down to his ball. "Perhaps I would be better off back on the island. Get a good shot away and play the seventeenth as normal."

"Don't be ridiculous, it's easy, here look," again Lamplighter clutched down on the wedge.

"You play it for me."

Bill stepped in. "That's not allowed I'm afraid, it's not in the rules of golf."

"How do you know Bramley didn't take a couple of swings for the others? You said yourself the rules were a bit, how did you put it, woolly?"

"I-I'm not sure. We really should stick within the rules."

"It's hardly a crime. After all it's no different to greensomes or foursomes, you're just taking alternate shots. You're still playing one ball, still taking the same amount of strokes."

Bill stalled, looking to Chives for help. The Club Secretary considered it for a moment and then nodded his assent.

"Alright, go on then," conceded Bill.

"Good man," exclaimed the Viscount, "c'mon Johnnie, do your magic."

Lamplighter stepped up to the ball, his disco ball outfit almost fluorescent in the gloom of the wood. A safe distance away he took another few practice swings before settling over the ball, his back crooked and his knees bent so that he could get down to the ball on the severe hanging lie. But as he drew back the club on its tiny little backswing the club face got caught on a thick fern behind, that flicked the club off line and as he stabbed at the ball he struck mostly tree stump, only managing to move the ball a couple of yards further up the hill.

"Bloody hell Johnnie, you arse! That doesn't count," he bleated, "that doesn't count, you were right, it has to be me. His shot doesn't count."

"Sorry Sir, you can't have it both ways. Three!" called Bill.

"That's the last time I listen to you," moaned the Viscount. "Give me my three wood and stand up there so you can see where it goes, I'm going to just larrup this one as hard as I can."

"Bertie, do you think that's wise?"

"A damn sight wiser than trying to use a bloody midgets club, now stand up there where you can't do any more damage."

He didn't hang about and swung an angry blow. He caught it sweetly but it never got passed the first tree. Everyone in the vicinity ducked as it ricocheted off branches and trunks above their heads. As the knocking stopped they looked up silently and waited to hear it drop. Noting happened for a few seconds before it suddenly fell from the sky, struck Lamplighter on the shoulder and rolled into a space between the trees.

"Oh very bad luck, Sir," apologized Bill, "rule 19-2. Ball in motion deflected or stopped by player, partner, caddie or his equipment. One stroke penalty I'm afraid. Five!!"

Viscount Waffham scowled at his caddie, stepped up to his ball without a word and once again smacked it as hard as he could. The white ball whistled through the intricate cobweb of twigs and spurs without clipping so much as a leaf.

"It's out!" came a distant cry.

The eighteenth tee was a wonder. A huge flat dais raised up from the hilltop, connected to the surrounding land by flights of wide stone steps flanked with carved balustrades. Between the seventeenth green and the eighteen tee, was the inspiring memorial to the fifth Earl. Standing at one hundred and twenty feet high the Corinthian column dominated the landscape, towering over the hall half a mile away. Standing on the tee you could see the whole estate. The tenant farms and deer park away to the west, the sprawling hall below and beyond that the lonesome finger of the Memorial to the Unknown Airmen atop a twin hill mirrored on the other side of the great building.

Despite the fact that his ball was a hundred yards further on, Viscount Waffham couldn't resist climbing the stairs and stepping on to the tee. Lagging a modest distance behind, Lamplighter followed him up.

"Still mad at me?" asked the caddie.

Waffham smiled. "I never could stay angry with you for long, you know that."

"I know, but it was a bloody awful shot," he said as they both laughed.

"Do you remember me telling you about this view, all those years ago after lights out?" said the heir.

"Of course. 'One day it will all be mine' you said," recalled Lamplighter. "To be honest I thought you were talking bollocks, getting stir crazy."

"You never told me that!"

"Well crazy or not, it kept me going as much as you," the caddie admitted. "I never tired of you describing the evening sun setting over the trees, its dying light shimmering off the lake. And now it's all yours."

Viscount Waffham turned with affection. "Ours Johnnie, just like I promised."

"Sorry Sir," shouted Chives from the path below, "if I could hurry you, there's nothing worse than burnt birds at a banquet."

The heir acknowledged him with a wave.

"Have you asked him yet?" said Lamplighter.

"No, I am trying to wait for the right moment."

"You can't put it off for long, I need to give her fifteen thousand by Wednesday or..."

"Or what?"

Lamplighter paused, casting his eyes to the ground. "Or there'll be consequences," he said eventually.

"Beware the expectant mother eh?" prompted the Viscount.

"Something like that," replied Lamplighter.

The Viscount rested his hand on his caddies shoulder. "I promised you I'd sort out this matter. I'll get the money, I promise."

"You promised that over a month ago, her patience is running thin. I'm trying to keep a lid on it but Muxcombe is on to me."

"Two days Johnnie, you'll have the money in two days I promise. I'll think of something. Now, come on, let's show these buggers what golf is about!"

## 5 - Rubens

The crowd of members parted to allow the player through. The ball hadn't quite reached the short grass of the fairway, however it was sitting up invitingly in the semi-rough.

"At last," said Viscount Waffham as he saw the nice lie, "now we can get some yardage under our belt. Three wood please, Johnnie."

The flat base of the wood nestled nicely below the ball at address, encouraging the Viscount to send his seventh shot rifling down the centre of the fairway to the accompaniment of cheers that grew louder as the ball sailed over the lurking trap. In normal play the next shot requires careful consideration. With a mammoth bunker straddling the width of the entire fairway, it was positioned with uncanny accuracy to gather any eager attempt at greed. But having played his first shot to the hole from a hundred yards in front of the tee, the Viscount had no such concern.

"Just go straight for the green?" suggested Lamplighter.

"I think so, it's a shame I can't bear right and go closer to the lake but the last time I was in the rough on that side it was almost up to my knees," replied Waffham. "Once we get to the green we can then try and gauge which way around the house looks the easiest option."

"That's a no-brainer," replied Lamplighter, "around the lake side without doubt. Try and favour the right hand side of the green."

"Agreed," said the player, once again taking out his favoured three wood. But this time the ball wasn't sitting on such a fluffy lie and with the fear of the long rough also poisoning his mind he turned his hands over slightly and the ball veered off on a right to left trajectory.

"Get out of them!" shouted the Viscount as his ball continued to turn, like a heat seeking missile, towards the coven of three deadly pot bunkers to the left of the green.

The synchronized movement of craned necks and heads followed the flight. Falling just short of the first bunker, the ball bounced up and over the sunken trap and headed towards the larger hazard behind it.

"Go! Go!" shouted Viscount Waffham, waving his club like a whip. Perhaps invigorated by the verbal stimulus the ball managed to leap the next bunker as well, making landfall on the inclined front lip. The jubilant cries of the One Hundred withered in their throats as they watched the ball wobble and then start to roll backwards towards the sand. But then it stopped.

"How the hell did it stop there?" asked Lamplighter.

"I've no idea," replied the Viscount, already speeding down the fairway before it got rolling again, "but I'm not complaining!"

The ball had somehow come to rest half way down the closely mown bank at the front of the bunker. Defying gravity it was sitting up beautifully on the forty-five degree grass.

As soon as he got there Viscount Waffham immediately jumped down into the bunker and positioned himself so that he was looking up the line of the incline. Closing one eye he could see, over the tips of the green manicured blades, the pitched tip of the hall, flanked by blackened chimneys.

"You're not thinking what I'm thinking are you?" smiled the caddie from above.

"It's like a V1 launch pad. It's absolutely perfect, aiming straight over the top," replied Viscount Waffham animatedly as Lamplighter jumped down into the bunker to join him.

"Too tempting to resist," agreed the caddie, pushing his face up to the lip and squinting his eye to the line. "You need to aim just over those little holes at the top of the hall."

"Bullet holes," stated Chives from close by.

"Bullet holes?" exclaimed Waffham.

"A little parting gift from the German Messerschmitt that came down during the war."

"The unknown airmen?"

"The very same," affirmed Chives.

"I never did understand why the old man forked out on a memorial for them, they tried to blow the place to smithereens," said the Viscount. "Now, how far to clear the lot, Johnnie?"

"Got to be a good couple of hundred yards," replied the caddie.

"At least I don't have to worry about loft, another blow with the three wood me thinks," said the heir, beckoning for the club with his hand.

It was only as he addressed the ball that he realized how awkward his stance was. Luckily the ball had come to rest towards the left hand side of the hazard and as a right-hander he was able to stand with his feet down the side of the bunker. But the incline meant that his left foot was about two foot higher than his right causing his weight to tilt him backwards. As he attempted a couple of practice swings, he just managed to stop himself from tumbling down into the bunker. Pausing over the ball with intense concentration, he tried to clear his mind of the gaping hole beside him and to make a committed stroke. But as he swung, his weight immediately transferred over to his right. Instead of striking the ball normally he was so unbalanced that he struck the ball on the up. The connection itself was good, a crisp satisfying crack coming off the face of the club. However, rather than gaining height from the loft of the wood it just fired off the grassy ramp which was never going to be enough to get it over the hall. Just like the bullets of yesteryear the ball shot straight for the uppermost part of the hall, clearing Old Bogy with ease. But once over the tree it started to lose momentum and began to dip. There was a collective intake of breath as the direction of the ball became clear to all watching on.

"Oh bugger," cursed Viscount Waffham as it smashed through the uppermost panel of the arched window to the Coral Hall. Even from where they all stood they could hear the sound of glass shards crashing to the stone floor.

"Nine," called Bill awkwardly.

"More like nine _hundred_ in repairs," bemoaned the Viscount, "this flipping challenge is going to cost me a bloody fortune." He threw the club in the direction of Lamplighter and followed the members as they flowed around the ancient tree and converged on the hall.

Crunching over the broken shards the members swarmed into the Coral Hall. Viscount Waffham followed, the metal studs of his shoes clacking upon the stone floor. He tiptoed over the glass slithers resisting the temptation to look up at the jagged hole in the window.

With the ground floor of the Coral Hall devoid of any furniture it was immediately clear that the ball must have come to rest on one of the twin balconies that joined the top of the grand staircase to the rooms on the north face of the building. Russet blazers swept up the steps and split in either direction.

"Got it!" shouted one eventually from the right hand balcony. The Viscount looked up to see a man, leaning over the black iron railings that ran between each of the fluted columns, pointing ominously down to the ledge on the other side of the balustrade.

On each side of the hall, five columns rose majestically to the heavens. At their base they sat upon a square slab of matching stone. The ornate railings were attached to the centre of these columns leaving a nine-inch ledge isolated on the other side of the barricade. The ball had come to rest on this narrow outcrop, teetering on the edge of the drop to the main floor of the hall below.

"How the hell did it get there?" queried the Viscount after he had climbed the stairs and leant over the rail to see his ball.

"More like how the bloody hell did it stay there?" added Lamplighter looking on helplessly, peering through the wrought iron fronds.

The Viscount clasped the smooth wooden handrail and gave the barricade a shake.

"Don't even think of trying to climb over," exclaimed the caddie, "you'll break your neck, it's barely a foot wide! You've got no choice but to prod it over the edge from here."

"But it's such a waste of a shot," moaned Viscount Waffham, still eyeing up the gap. "I guess you're right," he sighed after a moment's more thought, "pass me the putter."

Getting down on to his knees he held the putter like a snooker cue and poked it in between the foliage shaped metal. He ducked his head to look along his makeshift cue as he slid the club back and forth in the hollow between his thumb and forefinger. Once content he took his shot and popped it over the edge. The ball struck the solid floor below with a hollow knock before leaping back into the air. The rebound almost climbed back to the height of the balcony before gravity once again got the upper hand and the ball fell earthwards. Over and over the ball yo-yoed up and down, each leap growing smaller than the last before it struck the edge of one of the tiles and it skewed off at an acute angle. The ball pinged off the pink stonewall and began to ricochet around the lower floor. All eyes were glued to the little white globe as it began to lose speed and roll lazily around the floor. Eventually it stopped up against one of the marble walls, its glossy cover touching the swirling patterned surface.

