Pointless pursuits

Which club to use?
Originally uploaded by A Simple Man

There are many things that happen in life, for which there seems to be no rhyme nor reason...

such as why your queue in Asda is always slower than the one next to you. Switch queues and your old queue goes faster;

such as why men feel the need to show off their podgy, pasty chests with the merest hint of sun;

or why someone ever told Shane Richie that he could turn up on my TV screen. The man's a lemon.

Another one to add to the list is the whole point of the game of golf. I do not understand it.

Every few months, I feel the need to brush down my brother's clubs and take them out for a round. My reasoning is always based around the fact that it's a lovely day, so I should make the most of it by spending a few hours with just greenery and me. I'd be better off sitting in Homebase.

From the moment I tee off (look at me with my technical speak), I see people hurriedly putting up umbrellas to prevent themselves from being permanently maimed by the projectile lumps of earth that I carve out of the ground with every shot.

I usually take along a friend to make me feel even worse about my lack of aptitude for the game. Whereas they seem to have an invisible fishing line reeling their ball towards the hole, my ball always seems adamant on exploring areas of the green that man hasn't set eyes on for the last millenia.

These areas largely consist of pointy branched trees, stinging nettled patches of grass and the bottom of ponds. Bill Oddy, eat your heart out mate.

I'll get to the end of a hole, which should have been completed in three shots, swearing under my breath as my attempt was closer to fifteen. And even then I chose to give up as the pair of golfers behind us had resorted to pitching up a tent and starting a camp fire because I'd taken so long.

It really is a pointlessly frustrating game. So frustrating that I'm not going to get back those hours spent rooting around in undergrowth.

So frustrating as that lump of earth has now been been projected into space, to orbit the Mir Space Station, never to fit into the patchwork of green from which it once came.

So frustrating that I'll find myself trying to get the better of it very, very soon...