"This is going from bad to worse," complained the Viscount, making his way down the stone steps. He paused in the middle of the room and looked up to the pro shop. "I've got to get it to here," he said, pointing to the centre of the floor, "I can then chip it up into the pro shop and out through the Portico Terrace." Still with putter in hand he leant against the wall and hovered the sole of the club an inch above the ball. Barely moving his arm he practiced a few jerks as he tried to gauge how hard to hit the ball. Eventually he stabbed down on the side of the ball furthest from the marble wall and with a low grumble the ball began to roll.

"Ooops," grimaced Viscount Waffham as soon as he hit it, watching as the ball rolled with ease across the smooth surface, immediately passing the centre of the room. "Stop you bloody thing," he shouted in vain as it slowly trundled on until it softly struck the opposite side and came to rest twelve inches from the wall.

"Eleven!" called Bill.

"That's better," encouraged Lamplighter.

"Better?" challenged Waffham. "Better for a southpaw maybe but no good for a poor old right hander. I still can't get a club at it," he went on, trying to squeeze himself up against the wall to see if he could make a stance.

"Maybe not this go," admitted his caddie, "but at least you can now address the ball properly with your putter. It'll be much easier to gauge the speed. You've only got to give it a tiny little tap and it will roll into a perfect position."

This time the Viscount took much longer practicing, gently rocking his arms back and forth in a smooth pendulum motion. Once he was confident he nestled in behind his ball and gave it a little tap.

"Twelve!" The word resonated around the hall as the ball rolled softly forward and fell into one of the grout lines between tiles. It continued along the straight line before coming to rest in the cross hair joint of four tiles, smack bang in the middle of the room.

"Per-fection!" smacked Lamplighter in a French accent, kissing his fingers.

"Now we're talking!" enthused Viscount Waffham, running behind the line of his ball and looking up into the pro shop.

Despite being in the perfect position the next shot was still a difficult one. At the top of the stairs were two last columns that formed the end of the balconies that flanked the space. These twin sentinels were no more than three to four yards apart, barely wider than the doorway itself.

"If you go with anything too lofted," said Lamplighter from behind, "you'll take out that bloke above the door," he pointed to a small marble bust housed directly above the doorway in the base of a carved golden apse.

"That is of course one of your ancestors, Sir," interrupted Chives, "the first Earl Orbury, the man who built this great house."

"Well I certainly wouldn't want to upset great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpapa or whatever he is. Plus I can ill afford to kiss good bye to another couple of grand," said the Viscount with a nod back to the broken window. "What are you thinking, seven iron?"

"Difficult to say, you can't exactly take a big divot," said Lamplighter, tapping his foot on the solid floor, the stomp echoing about them. "If you're not careful you'll slam it straight into the stairs and it'll go flying back out the way you've just been. Maybe an eight?"

The Viscount paused for a moment as the gathered members of the One Hundred craned their necks over the balcony to catch his reply. "Agreed," he said at last and held out his hand for the club.

Instinctively Chives shrank back a few steps as the heir rehearsed a few half swings, the club striking the stone floor with the odd spark.

"Here goes," called the Viscount, "shit or bust!" With that he swung back and struck at the ball. The connection was lovely and its angle of assent perfectly mirrored the rise of the stairs. However the line was slightly askew and by the time it reached the doorway to the pro shop it was a yard off centre and it struck the carved marble architrave with a crack.

"Fore!" shouted Chives as all onlookers instantly ducked for cover, throwing their arms over their heads.

The ball cannoned back at an angle and struck the left hand column before deflecting off one of its flutes and rebounding across the top of the stairs and smacking into the twin pillar on the right. Only Viscount Waffham had stayed upright and he followed the erratic path of his ball as it careered off the last obstacle that miraculously diverted it back towards the doorway.

"Never in doubt!" he cried joyfully as it first bounced and then rolled onto the Axminster clad floor of the upper room to cheers from the gallery.

From inside the pro shop Vic Peters bobbed over the counter, his eyes wide in surprise as a ball came flying into the room followed by a crescendo of noise.

"What the hell..." he muttered as out of nowhere a mass of russet clad members came pouring into the room, their eyes glued to the floor.

"Here it is!" cried one of them, his head thrust between two merchandise racks.

The Viscount pushed through the crowd, looked at his lie and began to survey the room for options.

In complete opposition to the architectural coldness of the Coral Hall the pro shop was warm and sumptuous. It was a large room, topped with a high lofted ceiling of octagonal panels decorated with carved gilded sunflowers. The walls were resplendent in a plum colored material made from wool, linen and silk, the surface woven with golden flowers. The ball had come to a stop beside the right hand fireplace, its way to the terrace blocked by the large mahogany counter.

"Can it be moved?" asked Lamplighter, turning to Chives. Before the secretary had time to answer an ageing gang descended on the furniture and started to grunt and wheeze as they tried to raise it from the floor.

At that moment Brunswick emerged from the bar on the left hand side of the room, carrying a silver tray laden with a bottle and some charged glasses.

"To my knowledge the counter has stood in that exact same spot for a hundred and fifty years," said the Steward, "I suspect you'll find that it may prove a little too stubborn to move."

The Viscount's eyes widened at the Steward's cargo. "Ah, Brunswick, perfect timing as ever. A little halfway house schniffter I see." He took a glass and sunk its amber contents in one gulp, his face twitching with fiery pleasure. "Well if the damn thing won't budge I'll just have to bounce it off the far cushion," he concluded with an elaborate thrust of an imaginary cue.

The Steward gave a little cough.

"Problem, Brunswick?" enquired the heir.

"Far be it for me to tell you how to spend your money Sir. But on account of the fact that the glazier is already on his way, I wouldn't like to be calling out the insurance company as well," he said pointing to the painting hanging on the wall.

"Is it worth a few quid?" interjected Lamplighter suddenly.

"That, Mr. Lamplighter, is a Rubens," replied Brunswick simply. Viscount Waffham and his caddie exchanged unknowing glances.

"I believe one of his other paintings sold recently at auction for nine million pounds," said Chives, taking his own glass from the Steward.

"Nine Million!" The two men screamed in unison.

Brunswick gave a little smile. "I wonder if perhaps Sir would forgive my impudence, but I suggest he considers bouncing his ball off another wall?"

"I'm too bloody scared to even swing the club now," replied the Viscount, "anything else I should worry about?"

"You might want to be a tad careful on your back swing," said Chives casually. "The painting of one of your forebears might also dent your wallet should it end up on the wrong end of your pitching wedge."

"Another Rubens?" asked Lamplighter excitedly.

"Alas no," replied Chives, "merely a Gainsborough."

"Shame," said Waffham.

"Shame indeed, it is after all probably only worth around seven."

"Thousand?"

"Million."

"The two great treasures of The Orbury," added Brunswick proudly.

"Dear God, I can't play a full shot from in here. Johnnie, give me back my putter for heaven's sake." With that the heir tapped the ball softly a couple of times to manoeuvre between the racks and end up in front of the doors to the Portico Terrace.

"Shot number fifteen," announced Bill, before adding, "halfway to the pin, Sir."

"Halfway? It feels like I've played thirty-six holes already."

The south-facing end of the pro shop has five tall arched windows looking out on to the terrace and straight down the line of the first fairway. As soon as the ball came to rest a couple of members slid up the window and unclasped the mechanism to open the gap below. Viscount Waffham's lie was at the very epicenter of the estate. South from this point, through the gap in the centre columns of the portico sat the extensive first tee that was laid out in the curve of the ornamental gardens before the terrace. In the distance, again in perfect alignment stood the tall imposing structure of the Memorial to the Unknown Airmen. Back in the direction already played, the linear placement was completed by the memorial to the fifth Earl that stood guardian to the eighteenth tee.

The Viscount stood staring at the gap between the columns. Lamplighter came up behind him. "It's a bit tight," said the heir.

"Nonsense," replied the caddie, "you've got a perfect lie so just aim for the memorial in the distance and give it a blast. Surely a job for the three wood?"

"Are you mad?" replied the Viscount, "too much loft and bang goes another window. Not to mention the possibility of hitting one of them columns and then whizzing back into one of them paintings!"

"Don't say you've let the old bugger spook you?" teased the caddie with a nod to Chives who was already out on the terrace with Bill Muir.

"With due respect I think you'll find it's got more to do with the sixteen million quids worth of paintings. B-Besides, I suddenly feel very..." he struggled to find the correct word, "I suddenly realize the enormity of what is happening. I-It's all on my shoulders now Johnnie," he finished softly.

Lamplighter leaned close and spoke in a whisper. "Our shoulders Bertie. But all that pressure and worry is for another day. Today you can be carefree. Besides, what's insurance for anyway, eh?"

Viscount Waffham took a deep breath. "I always was the cautious one between us. But of course you are right. Live for the moment eh? Take the bull by the horns!"

"That's it!" encouraged the caddie, ripping the head cover off the three wood, an action that sent the watching members of the One Hundred scurrying for cover again, "grip it and rip it!"

Standing over the ball the Viscount took a last look around, only to discover that there wasn't another person in sight.

"Peters?" he called out into the emptiness.

At first there was silence but after a few seconds there came a bodiless reply.

"Sir?"

"Where are you man?"

Again a few moments elapsed before a head nervously ventured over the parapet of the counter.

"If this ball comes flying back towards them paintings, I'll double your wages if you stop it from hitting them. Deal?"

"Maybe," blurted the professional before snapping his head back down to safety.

Back over the ball the Viscount stepped a foot to the side and took a swipe. "Bit of a bald lie, any chance of teeing it up?" he asked to no one in particular.

"No," came the invisible response from Bill Muir.

Waffham shrugged before resting the club softly on the antique floor covering. With a turn of his shoulders he chopped down on the back of the ball and smashed it towards the terrace. Whilst arrow straight it started low, no more than a foot off the floor though rising. The gaps between the portico columns we're filled with identical plant boxes, their contents a beautiful blaze of red. Rising just enough to clear the lip of the central ceramic pot the ball burst into the flowering display and sent a shower of red petals into the air. Stunted by the scarlet blooms the ball lost impetus and bounced across the formal grounds in front of the portico. Like a skimming stone across water each bounce got shorter, narrower and slower until with a final small hop the ball jumped over a small stonewall and plopped into the ornamental pond.

"Bugger!" cursed the Viscount, "who put that bloody thing there? Nobody answer that!" he added sourly as he stomped back into the pro shop and proceeded to the nearest stairs down to the network of corridors that traversed the lower level below the grand rooms above.

The pond is set in the heart of the formal gardens and lay directly behind the first tee. At its centre a large sculpture of St. George who is about to slay the dragon. The great beast has wound its tail around a ragged rock and its head is thrown back firing a plume of water skyward from its gaping mouth. St. George is carved standing over the dragon; his arms raised back to deliver the killing blow. But instead of a great sword hefted in his hands, there is a golf club and the patron saint stands frozen forever in a beautiful follow through.

By the time the Viscount got to the pond it was surrounded by russet ball spotters peering into the rippling surface. As well as water cascading from the dragon it also gushes from the open mouths of dolphins at the base of the rock and a ring of swans and fishes facing back at the titanic struggle.

"I presume you don't need me to actually go in and fetch the thing to get a drop out?" said Waffham turning to Chives.

The secretary squirmed. "I fear this might be a bit awkward, Sir."

"Awkward?" challenged the heir.

"I think you'll find that it's not actually a water hazard," continued Chives, turning to try and seek Bill for help only to see him still back up on the terrace finishing off his drink.

"Are you mad?" went on Waffham, "it's about two feet deep so it's hardly casual water!"

"What I mean is there are no stakes."

"Well that's hardly his fault!" joined in Lamplighter.

"You see, it's behind the tee so it's not normally in play."

"Well it is now," continued the caddie.

"You're not seriously suggesting that I play it as it lies are you?" asked the Viscount. "Or that it's a lost ball?"

"It's hardly lost! I can see it from here," said Lamplighter pointing over the edge of the pond wall.

"I really think we'd better wait for Bill, after all, he is the rules guru."

Lamplighter threw up his arms in frustration. "We can't hang around for that old duffer or we'll be here all day. I'll get the ruddy thing if no one else will!" With that he undid his laces and removed his shoes before peeling off his orange stockings and then vaulting the little wall to pluck the ball from the water's bed.

"Problem?" said Bill Muir finally catching them up as Lamplighter withdrew a sodden arm and tossed the ball to his friend.

"Adjudication needed," said Chives as Lamplighter climbed back out, "water hazard or not?"

"Good point," replied the Competition Secretary, furrowing his brow.

"There aren't any stakes," added Chives.

"Yes alright," complained the Viscount, "don't lead the witness!"

Bill paused before making up his mind. "Well, one thing's for sure, it's full of water and it is something of a hazard," he mused lightly with a nod to Lamplighter who was sat on the wall drying his feet with the towel from the side of the bag, "therefore I think that Rule 33-2 applies," he concluded confidently, followed by silence from those around him.

"And?" prompted the Viscount, "we're not all like you, sad bastards who sleep with the rule book, would you care to elaborate?"

"Sorry, yes, of course. Rule 33-2. The course. Sub section 'a'; defining bounds and margins. It states that the Committee must define accurately (i), the course and out of bounds. (ii) The margins of water hazards and lateral water hazards."

Another silence.

"Nope, I'm afraid you are going to have to drive this one home," said the Viscount, indicating the bank of confused faces looking on.

"In other words," went on Bill, "just because it has never come into play in a hundred and fifty years, it is within the bounds of the course and by rights should have been correctly identified as a water hazard by the Committee. As far as I'm concerned you can take a drop."

"Hooray!" scoffed Waffham. "At last some common sense."

"But alas," went on Bill, "I fear we still have a problem."

The smile dropped from the heir's face. "Go on," he invited.

"Did you give authority for your caddie to lift the ball from the water hazard?"

"I'm not a lap dog. I can make my own decisions," snapped Lamplighter as he popped an orange clad leg back into his shoe. "I _am_ a responsible adult," he finished sarcastically.

"As I suspected, it appears you did not," Bill said to Waffham.

"What difference does that make? We just established that I get a drop."

"I'm afraid you fall foul of Rule 18-2a."

"Come again?"

"It is covered in the book of Decisions on the Rules of Golf. Rule 26 reference one oblique nine. Question: A player's ball lying in a water hazard is lifted by the player's caddie without the player's authority. What is the ruling? Answer: The player incurred a one-stroke penalty when his caddie lifted the ball - Rule 18-2a. The player may either replace the ball as required-"

"Put it back in there?" exclaimed the Viscount, "are you taking the piss?"

"Or," continued Bill, "proceed under Rule 26-1 and incur an additional one stroke penalty under that rule."

"You know what?" said Viscount Waffham. "You can stick this book of decisions up where the sun don't shine. And as for rule twenty-six sodding one or whatever you said, you can stick that up there as well! Why don't you just stick the ball wherever you want and I'll hit it," he said, tossing the ball to Bill.

"That's most irregu-"

Chives put his hand up to stop his friend from going on. "Here, give it to me before he puts a seven iron over your head." Taking the ball he stood behind the pond. "Obviously we can't see the pin but we know it's somewhere more or less in that direction," he said pointing into the distance at an angle of about one o'clock, "so anywhere back on this line," he said stepping backwards, keeping the pond and the distant hidden pin in alignment as he went. He walked about ten paces until he came to the end of the grass surrounding the pond, stopping short of the gravel path. Extending out his arm at shoulder height he dropped the ball onto the beautifully mown surface.

"There you go you Sir, I think you'll find your playing nineteen."

Viscount Waffham scowled over to Bill. "If I lose by one shot then I will hold you personally responsible. You and your bloody rules!"

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SECTION 2: The Hacker

1: I think I know what I'm doing wrong....

Why is it that golfers find watching hour after hour of golf on the TV just as fascinating as playing? They never watched it before they started playing. The answer is simple. The minute you take up golf you understand – instantly! – How difficult the sport is and just how brilliant the top professional golfers are.

To the outsider it looks such an easy game. Long clubs, decent sized ball, large hole – a doddle. But then you take your first swing and no doubt miss the ball completely.

For the majority of people this auspicious start quite rightly closes their golfing career before it has a chance to catch its first breath. But for us poor mugs that make up the minority that is left, it is the start of a doomed love affair. I say doomed because no matter how often you play or how long you play for, golf will always wear the trousers in this relationship.

To add insult to injury, the better you get the harder it gets. To begin with the goal is simple, try and actually make contact with the ball. But assuming you let the path of true love take its course then you will slowly follow the traditional route of golfing courtship. Once you have got over the embarrassing stage of first hit, then follows the sneaky trips to the driving range, practice swings with a hairbrush in front of the mirror and air-swings in your office with all the shutters pulled close. In time you get brave and book up a few lessons before eventually plucking up the courage to consummate the relationship and join a club and get yourself a bona fide handicap. That's when your problems really start. Because just as with all other relationships in life, you didn't realise quite what you were taking on when you first started.

At the beginning you were content with actually being able to make contact with the ball, but now you are into 'obsession' territory. You're starting to try and draw the ball, fade it, spin it, check it. Now you've got to worry about what every single inch of your body is doing during the swing. How is it possible to put everything together at once and hit the perfect shot?

Just when you're considering a divorce from the demon spouse you discover golf on the TV. Which brings me neatly back to my opening remark. We can't take our eyes off golf on the TV because of two reasons – firstly we admire just how good they are. Shot after shot perfectly off the club head, all controlled fade or draw, not a hint of hook or slice. Swing after swing is perfectly executed under the ultimate pressure of spectators and cameras. To be good at golf you must be able to control the twin ogres of body and mind, and the professional's do this without, it seems, breaking a sweat. But second, and perhaps more important, is that it gives us hope. It proves to us that the game can be mastered. When you are feeling low and have racked up another ton in the monthly medal for another 0.1 handicap increase, there is nothing like watching the pro's on tour to raise the hairs on the back of your neck and get you itching to rush back out on the course.

There is always something to learn from watching the professionals and you sit glued to the screen hoping to discover the missing link from your game that will click everything else in to place

And that's the crux, golfers are many things (stupid, obsessive, dedicated...) but more than anything we are ultimate optimists. How else could we bounce back from every kick in the teeth that the Golfing Gods inflict on us? No matter how bad we play, or how many we shoot, we still walk off at the end of the round with the immortal words: 'I think I know what I'm doing wrong....'

2: Mad Dogs...

Mad dogs & Englishmen..... Think golfing in the snow is fun.

Alright so it is not exactly as Noel Coward wrote it, but if he thought that playing in the midday sun was balmy then thank heavens he didn't pen his famous lines during a cold wet English winter from the comfort of a 19th hole.

Then he would have seen the crème de la crème of mad Englishmen.

Even an outsider with not even the merest hint of interest in golf must see the attraction of the sport when the sun is beating down in Mid August. Even the creamiest milk bottle legs get an all over colour – though sadly the colour is more likely to be lobster than honey! In your shorts & T-shirt your muscles warm through and your swing glides like a well-oiled machine.

Cut to winter!

The wind is blowing a hundred miles an hour; the wind chill is at a record low and you are wearing almost every piece of clothing that you own. On your feet are a pair of £150.00 super dry Atlantic-proof pair of shoes that let in water quicker than the Titanic. Your socks are a freezing patty of mud and 'casual water' that by the halfway house weighs heavier than the whole of your golf bag. Underwear, long johns, two vests, two jumpers and a pair of trousers later and you get to the piece de resistance – your waterproofs.

What part of waterproof don't the manufacturers understand?

They seem to be made from a revolutionary material that manages to not let a single drop of moisture out – allowing your sweat to break out into it's own Eco-system – whilst magically welcoming every drop of rain from within 5 fairways to pass straight through to your jumper.

Then it starts snowing. With your eyes frozen together you start hunting around in your bag for luminous balls. With a few luminous reds, pinks & blues you might actually be better off turning your club around and playing snooker.

Every single wedge into the frozen greens bounce back into the air like a bouncy ball before skittling across the green as if you were trying to chip across a tiled floor. A 6ft putt allows enough time for the ball to build itself into a snowball too big to drop into the hole even if you did hit the right line.

Then just when you think you've cracked it, it's time to get out the driver - a lethal weapon in most of our hands at the best of times. But still you fancy yourself to crack this one down the middle. How?! With 38 articles of clothing on you're like the Michelin man's fatter brother. Despite the fact that when you turn one part of your body the rest lolls round with it a few seconds later, you let rip. True to form the ball soars off into oblivion. Whether it was hit with a fade, draw, hook or slice (note that I didn't include straight) the ball is a goner in the snowdrifts doubling up as rough.

So let me give you a little advice about winter golf – stay at home! Turn up the heating, turn off the early morning alarm, buy in the bacon and leave your clubs in the garage to gather cobwebs until at least Easter.

For every non-golfer reading this, no doubt your non-playing status sets you up as estimably sensible people, and I'm sure this advice will be carefully taken on board and religiously adhered to.

Alas for the rest of us, there is no such hope. We know that the advice is not only sound & considered but also total common sense. So does this mean that we'll follow it? I think I'll leave you to battle this question out with your own golfing demons. Personally I never was one for a fight so I'm off to buy a pair of Footjoy ski boots in time for the next blizzard....

3: The Honeymoon Strip

Fellow hirsute golfers out there will be well familiar with the latest technological advances in personal grooming - the aloe vera easy glide comfort strip - designed to give you a smooth, gliding shave. Ever determined in their pursuit for the marketing edge the manufacturers push the boundaries, how long before we get to shave with the silky aid of quadruple blades with a dual comfort strip of butterfly sweat and monkey's tears? Now my problem with this isn't how do they intend to collect the sweat, it is instead focused on the testers they give away. They are sublime and feel like you're shaving with a feather dipped in honey, resulting in you galloping down to the shops to buy a years supply. But you then discover that, for some reason, the product just never shaves as well as the tester. Why? Because they're not the bloody same!

So does this ring any bells with any other products? Yep, you guessed it, the demo driver! There you are innocently browsing through the racks and rails of the club pro-shop when the assistant pro wanders over and waves this gleaming, iridescent blue piece of driving technology under your nose.

"Just come in," he whispers in an awed whisper. "Guaranteed to make you hit further and straighter." Yeah right. You've been here before and you know sales speak when you hear it. "Honestly, if you don't believe me take it out for a round, we've been sent this one as a demo."

Well, where can be the harm in this? You can't use a driver anyway so you may as well have a bit of fun. So you stroll onto the first tee and pull off the head cover and feel a flicker of excitement as the peacock blue strip on the shaft reflects off the early morning sun. A little half turn of the shoulders and CRACK! With the sound of a shotgun that sends local pheasants scattering for the bunkers, the ball arrows down the centre of the fairway and disappears into the distance. And so it continues; hole after hole, drive after drive, fairway after fairway – you couldn't miss a fairway if it was one stripe wide.

So you stumble into the clubhouse and whip out your credit card and chip and pin like a pro. Now at this stage all may not be lost, as long as you walk off with the demo club! Under no circumstances buy a new one – remember the razor – your new driver just won't be the same, they can only afford to make monkeys cry for testers! But of course, they never let you and so you walk out clutching a gleaming new driver convinced you are now only half a dozen medal rounds away from being a golfing God.

Now this is the moment I let you into a lesser-known industry secret. Do you remember the aloe vera strip? Well I'm convinced they build one into new drivers. A lubricated strip of Jojoba or other such exotic oil that runs the length of the shaft to ensure that for the first few rounds you swing like Tiger Woods. I call it the honeymoon strip, great to start with but it wears off. So shot by shot, the strip slowly dries out and your drives start to have a hint of shape. Round follows round and you start to miss fairways, and then you start to lose balls until you realise that the driver is utterly useless, the strip has dried to a bone dry husk. The club is now worthless and eventually is resigned to a corner of the garage until you sell it for 50p on e-bay.

So do yourself a favour, next time the assistant pro creeps over and waves the latest demo club under your nose, remember the razors, smile back politely and whisper, "No thanks, I'm growing a beard."

4: Stop flapping

I don't know what it is about us golfers, but despite being an eclectic bunch of intellectuals - from plumbers to brain surgeons; chippies to princes - it seems the average golfer has a uniform disregard for engineers & designers. Now you may never have thought about it, but when you have been persuaded by the shop pro to chip and pin away the best part of £500 on a new set of clubs, you are leaving the shop with some very advanced pieces of designer engineering. Nowadays these aren't just whittled rods of hickory with a paddle stuck on the end. Oh no, these little beauties have had every atom of every millimetre tweaked, pushed, teased, calibrated and tested. Every curve, cavity and groove has been put through computer analysis to ensure ultimate aerodynamic performance. On top of that, as every couple across the world searches blindly for the G spot, the designers have given us a sweet spot that we surely couldn't miss after ten pints and a whiskey chaser. Even the shafts have put been through their paces, perfected for weight, length, torque, flex and kick not to mention a mind numbing array of materials such as carbon stickwood, graphite, grafalloy and tempered iron to name but a few. These materials come with engineering promises right up their with the best - "stores more energy during the downswing and releases the energy just before impact while maintaining stability..."

Even the ball has been aerodynamically advanced with a precise pattern of dimples that act as turbulators to induce turbulence in the layer of air next to the ball thus reducing long term drag. So let us look at the big picture. In our hands we hold a perfectly weighted instrument which comes into contact with the ball for an incredibly miniscule 450 millionths of a second. The engineered shape of the club then allows the ball to roll up its face, its grooves helping the ball to spin as well as ensuring the moisture in the grass is taken away from the face (in the same way that car tyres channel off the rain) so that the ball doesn't 'skid'. If you have just swung a pitching wedge then the ball will be exploding off the face revolving at 6000 RPM. All this, because of the amazing advances in science, engineering and manufacturing.

And yet, despite all the help that the hard earned money has provided at our fingertips we still obviously don't believe the makers have a clue. For instead of letting the instrument purr through the air and launch our handicaps safely into the far distance - we try to smack the living daylights out of the ball and rip the balata cover from its core. Primeval instinct kicks in - the 5 iron is swung like a caveman's club and it is all we can do to refrain from screaming at the same time.

And yet do you think that people held the same disdain for the designers of say, the Concorde? Can you imagine all the suited, booted and fine frocked passengers of the inaugural flight sitting tentatively in their seats as the engines started to build power? Then as the aircraft launched down the runway, did they all crane their necks forward, just as they felt the iconic pointed nose struggle to lift hesitantly from the tarmac before deciding the engineers were a bunch of charlatans and in unison all thrust out their arms and start flapping wildly to get that bird off the ground?

Or what of the purchasers of the first motor cars to roll off the assembly lines staring in disbelief as they climbed in for the first time to find there was no hole cut in the floor so that they could stick out their legs and get that baby up to 20 miles an hour!

Now having made this hardly earth shattering realisation of the untrusting golfer and his cynicism toward our techie brethren I was surprised when I had a real eureka moment. I have for many years stood in disbelief and irritation on trains and buses within earshot of someone yelling down their mobile phone to someone in New Delhi, Guang Zhou or other such far flung clime. Why I wondered had man bothered to push human endeavour to the limit and create a network of satellites 36,000 kilometres up in the celestial heavens to provide a microwave radio relay? The man on the street doesn't believe a word of it and instead they'll just shout their instructions into the small device in the palm of their hand. They are of course utterly convinced that this is the only reason the person on the other end of the call can hear them; never the science, never the clever engineer. But of course it's more selective than the 'man on the street', I can whittle it down much better than that - in fact the next time I hear someone shouting into their handset, instead of getting irate I'll just smile and wonder what their swing is like....

5: The more the merrier....

I'm sure from time to time I'll get a chance to use this column to vent frustration at the seemingly endless rules of golf. I mean how difficult can it be? We smack a small ball, as hard as we can and try and pop it into a silly little hole that even a rabbit would be embarrassed by. And yet not only content with producing a whopping great 121 pages of rules for us to read, interpret, remember and then follow; the powers that be then go on to grind us into the deepest recesses of boredom with 58 pages of appendices and a 23 page index. Now as a little aside I have to take to task the job done by the 'chairman of the rules index' or the 'Chief executive of the list of pointless and irrelevant words at the back of the book' or whatever they are called, for pointless and irrelevant is certainly what it is - you try looking up something when you need it, and maybe, if you are very lucky you may find it about an hour later after following a trail seemingly designed by the same person who laid out the Hampton Court Maze. Never in the realms of human typing has so much been typed, to confuse so many, by so few. I guess if the rules ended there we could probably just about stomach it. Could we just accept the fact that an anal 5% of golfers will have a go at reading and learning the rules, whilst the other 95% will make it up as they go along? Well no, because it doesn't stop there. Many rules are so ambiguous, pernickety and pointless, that their authors then realised they needed to produce a hefty tome almost 2-3 inches thicker than the rules themselves called 'The Decisions on the Rules of Golf'. 546 more pages to try and clarify what they couldn't say properly in the first place - oh and the index bloke is at it again, this time glorifying in a list of 5340 entries. If you read it in a novel or watched it in a film you'd wouldn't, couldn't believe it.

Now as a backdrop to this introductory rant, it is worth noting that the corporate world of golf isn't surviving in some financial bubble ever on the up. A quick read of the last years full accounts of some of the major manufacturers endorses this. Callaway for example showed a whopping 15% drop in sales from $1.1b down to $951m from 2008-09. To make matters worse this reduced turnover also came at huge fall in gross profit - from 44% to 36%. They were not alone; Adams Golf seem to be in corporate downward spiral with the last full years accounts showing net profit down from a surfeit of 9.9% in 2007 to a deficit of 1.6%. And the quarterly figures for 2009 seem even worse - a comparison to Q3 2008 against the same period in 2009 shows a drop in sales from $79m to $46m, a percentage you don't even need to bother working out. Having said that, some lucky brands find themselves in relative healthy homes, with stable mates such as Jim Beam & Laphroaig to warm the cockles of Titleist & Foot-joy. Some where between golf and whiskey you can't help thinking they've got things covered for the good times as well as the bad.

Which sort of brings me to my point, with the industry strapped into the same global straight jackets as other industries and a rule book littered, in my opinion with some pointless twaddle - is there anyway we can kill two holes with one ball so to speak. And I think there is - it's time to get out the permanent marker pen and confine the first rule to the annals of history. Turn to page 52 and draw a thick diagonal line through the whole page - there, gone. Rule 4.4 is no more, and what you may not realise is that you have just added $28 billion dollars to the global golf industry, a figure that obliterates words such as recession, depression and administration.

Now I guess that if you don't have a rule book to hand then I might be going a little to fast for you so let me back-track and explain. Rule 4.4 states 'Maximum of Fourteen Clubs' - why?! Give me one good reason. Come on, I'm waiting. Now maybe you are a hell of a lot smarter than me but I can't think of even the slightest hint of a good reason other than one on the decidedly dodgy ground of Osteopathy. So did you come up with a reason? My money's on no. What the hell would it matter if we bung in the 7 wood as well as the 3 & 5. Stick in the 60 degree wedge in case you get a nice floppy lie and you can do your best Michelson impression. But then the more you think of it the more opportunities open up. Why stick to just traditional extra clubs? We could invent new types of club. How about a new set of 'multi-putters™' (thought I'd get in quick with the trademark)? A set of 3 putters designed so that you take a consistent stroke with each one but the first is set up for long putts, another for medium and another for short - we do exactly the same thing for all the irons and woods so why not putters? Or how about a tiny little club with a shaft about a foot long in case you're up against a tree? The options are endless and I see no reason whatsoever why the rules would bother to limit the number of clubs we carry. Just another wasted page in the rules. Imagine if everyone of the supposed 60 million golfers in the world bought a set of multi-putters™ at say £200 plus a tree iron (no not an Irish 3 iron) you could easily be at £300,multiplied by the number of golfers, converted into dollars and maybe, just maybe I just got the attention of a few CEO's around the world.

Now I ought really to leave it there and leave something for a future column, but let me just take out one more rule and add another few billion to the bottom line; Rule 5.3 spouts on about when you can and can't substitute your ball for another. Again why bother. I see no reason why you can't change your ball for every shot. Start with a brick designed to fly 250 yards, then change to a ball suited to your approach shot and then end with your perfect putting ball. Every golfer in the world would need to buy 3 times as many balls and the green activists would be over the moon because the world's resources would be spared another 4 sides of text in the Decisions books about changing your bloody balls.

Simples.

6: Whose divot is it anyway?

I have to say that on the whole I hate this whole blame culture in which we increasingly live. If you trip up over a paving slab as you walk along the street then rather than picking up your mobile to dial your solicitor, the only picking up you should be worrying about is learning to do just that with your feet. Or if a conker lands on your head you should be standing there marvelling at the ways of nature instead of drawing up a shortlist of organisations you can sue for the headache.

And of course suing someone has never been easier. Next time you are at your computer type the words "sue someone' into Google. Within milli-seconds it returns over 16 million results. To make things even easier, the top return when I did it offered in nice easy to read bold type: "How to sue someone. Are you thinking of claiming something from someone?" One minute I'm sitting there thinking whether or not I want a cup of tea, the next I'm sifting through my life, jotting down all the bad bits and then starting to think of who I can blame and sue for making them happen.

But I resisted. Instead, someone, or rather something, did pop into my head. Something for which I am repeatedly punished for no fault of my own. Being in someone else's divot! This really gets up my nose! So now I really had someone to hurl at the impressive facade of Her Majesty's esteemed legal system.

Google even made my next step nice and easy. Seven results down on the first screen I was offered the chance to follow three easy steps to suing someone. Suffice to say I happily clicked away. Step 1: Decide if you have a good case. I cast my mind back to the club championship, a perfect little lay up shot that left me a gentle 110 yard wedge over the water protecting the 18th green only to walk up to my ball and find it sitting half an inch below the surface in a beautifully hewn divot that had clearly only just seen daylight for the first time. This discovery was promptly followed by a thinned exorcet straight into the water. It was only day one of the championship so whilst it didn't instantly deny me fame and fortune, it proved to be the thin edge of the wedge (even my own words continue to mock). So yes, I feel I have a very good case!

Step 2: Can you collect if you win? As the divot was so very minty fresh I knew exactly who the three-ball in front of me were. All up standing pillars of the community and certainly not short of a few bob, so there's another tick! Step 3: Estimate your claim? Not so easy. However I'm sure I am just following the lead of other fellow amateur golfers when I imagine becoming club champion as merely the first step on my road to golfing greatness. The club championship would I'm sure have been swiftly followed by a call up to the county, then the national team, Tour qualifying, a run of Majors, Ryder Cups and then the sell out biography and film rights. Add that lot up and I'm happy to round it down to a cool £10 million for simplicity.

But of course I type with my tongue firmly planted into my cheek. To think of suing other golfers for leaving a divot, whilst on one hand perfectly reasonable, on a practical level is ridiculous. Which actually brings me to my point. I never for a second had a thought to litigate my fellow golfers, my gripe is actually with the rules. Play the ball as it lies. Poppycock! Why on earth, when I have safely found the middle of the fairway should I be punished for someone else's carelessness? In my opinion this is the stupidest rule in the book. Maybe back in the 18th Century when the great and good landowners of the Society of St Andrews Golfers smacked a ball around their rabbit strewn links, the quality of the course was a bit iffy to say the least. But these days fairways are mown to perfection with precision machinery. As I see it, the designers of a golf course lay down a gauntlet to us players. They lay out a course and challenge us to traverse it's various pitfalls and traps in as fewer shots as possible. An important part of this intimacy of player and designer locking horns is the safety of the fairway. "Hit it if you can" must be their unheard cry. And hit it we occasionally do. And when we do, I believe we have passed the test and thus should then be allowed to take relief if we find ourselves in any crag, divot, dung heap, scrape or scuff; Within six inches of the ball, no nearer the hole. Why not? We are allowed to do this in winter under a local rule, so to reward our skill by changing this stupid rule globally seems to me to make eminent sense. But then again sense doesn't always seem to go hand in hand with golf. So rather than await the rule change, I'll keep my ears pealed for the first golfer to be hanged on the evidence of a divot-print.

7: They think it's all over....

The clock has moved on another four years and once again it is time for the quadrennial dreams of the English football fan with the start of the FIFA World Cup. Surely this time there is hope that we can now end Baddiel & Skinner's now lengthened 44 years of hurt and win footballs ultimate prize. For many fans the images of Moore being held aloft, the ricochet off the underside of the crossbar and Nobby Stiles manic dancing aren't just distant memories, they are history that took place before they were even born. For them our solitary victory isn't real, in the same way that the horrors of a World War cannot be grasped unless you were alive at the time.

Instead, for any football fan born after the summer of '66, the World Cup is synonymous with pain, agony & despair. In fact, if you add in the Euro Championships as well then world football for the under 44's can be neatly wrapped up in a phrase to send shivers down their spines: penalty shoot-out.

Surely there is a better way to end a sporting contest than the lottery of a twelve yard game of Russian Roulette?

Try this solution.... Imagine England once again get through to the final and find themselves facing their old nemesis, Germany. The game is tight but just before the break Rooney uses all his strength to shrug off the might of the German defence to take England in to half time one up. The second half is a tight affair. Alas, like in 1966 England cannot hold out and succumb to a last minute equaliser. So under current rules we head for extra time and with no more goals find ourselves at penalties once again. Perhaps here is when we turn to our favourite pastime of golf and see if it can produce a more satisfying end than penalties. Well, let me tell you right now that the answer is no, it can't. In fact the examination actually highlights one of the most amazingly bad ways to decide a tournament that has ever been created in sport: Count-back.

Under a count-back system the scores achieved by both teams in the World Cup Final would be calculated across both halves. The first half would be discarded, why I have no idea. Instead the result would hinge on who performed the best in the second half. In this instance Germany would win as they 'won' the second half one-nil. Before you could utter Kenneth Wolstenholme's immortal line the German skipper would be holding aloft Gazzaniga's 5kg solid gold statue and once again we would be crying in our beer and smashing up town centres across the country.

Clearly this is a totally unacceptable way to decide the winner. What possible reason does the second half have for being more important than the first? And yet we golfers let this happen week in week out to decide not just the outcome of a few quid in a midweek swindle but also the destination of silverware. Frankly it is ridiculous, a silly system that in my mind is no better than tossing a coin.

But what would we use instead?

Let me start by having a quick look at the wonderful handicap system. In what other sphere of life can multiple players play for a single prize regardless of their level of ability. However when you step back a few paces and look at it from afar, cracks start to appear. Imagine if you will a 400 metres race operated under a handicap system whereby runners are allowed extra seconds depending on their ability as is the case in golf with shots. The pistol fires and the two runners involved set off. One is 17 years old and the other is 90. The younger runner hurtles round like a hare and posts a time of 46 seconds and runs off scratch. The older runner takes an extra minute and by the time he shuffles over the line the younger runner is already changed and ready to go home. The 90 year old runs off a handicap of 61 seconds and thus wins the gold medal by a second. Hmmm. When viewed like this the whole handicap system is exposed as a bit silly. But on this occasion I'm going to let that go, maybe that's the subject for another rainy day. Instead I'm looking for a better way to decide a tie than the arbitrary use of count-back. Now assuming that the whole of the golfing world accepts that the 90 year old runner is the worthy winner due to handicapping, what would happen if they had actually tied? Do we really check to see who ran quicker, after handicap, over the last 200m?

The aim of the game is to run around the track in the quickest time possible. So whilst the handicap has allowed them to compete, common sense dictates that in the event of a tie the fastest must prevail.

So in golf, whenever there is a tie, the player who shot the best gross score should win, or in the event of a stableford the player with the lower handicap to achieve their points total. Of course many will think this gives advantage to the lower handicap players. It doesn't, it just makes sense - always remember the 90 year old runner.

Which is why I actually think a penalty shot-out is a good and fair way to end a football match. At least it is decided by the skill of kicking a football rather than some formula of fortune like golf's countback.

8: Time for a round?

Following a shockingly cold and brutal winter of golf, it is with a huge sigh of relief that the last few weeks has seen a proper bit of summer. Playing with the sun on our backs and muscles warm for once softens the frustration of thinned wedges and missed putts. However there is one down side to the sunshine season, the sight of shy legs blinking their way into the light from their long hibernation. Many a match play has been won by the powerful effect of exposed pins on the enemy.

A bit of research on the internet found me the perfect literary quote to back up this observation: "The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf - it's almost a law." So wrote HG Wells in his novel Bealby in 1915.

And I'm afraid that this is where this months column takes a sharp and surprising about turn from the expected reflections upon summer golf. For as I read more on HG Wells I see that he lived much of his life in The Avenue in Worcester Park, a few minutes from the home I was born and brought up in. The father of science fiction must surely have trod the same pavements as I. What was going through that amazing mind as he hauled himself up the steep high street? Further ruminations on the infinite adventures suggested in his genre creating book on time travel perhaps? It wasn't long before I found myself staring at the laptop trying to answer a simple, albeit science busting question, that I now put to you.

Given that you are now the proud owner of a shiny new time machine, who out of the whole of human history would you choose to play one round of golf with? Or maybe you would prefer to use the machine to go back and witness some of the most historic rounds or shots ever made. Be warned, the machine only has a enough juice for one round trip so choose wisely....

If golf history is your thing then you might consider zipping back to 1935, four years before the horror of a world war that would bring life for a generation to a shuddering halt. Perhaps if we trawl back through the black and white photographs of that time we might just see you standing in the background watching on as Gene Sarazan plays the infamous 'shot heard around the world'; a thundering 4 wood to the par 5 15th in The Masters that rolled in for an incredible albatross to tie the lead. Or maybe you would prefer Seve's tee shot at the 10th at the Belfry or Sandy Lyle's miraculous bunker shot to set up a first British win at the Masters in 1988.

Of course if you are feeling a little bit more daring then how about setting the machine for 1872 and the chance of a three ball with Old and Young Tom Morris. Between father and son they won the Open four times each between 1861 - 1872. The year you play with them sees the famous claret jug presented for the first time. Young Tom is just 21 as you pound the fairways of St Andrews, he is at the peak of his game having just secured his fourth consecutive open championship, a feat never repeated to this day. And yet you watch in heartbreaking reverie, as he strokes his way around the old course, for you alone know that he will never win another title and in just three years time his wife will die in childbirth along with the baby. Young Tom will never recover, eventually dying three short months later on Christmas Day 1875 at the age of 24. Such is the curse of the time traveller.

For many, maybe the machine will allow the chance to plot a more personal course through time. Perhaps it will enable you to snatch hours with an unknown grandfather or once again share a sun dappled two-ball with a sorely missed parent. The chance perhaps to complete unfinished conversations or the opportunity to whisper words never said.

Or perhaps Gandhi would be able to unlock some inner calm to control the red mist from descending everytime you miss a two-foot putt. Could Field Marshall Montgomery, hero of El Alamein, teach you a thing or two about coming out of the sand? Whenever, whoever; it's your choice. I suggest that before you get to the silly conclusion of this column you take a few moments to consider your choice. Once you have chosen you may proceed on to the ridiculous end.....

For me, I would choose Charles Darwin in 1860, a year after the publication of On The Origin of Species. The round would allow me the chance to understand the man who revolutionised natural science. No doubt he would still hunker some concerns and even alarm at the response to his research and subsequent theory. Despite being forbidden, I would of course be bursting to tell him that all would be well, his theory would prevail and his renown remain undimmed even into the next millennium.

But actually I choose him for a very practical and selfish reason. What if during the course of our round my ball should run into a small hole? I pick up my rule book and flick to the index. I look up 'hole' and find 'Made by burrowing animal' and turn to the proffered page of definitions. A "burrowing animal" is an animal that makes a hole for habitation or shelter, such as a rabbit, mole, groundhog, gopher or salamander. An index chain later and the gist is: hole by burrowing animal equals abnormal ground condition equals relief. If 'burrowing' the animal ain't, then bad luck. Thus I find myself out of my sphere of knowledge and stuffed by a stupid rule.

I haven't got a clue what holes may or may not have been made by 'burrowing animals' or otherwise. Why should I? You should get relief either way! Instead, I'm in a hole, and can't move on until I can identify the species that made the hole. Even if I can then I have to know enough about it's physiology to ascertain if it is 'burrowing' or not. And then I remember my well chosen partner, the pre-eminent naturalist of the last two centuries. Salvation. "Hey Chas," I ask "Do you know anyone whose got a gopher?"

9: A level playing field.....

There continues to be an increasing number of women playing golf across the country. Now whilst I recognise that this opening statement will render choking fits in some of the more 'traditional' committee rooms around the country, more women playing is great for the sport. Of course how women have been received and treated in clubs is a long and old story for others to tell. Suffice to say it wouldn't surprise me if there were still some prehistoric clubs around that still firmly believe in the old acronym: Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden. I know of one club just miles from where I write where you could count the number of years on your fingers since ladies had their own entrance into the club, forbidden to use the main entrance. Emancipation for women in golf has been a long haul.

Yet for once the golfing authorities have been leading the way. The Council of National Golf Unions (CONGU) have led with one massive step for golf kind by actively encouraging and legislating a system whereby men & women not only play together, but compete within the same competition.

The trouble is that to do this you have to get around one problem. People playing off of different tees are effectively playing different courses. But is that fair if one of the courses is much more difficult than the other? CONGU decided that it wasn't and decided to formulate a system to rebalance this difference.

The seed of the answer begins with the standard scratch score (SSS) of each course. For those of you who are not familiar with the SSS, it is the score a gender specific 'scratch' golfer is expected to shoot. To calculate this the assessors take into account various topographical and design considerations such as how long is the first cut, the rough, how wide are the fairways etc.... The result can often differ from the par of the course. For example a course off the white tees with a Par 72 may comeback with a SSS of 71 as the assessors expect the scratch male golfer to shoot one better than Par. The Ladies Golf Union (LGU) then assess the expected score shot by a lady scratch golfer off the red tees to get an SSS for the ladies course. It is possible that whilst this course may have the same Par 72 as the men's course, they decide that the lady scratch golfer would be expected to return a score one more than par - i.e. SSS 73. And here lies the secret to the system. In our example above, the 'system' is saying that it is harder for a scratch female golfer off the red tees than it is for a male scratch golfer off the white tees (of course depending on the courses the scenario may be reversed!).

Somehow you have to take this differing level of difficulty into consideration if you are to pitch both genders into battle for a single prize. Their answer was a formula that allowed for the difference in the SSS of the 'separate' courses. Therefore to continue with our example above, it is deemed that the ladies course is 2 shots harder than the men's course (Ladies SSS 73 minus Men's SSS 71). Therefore in a medal competition, for results purposes only, ladies add these 2 adjustments shots to their handicaps to lower their net score. In the first version of the system, in a stableford event the same adjustment calculation was used and the ladies returned points scores were increased by the same adjustment of 2. However this has recently been amended; the new system uses an adjustment calculated between the points each gender needs to score to play to handicap. The gender with the higher points target (i.e. easier course) may have the difference deducted from their score. In our example therefore, (whereby men have to shoot 37 points to hit handicap - one easier than par - and the women 35 - one harder than par) the men's scores could be reduced by up to 2 points (one per hole) when compiling the mixed result if they scored any points on the highest 2 stroke index holes they get shots on. (It is worth noting at this stage that these adjustments are made to the scores for results purposes only to ascertain a winner across genders, the score prior to adjustment is the one used for handicap purposes). So already we find the CONGU system lurching from one version to another, getting more complicated and confounding confusion.

My guess is that some of you are still with me and some of you are lying exhausted on your sofa's. I'll give it one more go and try and nail the CONGU thinking and reasoning down in three simple statements:

You must understand that the foundation of the system is that men and ladies are playing off of different courses.

The difficulty of each course is based on how a scratch golfer of the correct gender would be expected to play their course.

The difference between the difficulty of the courses is adjusted in the result of the competition.

Think of it another way; imagine a 100m race between a man and a woman. The men's 100m track is totally straight and flat but the women's rises uphill from start to finish by some 100ft. In this instance it is obvious that if you want them to be racing against each other for the same prize that some kind of adjustment to the running times must be made to allow for the fact that it is harder to run uphill compared to flat.

Hopefully by now you are with me and understand the logic and back-bone of the CONGU system.

My problem is not with the theory but the practice. At my club the adjustment between the men's and ladies courses is 2 shots, with the ladies course being the more difficult, exactly as the example I have used here. The first problem we experienced was a majority of men being unable to grasp the logic and insisting on calling them courtesy shots - however that is no reason to question or doubt the system, it is only ignorance on their part. The more surprising and practical outcome that I saw was an uncomfortable feeling from some women who won tournaments not by the score they shot but after the application of the formula of adjustment shots they (rightly) received (and with the new stableford system we will see men who score the most points in the field potentially lose the trophy by going backwards via adjustment). In effect it is a logical system that manages to produce a result that both genders seem uncomfortable with. Golf's equivalent to cricket's Duckworth-Lewis.

I understand the system, the logic is sound, but in my opinion when applied it somehow doesn't work. Surely golf should be won or lost on the swing of a club, not by the application of a formula (handicaps aside) that is desperately trying to level a playing field that has been centuries in the skewing. Some four hundred years after inception we are only just working out how to make men and women both play together and against each other.

I have my own, simpler solution. All golfers seem to accept and respect the handicap system. It allows the physical difference between a Junior and an OAP to be factored in and produce a satisfying result in a competition. The answer surely is to therefore let the same system flourish between men and women and allow the handicap system to level the playing field between the genders off the same course and same tee. I'm sure that if the sport were invented today they wouldn't think of building multiple tees on each hole. Just one white tee for all. Of course the handicap maximum for ladies would have to increase from the current 36 and a seismic change would probably be needed in their handicaps when they moved to the whites. But eventually they would settle to a handicap that reflected their ability to play the white tee course. In time we would have all players, of all abilities, ages and gender playing the same course and allowing the handicap system to determine the winner fairly, based on the shots struck.

One competition; one tee; one winner; two genders.

10: An athlete's breakfast...

With our nation's passion for DIY vying strongly with golf to swallow up our precious weekend hours, many of you will I'm sure know that a quality finish is all about good preparation. Get this right, the professional tradesman will tell us and our chances of success have multiplied exponentially. We understand this, but the trouble is, proper prep is bloody boring and time consuming.

In this respect the similarity between the two popular hobbies is striking. Again in golf, the professional will tell the amateur it's all about preparation. Take the example of the morning preparation of a pro on tour before he tees off. A nine o'clock tee time finds his alarm shattering his nocturnal dreams of winning at around 5am. Breakfast will be carefully selected by their dietician or personal trainer to maximise and ensure a slow release of energy throughout the round. Once refreshed and charged they will make an early approach to the course to carry out an extensive warm-up routine starting with a regime of stretching exercises to firstly wake, then heat their body muscles before they even contemplate grasping a club. Once they are feeling supple then their attention finally turns to hitting balls. Most professionals will hit balls with all of their clubs, or at the very least every other one. Starting with wedges they slowly work down to the longer clubs, woods and eventually the driver before they hit reverse gear and work back towards the wedges again. This warm-up could easily involve hitting as many balls as a 28 handicapper would hit in two rounds of golf. This extensive programme will be done methodically, and slowly, with meticulous patience. Finally, with their bodies alert, warm and supple they progress to the putting green to sharpen their focus. Again the routine would entail more putts than an amateur probably makes in a summer of medals. To summarise, from the moment the pro's hand silences the alarm to it holding the driver on the first tee, they have been in preparation mode for hitting their first ball for real.

So what about the amateur golfer? For them, the morning after the long night before invariably arrives too quickly. Heavy eyelids struggle to open and focus on the bedside clock to read the time. Eventually sleep is replaced by panic as they realise their tee-time is less than an hour away. Ten whirlwind minutes later and with clubs thrown into the back of the car they are speeding to the course.

If the speed cameras allow then they may just be in time for some hurried breakfast and a rendezvous with the patron saint of golf - St. Bacon. Quite what golf would do without bacon I don't know but it stands proud every turn. No matter what event is on, from a society day to a club match, you can rest assured it will kick off with a bacon roll. Pigs must really hate golf.

Of course not every amateur arrives nano-seconds before their slot. Some have an ulterior motive to be more organised and arrive in good time. For them the princely offering of an athlete's breakfast awaits. Full English; all the trimmings.

Thus with oleaginous fuel glooping through their veins they make it to the first tee. If they pass a handily placed practice net along the way they use the convenient structure to lean their bag against it as they dig out a ball, tea and pencil. Now for the warm-up! Out come two irons that are thrown across their shoulders and with great gusto they do a couple of half turns each way before finishing with the flourish of a wedge at some unsuspecting weed. So it is that with a difference of some three hours prep to the professional our amateur takes his place centre stage. With a miracle of engineering their belts somehow keep in the contents of their breakfast as they bend down and plant a tee, balance their ball and conquer the head rush as they stand back up.

At this stage one can only marvel at their optimism as they stare confidently down the fairway and lock onto some distant target with the assuredness of a heat seeking missile. They totally and utterly believe it is their right and destiny to launch an Exocet with unfaltering shape and accuracy and take the plaudits of their playing partners. But alas this is where it becomes clear and obvious that they should have taken a little more time on the sanding down, for no amount of topcoat can hide their shoddy preparation.

With a back as stiff as a board they swing like Pinocchio on strings and slice the ball fifty yards right into the Captains Charity Bunker and immediately start the round a pound down. To cap it all, their faces look like they've just discovered their spouse's infidelity. A mixture of shock, hurt and disbelief. How could that happen? They cannot believe it, they played so well last week! And no doubt in four holes time, after they have finally warmed up they'll be back to their best. But the damage will probably have already been done and the mountain of dropped shots already too high to overcome.

But they never learn and in some kind of perverse groundhog cycle of course the same will happen next week.

There is however one exception. The club championship. For one night and morning every year the routine is turned on its head. It begins with the ritual of the annual washing of clubs; every groove and cavity cleared and polished. An early night follows and for once the alarm bell is early enough to wake the birds as well. A healthy home breakfast is the precursor to a slow, leisurely drive. Like a true professional it is straight to the range and a three-bucket warm-up, topped off with meticulous putting practice. They then take to the tee like never before, their bodies and minds warmed and focused.

There are many phrases to describe what happens next. But somehow, instead of the normal slice, they somehow snap-hook one out of bounds left. Time stands still, and for once the look of hurt and anger and disbelief is justified. This reader, is the law of the sod.

Of course instead of putting this one down to Murphy playing his legal games with them and persevering next time out they vow to never go on the range again before a round. And thus the cycle is kept intact.

So here's my tip. Instead of spending another hundred pounds on a new putter that claims to take five shots off your round, spend a fiver on some sandpaper. Stick a hole through one of the sheets and hang it next to your members tag on your bag in the hope that next time you throw your clubs in the car you might, just might, think of swapping the athlete's breakfast for a bucket on the range.

On the other hand, fancy a bacon roll....?

11: Bandits...

Bandit. A strong and provocative word in the world of golf. And yet, if you were to pick up and thumb through your dictionary at home I doubt you would find mention of this great sport of ours, let alone a description that could come close to invoking the passion this word can produce in the bar at your club.

More than likely you would read the normal blurb of robbers and outlaws in lawless areas. If you're lucky it may touch close to home with mention of persons being proficient at something at the expense of others.

But almost certainly no four letter word - g**f! Strange then that us golfers use this word so often and with such meaning and yet the great and good successors to Samuel Johnson haven't bothered to mention us?

So why do we use it with such readiness and zeal? Firstly the accusation is always aimed at the smoking bandito masked under a heavy cloak of sarcasm and banter. But beware the smiling accuser. He may look jocular with one arm on the bar, the other balancing a G&T, but the hatred is real. Oh OK so to call it hatred is a little strong, perhaps bitterness is more appropriate. Either way, the sentiment is very real and it doesn't just fester in solitary hearts. It breeds and multiplies in the wider membership. With a pack mentality they hunt down, expose and besmirch the latest spur-wearing Mexican to stray into their patch, until their handicaps have been cut down to a level where they can no longer win so much as a jumping bean. Of course then everyone claims them to be the salt of the earth and they are welcomed into the collective bosom. And therein lies a problem.

The CONGU handicap system as it stands produces three consequences. The first is to cut players who return scores better than their handicaps (this can be quite aggressive for higher handicap players who could see their handicaps reduced by as much as 0.4 [0.5 for the highest category ladies] for each shot better than handicap). Secondly it protects players handicaps from rising if they don't quite play to their handicap but manage to score within the so-called 'buffer-zone'. The third & last is to pay lip service to increasing your handicap if you play below not only your handicap but also your buffer zone. However this increase is limited to just 0.1 for each round you do this and a dreadful run of form would mean that your handicap moves upwards at the speed of a creeping glacier. You could play for months and months in competition and find that you still haven't crossed the next threshold to get a measly one shot back in your armoury.

Let us not forget that this is a tried and trusted system that is normally accepted without so much as a cursory glance to its fairness and appropriateness. However I feel it is deeply flawed and this system itself is the breeding ground for the bandit haters.

This is because having given it a bit more thought I actually don't believe it is the hatred or even bitterness I mentioned earlier in the heart of the accusers. It is envy. Envy because their time as a bandit has long had the sun go down on it. Instead the member has been consigned to an after-bandit lifetime of mediocre scores restricted by the straight jacket of the handicap system.

When most people take up golf and join a club they are either new to the game or returning from a long lay-off. They put in their three cards for their initial handicap and then the bug bites (or re-bites) and they play and practice like mad. They improve; fast. Great scores come firing from their ivory handled pistols and the handlebar moustache starts growing thickly on their top lip. Such a character simply cannot blend into the clubhouse cacti. What starts as a whisper as they walk by swiftly grows to a cacophony.

But worry not members, the wheels of the handicap system will start to turn. And turn they inexorably do, until the new member has been neutered and their golfing prowess and success has been reduced to your miserable level. Give it a couple of years and this 'new' member will hit the dangerous state of mind of so many others - apathy. If you look that up in your dictionary it will tell you all about lack of interest, enthusiasm or concern. Once you find your level in golf - whether that be scratch or 24 handicap - you take up camp within the buffer-zone. Your handicap barely moves. The handicap system is skewed to cutting and its nirvana is to give you a handicap that means you play to net par at your best. Is it any wonder then that you start looking under rocks and valleys to sniff out the bandits who are streaking across the course recording scores that, if the handicap system has done its job properly, you are unable to produce.

The sentiments of the system are admirable, to try and level the playing field so that improving players do not continually win. And to this end it works, the trouble is there is always a new chaps-clad player riding onto the horizon. The problem is that they are trying to level the playing field by raising up just one end so that all players fall to the lower end. Surely it would be much more interesting if they designed a system that adjusted both ends of the field. If you are playing badly you should go up quickly so that you can compete. This would totally re-invigorate competitions and the massed ranks of members who, mostly accurately, bemoan that they cannot win before they've even struck a ball.

Well what if you play 3 shots worse than your handicap and suddenly find 0.9 added to your handicap (for a Cat 3 player)? And if the only time you didn't move was if you hit smack on handicap? Other than that if you play 1,2,3 or 4 shots worse than your handicap then you go up 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 or 0.4 for each shot respectively depending on your handicap category. It would probably need to be capped to a 4 shot upward adjustment at most (so any worse than 4 over handicap only carries the same 4 shot incremental increase). Playing better than handicap would remain as it is today with no cap on the reduction.

This would mean that your handicap would constantly be in flux, rising and dipping with form, always keeping the scent of glory within your reach.

I know many will cry foul at the potential for some players to 'throw' numerous rounds to get their handicaps up high for some big competitions. Frankly if they can be bothered let them. I believe the positives would far outweigh the negatives. We must release the disenchanted golfers from their prison of mediocrity. Change the system, give out the mail order catalogues and let's us all place our orders for some new spurs and sombreros....

12: Rule 19-6: Ball coming to rest, close to the hole

Dear Reader, you are respectfully advised that someone has got my gander in the Northerly direction. Or to put it another way, I am in possession of the Camel's back. Consider me 'Peeved of Epsom'.

My beef is with the R&A and their so called Rules of Golf book. On page 5, in the forward by the chairmen, their very first line states 'this book contains the Rules of Golf'. So you must forgive me for assuming that this official tome did in fact carry the rules, such as they are, in their entirety. And yet I can disclose to you that they have been totally and utterly inept in this respect. They have left a rule out! Not just some flippant, obscure directive that has virtually no effect on the game, but a huge great whopping one. And having seen it used by hundreds of other golfers, it is one that could save you and me two, three or perhaps even four shots in a single round!

Now because the R&A have been so careless as to forget to place this rule into the book, I have had to try and learn of its statute through the experience of my own eyes and ears.

I have been undertaking this research for many years now in the hope that I could fully understand all its nuances and once proficient, I could then in turn pass the knowledge on to you. Rest assured I am not telling you anything I have not included in my letter of complaint to Messrs. Brown & Bunch, and to that end I can advise that I am very close to the root of the matter.

My letter began by letting them know of the omissions from the index; there are two. The first is on page 180 under the heading BALL, between 'Cleaning' and 'Damaged, unfit for play'. The missing entry is: 'Coming to rest, just short of the hole (Rule 19-6) ...p86'.

In my missive I also advised them that the inclusion of slang or commonly used golf terms should be included in the index to help players find relevant rules quickly. I therefore suggested a second addition; GIMME between GENERAL PENALTY and GOLF CARTS that should direct readers to page 188.

So to the rule itself. Now remember, because it has been left out of the book no amateur seems to knows the definitive explanation. Thus I have seen different players apply it in subtly different ways. I have heard for example that it is rare to see it invoked during competition play, though not unheard of. However it seems prevalent in forms of play such as swindles which indicates some kind of applying criteria. We can presume that this criteria is not one of a financial nature for there is often large sums of money at stake in swindles. Hopefully my letter will not only receive a groveling apology but full disclosure of Rule 19-6 and clarification of exactly when and where it can be entreated.

The first great mystery this perplexing edict brings forth is who is the first player allowed to call on its use. Again my research has thus far been unable to pin this down with any satisfaction.

Suffice to say that at some stage in the round one of the players will strike his ball towards the hole (interestingly the question of whether the ball starts from on or off the putting surface appears to be of no consequence) and it comes to rest close to the hole. Now it is interesting and important to note two things at this point. Firstly there appears to be no official distance from the hole that qualifies for the rule to be used. Secondly for the first use of the rule in the round it cannot be the player himself who asks for it. Instead, once their ball has come to rest one of the other players may choose to say 'take it away' and the player is allowed to pick up his ball and score the hole as completed with the use of just one additional 'free' stroke.

A most interesting transition happens at this point, for the player who received this 'gimme' now seems to move from being the gimmee to the gimmer. From my observations, from this moment on he is under severe pressure to bring parity to the round and award the ruling to each of his playing partners in turn. Even it seems, if that players ball is further from the hole than his one was. His obligation to reciprocate thereby manifests itself with his echoing cry of 'take it away'.

A further codicil appears to be the ability for players who have as yet not received their gimme to call on the gimmer directly with a call of 'surely that's a gimme?' My experience indicates that this is guaranteed to receive a positive reply and the ball is picked off the surface with due haste. And thus it is that an inexorably growing length of putt is given under 19-6 as the round plays out.

Perhaps now you can understand my anger at the R&A for stupidly omitting this rule. I regularly miss putts such as these and have therefore been unfairly penalised with dropped shots that clearly by the actions of others could, and should have been fairly given under this resolution.

You will I hope reader, forgive me for admitting that during my research I did suffer bouts of doubt. Was there really such a rule? Could an organisation such as the R&A really make such a school boy omission? Of course these indecisions came when I was at my lowest - the middle of the night, or after a particularly bad round.

But always I was pulled on by the comfort of knowing that ours is a honourable sport, played by honourable people. I eventually became able to laugh at my apprehensions and see them for what they truly were - silly! After all there is no way that Rule 19-6 could be a fallacy, for if that were the case then the dozens, scores, nay hundreds of players I had seen invoke it would in fact - just be cheating....

13: The Gloves are on

A question: 'Do you consider yourself to be a gullible person?'

Unless you are a half-wit you will most certainly have replied in the negative; none of us likes to think that someone else has got one over on us. And yet the chance to fall foul of some twisted scheme seems to be lurking around every corner. You can't even enter a supermarket without being bombarded with Buy One Get One Free offers at every turn that are so very, very tempting; such good value; and yet you have to be so strong on the basis that you didn't need or want one of the things in the first instance, let alone two!

Even stepping into the shower exposes you to the danger of being tricked. Do you really need to lather, rinse and repeat. It is just one little word and yet the use of the word repeat on a shampoo bottle has come to represent the zenith of the marketeers skills and saw sales of shampoo double overnight.

So are you still so confident that you traverse our worldly path without being conned? Now I'm sorry to say that I have you at a slight disadvantage here because I know that if you are reading this article there is a 99% chance that you are a golfer. And therefore you are the unwitting victim of one of the greatest marketing swindles of modern times.

To illustrate my point I think I might try and conjure up how, perhaps, this little scheme may just have begun....

The old immaculately dressed man looked on forlornly as the workers filed out in long lines under the shrill background of the factory whistle. He felts tears prick at his eyes as he looked into their eyes. These were his people, his responsibility. How were they going to feed their families or pay their rent once the factory closed? To a man, working here was the only job they had ever had.

Eventually the last of them had passed trough the old grand iron gates and he looked on as the watchman swung them shut with a great clang for the last time before walking on to break the news to his son and heir.

The old panelled boardroom was warm from the well stoked fire and he found his son waiting patiently.

" _What's wrong?" questioned the older man as soon as he saw the look on his fathers face._

" _It's over," came the croaked reply as he fell with exhaustion into the armchair nearest the fire._

" _What do you mean?"_

" _The Bank has looked at our order book and decided to withdraw the overdraft. We are bankrupt."_

" _But that's impossible, you've banked with them for over forty years, how can they do that now? Things will pick up, Winter is around the corner and gloves sales always improve once the snow comes," pleaded the son._

" _That's true, and yet the Bank claims our gloves are such high quality that they last too long, they don't come back for another pair."_

" _But surely there are always new people to sell to," countered the younger man._

" _It is not me you need to convince," said the father. "They told me today that the overdraft must be paid off by 11am Monday morning or they will reclaim the building as per the agreement we have signed with them."_

" _But that is thousands of pounds, it's impossible. Did they offer no other options?"_

" _Only that we must either pay the sum or come up with a new business plan that would convince them that we can pay back the sum and quickly. I have racked my brains and lain awake at night these past weeks but to no avail. Son, I'm sorry. I had hoped to hand over to you a flourishing business, instead it seems I leave you nothing."_

" _But we have a whole two days to come up with a new idea." said the son with enthusiasm._

" _If there was some hope, some new great idea, do you not think I wouldn't have come up with it and tried it already? You must not give yourself false hope," the old man whispered._

" _I will not give in without a fight," vowed the young man. "Meet me back here on Monday morning and I will have the idea to save us!"_

Monday morning found the old man still sitting in the same chair, his hair and clothes unkempt. As the carriage clock over the mantelpiece sounded the appointed hour the son burst through the door.

" _Father, we are saved! I have found the answer."_

The old man didn't raise a smile. "It is the Bank you must convince, what is your idea?"

" _All Saturday I paced up and down my rooms to no avail. All night I stayed up. Finally by Sunday morning I was exhausted and decided to get some fresh air and went to walk on the heath. It was here that I came across some fellows playing golf."_

" _Huh," puffed the father. "Now there's a waste of a man's time if ever I saw one."_

" _But father, I got talking to them. There were dozens of them, all playing one group after another. The say that there are hundreds of gold courses appearing up and down the country. Thousands are taking to the game."_

" _And was it one of these time wasters that came up with your great idea?"_

" _In a way, yes. I sat down and watched each of them come through and found many complaining of blisters through the constant swing of the bats they use chaffing their palms and fingers."_

" _So you suggested they wear gloves?"_

" _Yes."_

" _I think you'll find the Bank will give you short shrift there. Once again they will claim they will buy gloves and never come back for more."_

" _Aha!" interrupted the son. "But this is the clever bit. Instead of using the good leather, the strong leather, we use the very thinnest, soft leather we can find."_

" _But that will be useless, it won't last five minutes!"_

" _Exactly, we will tell them that to improve the feel of the bat they need soft thin leather. That way they will need to come back for new gloves every few months."_

" _But that leather is useless with water, what if it rains?" Despite himself, the old man couldn't keep a hint of excitement from his voice._

" _We sell them a different pair, made from treated leather to use in the rain."_

The old man was standing up now. So let me get this right. We design gloves for golfers made from soft leather that means they need to replace them every few months and get another sale from them in case it rains?"

" _Yes."_

" _Excellent! Of course the Bank will probably say that selling cheap gloves cannot repay the overdraft quickly enough."_

" _Who said anything about cheap? We charge normal price and say that this is the finest, premium leather designed to enhance their skill with the bat."_

" _Full price!!" the old man was staring to skip around the room, pulling at his hair wildly. "It might work, by jove you may have pulled it off young man. If we charge full price then with the lower priced materials our profits will triple overnight! Not to mention our sales will quadruple if they come back every 3 months at best."_

" _There is one more thing father...."_

" _What?" said the old man breathlessly._

" _The fellows I met seemed to think it would be impossible to play wearing a pair of gloves."_

" _Eh?" cried the company owner. "Then it was false hope, we are ruined after all?"_

" _Not quite, I said it was impossible to play wearing a pair of gloves. Instead we only sell them one."_

" _One glove!? What good is one glove? Our sales halve immediately."_

" _What we supply may halve, but what we charge stays the same."_

" _The same...! You're suggesting that we sell them one glove, made out of useless leather, that crumbles in the rain and needs replacing every three months all for the same price as a normal pair of quality gloves?" By now he was standing on his desk._

" _Precisely."_

" _Impossible," came back the old man. "Do you take these golfers for complete fools?"_

No, not fools father, just enthusiasts. I am told golfers are obsessive and will spend hundreds of pounds on the sport just to improve. Our gloves will be a tiny part of their outlay."

" _Son, you are a genius and have single handedly saved the company and the livelihood of all its workers. Come with me then to the Bank, and let's put these dark days behind us." He went to the drinks cabinet and poured them both a generous measure._

" _To golf!" he toasted._

" _To golf," repeated the son. "And to joy."_

And the rest as they say is history.

Still feel quite so sharp?

14: G=(IFp>30,pb2,p)

Having given it careful consideration, cerebration, cogitation and thunk, I have decided that this there Einstein chappy was actually quite a clever bugger. He had a fair old brain on him, I'll give him that. But he mixed this considerable intellect with a healthy dose of wit. Take for example his great theory of relativity which to be fair, to the layman, is not the easiest of notions to get your head around. That is until he illuminates it with a little humorous clarity:

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity!

Not that he kept himself to science, love also got a look in with this nugget:

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

But as you may have suspected, it is equations for which he will be most remembered. But instead of the obvious e=mc2 I much prefer his little insight and advice for climbing the ladder of success:

If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X+Y+Z. Where X is work; Y is play; and Z is keep your mouth shut.

So it is with this backdrop that I most humbly ask for your charity to allow me to have a stab at creating an immortal theoretical equation of my own that perhaps will go down in the annals.

I have for some time had trouble in understanding a rather strange habit that all we golfers seem to have picked up. It is a strange phenomenon that allows us to take failure and with a little alchemical wizardry turn it into success. Let me start by reminding us all that the definitive line between success and failure in stableford is, putting aside for ease both SSS and CSS, 36 points. Equal it or better it and you can rightly and justly enter the club house with your nose ceiling-ward and chin cutting a swath for the bar. Conversely, fall short of this number and at best you can sip your tipple from your buffer-zone, or worse face the humiliation of failure and a handicap increase if your score becomes a gap wedge away from three dozen.

Or so you would have thought. Not happy to face this potentially regular fate, it seems we have created ourselves a 'Get out of Jail' card. An escape route from Stalag 34 (points) or less. And wow, what a creation it is. It is in fact a Monster and in true Shelleyesque style we gave it life and a name: The Blob.

At first it started out harmless enough, a fun word to describe the squiggled nought one might make with the pencil when you can't put any points due to your ineptitude at playing the hole. And let us be clear - ineptitude it most certainly is, to not get one measly singular point on a hole. Whether it was a pulled drive, a shanked approach or just a lipped putt; for some reason you couldn't achieve a net bogey even when taking your handicap into consideration. I therefore hope that I am clear - a Blob is not a good thing, it has been created to describe failure. In case the nail has not yet been driven home, let me quote from my Oxford English Dictionary:

Failure (feɪljər)/n - 1 lack of success, failing 2 an unsuccessful person, thing or attempt 3 non-performance, non-occurrence

I think by now you've got it. Blobs are failure. Blobs are bad.

How then have they taken on this personna of an unfortunate mishap? Nowadays, with the useful Blob in your armoury your demeanour in the clubhouse has been transformed. Instead of a mumbled, barely audible "thirty four points'' to your peers in the 19th, you can now reply "Thirty Four points with two blobs!" Suddenly your performance has been transformed and a benevolent wave of admiration percolates through the bar at your skill. Clearly, you must have played brilliantly for 16 holes to secure your 34 points if the other two holes were lost to Blobs. You hold your head high. Oh those nasty, nasty blobs ruining your brilliant performance.

Equally amazing of course is the fact that the more Blobs you have, whilst still returning a score of 30+, just adds to your amazing performance. If I may undertake a little plagiarism, your golf brilliance is therefore all relative. Relative to the score you return in conjunction to the number of Blobs you get. That is to say: If your score is greater than 30 points then your golf brilliance (golfability) is equal to your stableford points plus Blobs squared. If the result of this equation happens to end up higher than the one returned by the so called 'winner' of the competition then you should immediately write to the committee, cry foul, and demand a recount based not on the namby pamby stableford system, but the Thoery of golfability.

And so I give my equation to the world: G=(IFp>30,pb2,p)

So IF p (your stableford points) is greater than thirty then G (your golfability score) equals p (your stableford points) plus b (number of Blobs) times b (Number of Blobs). IF p (your stableford score) is not greater than 30 then G (your golfability score) remains at p (your stableford score). And clearer than that I could not be.

Call it alchemy or slight of hand, I know not which. But somehow we have managed to camouflage the facts with our take on Blobs. The facts are that it is an 18 hole competition, not a 15, 16 or even 17 hole comp. 34 points is failure. I may have missed it but I can't recall The Open ever being won by the player with the best score after 70 holes (though don't mention the possibility to Jean Van de Velde who would have been quite happy to call it a day after 70 or 71).

Actually, although I have singled out the Blob, you only have to listen to the talk in the bar afterwards to understand that golfers have perfected a list of excuses that are all designed to convince themselves and their fellow players that despite a rubbish score they actually played very well. Listen out next time and you will hear talk of how well the back nine was played (so what happened on the front?) or the other chestnut is the three putt. A score of 33 points with four three-putts is as equally admired as the Blob ridden round. But given that our handicaps are, as I have bemoaned in this column before, driven ever downward, is it any wonder that we build ourselves a few safety nets?

15: When is a reed not a reed?

Regular readers will know that I am at my happiest when rallying against the rules of golf. However, in defence of the R&A one has to recognise that having written the generally asinine rule book they did then set to work on a number of ways that we, the golfer, could look to for guidance on what the rule book meant.

Therefore, if ever we are in doubt as to how to proceed on the golf course we are able to follow this simple path: First take out your rule book and hope that with a healthy dose of luck you can find the relevant page or entry. More often than not you will find that a volley of ball-fire is unleashed over your heads by the group behind before you have found the relevant entry. So you play on, unsure of the ruling. When you are next able you take to the rule book again and eventually find the relevant edict and you set about understanding the gobbledygook - yes it's in English but somehow reads more like Cantonese.

To cut a long story short, if the rule book leaves you still scratching your head then you can turn to the 'Illustrated Rule Book'. Frankly this is mostly the same old rubbish with some dodgy pictures. But any serious golfer, committee member or anorak will know that both of these former books are as good as useless without the accompaniment of the R&A's 'Decisions on the Rules of Golf'. This book is big, so big in fact that after putting page numbers up to leaf 546 they got so embarrassed they couldn't face continuing them for the index. Had they bothered they would have ended on 677. Should you get to the end of this option and still be unsure of the answer then your final option is to contact the R&A and get a definitive answer from the horses mouth as it were.

Now you would have thought that given all the above then the rules would have gained enough clarity to avoid areas of contention. And yet I recently found myself embroiled in an argument over a rule which has been given an awkward slant by the power of television. This argument was not the first time this particular rule has gone centre stage in the clubhouse, it will not be the last. I have also had identical 'discussions' at other clubs. To sum it up in a good old fashioned phrase: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Actually that is probably being unfair because on this occasion, millions saw, or later heard of the problem but by the unfortunate act of selective retention have only remembered the peripheral points and not the key ones.

Let me go on by asking you this poser on the rule in question: 'When in a (water) hazard that is surrounded by reeds (that are inside the stakes) are you allowed to touch the reeds with your backswing?'

Now whether or not you know the answer shouldn't deflect the fact that the R&A's armoury of books, iPhone app & Decisions should eventually bring you to Rule 13-4 and the all important note that gives you the answer. However the problem with this rule is the fact many players no longer feel the need to consult the books because the rule is etched into their memory as they saw it played out live in their own living rooms when a professional golfer made one of the most honest and memorable calls in sporting memory.

The occasion was the Verizon Heritage Classic at Harbour Town Golf Links in USA in April 2010. Englishman Brian Davis made a birdie at the 72nd hole to force a play-off against Jim Furyk. However a wayward 7 iron at the first play-off hole left him in a marshy, sandy hazard with his ball resting amongst some straggly reeds. Now the bit that people remember is that on his backswing Davis thought he may have nicked one of the reeds and asked if a TV replay could be seen to see if this was the case. He had, marginally. His amazing honesty meant a two shot penalty which handed Furyk the title and over $1m in prize money.

So given this extremely memorable, not to mention admirable, piece of televised sport you will find many a staunch golfer who will swear blind that if you touch a reed in a hazard it is a two shot penalty. I have seen it happen in competition where one competitor called the penalty on another and could quote the precedent down to the players name, the competition and the channel he saw it on. Television is powerful and the pictures would have left an indelible image for many: hazard, reeds, touch = 2 shot penalty.

But of course other discerning TV viewers that day may have listened a tad more carefully and would have realised that there was more to the ruling than meets the eye.

For the record the note to Rule 13-4 states that 'at any time, including at address or in the backward movement for the stroke the player may touch, with a club or otherwise, any obstruction, any construction declared by the committee to be an integral part of the course or any grass, bush, tree or other growing thing'. So in answer to my earlier question of whether you can touch a reed on your backswing, the answer is actually; 'probably'.

'Probably' because it is here that things get a little awkward and where you get to discover the actual reason for the two stroke penalty suffered by Brian Davis. To start with, the fact that Brian Davis hit a reed is a bit of a red herring. Yes it was a reed, but the crucial piece of information that swings the whole issue is that it was not fixed or growing. Everything now turns on its head. When is a reed not a reed? When it is a loose impediment. Because it was not fixed or growing then the unattached reed is actually deemed to be a loose impediment. Look up Loose Impediment in the definitions section of the rule book and it will tell you that they are natural objects such as leaves, twigs, branches and the like that are not fixed or growing.

Having established that the renegade reed is in fact a loose impediment means that Brian Davis fell foul of one of the mains stays of Rule 13-4 - namely that the player must not touch or move a loose impediment lying in or touching the hazard.

But of course that is not what people remember so whilst you are allowed to touch a healthy growing reed in a hazard with your backswing, live television & selective memory means that arguments will continue to rage over this subject for years to come.

♯♯♯

Thank you for reading The Hacker (Volume 1) and I really hope you enjoyed it.

_Don't forget that you can purchase a full copy of The Orbury Way at:_ <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349323>

Time permitting The Hacker will be back again in the future with more views and mutterings on the world of golf...

About the Author

Phil Churchill lives in Surrey with his wife Tana and has two sons, Daniel and Jake. He is a keen single figure handicap golfer and was Club Captain at Surrey Downs golf course and co-founder and chairman of the Surrey Hills Golf League for whom he wrote the popular monthly golf column, The Hacker (which was also edited into a monthly blog for Golf Monthly). He is also the Managing Director of a successful multi-million pound manufacturing business.

Acknowledgements

_Firstly all rules of golf, decisions on the rules of golf and the unified golf handicap system are taken from publications by The R &A Rules Limited and The Council of National Golf Unions (CONGU) respectively. Any readers with a good knowledge of the historic buildings of England may have deduced that inspiration for Orbury Hall comes from Holkham Hall in East Anglia, the ancestral home of the Earl of Leicester. The room layout is taken directly from the architectural plans of Holkham Hall and I have used the actual topography of the surrounding land to allow me to shape and design the golf course around the wonderful Palladian building and it's lake. Holkham Hall is open to the public for much of the year and is very worthwhile visit._

The recipe for The Orbury Flock was taken directly from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Ten Bird Roast' whilst the picture on the old poster at Folkenham train station was based on a painting called Rush Hour at Faringdon by artist Neil Podbery.

Cover illustration by Kayann.

Lastly Old Bogy, the tree in front of the clubhouse, can tip a branch to Old Knobbly at Mistley.

Contact the Author

If you would like to give feedback on the book then please feel free to do so in one of the following methods:

_Via email:_  mailto:theorbury@philchurchill.co.uk

You can also find more information on me, my writing, art and music at:

_Website:_ http://www.philchurchill.co.uk

_or my profile page on Smashwords:_ <http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/PhilChurchill>

_or read my Smashwords interview at:_ <https://www.smashwords.com/interview/PhilChurchill>

