Windy Golf

I have spent the last two or three weeks rushing around at work. It is often like that. When it is, it is nice just to veg at week-ends. This week-end however, in the midst of this rushing around, we have rushed around. We drove to Northumberland first thing yesterday morning; we were back here by 3.30.

I got up this morning at 7.00 and drove back again to golf. I can't get too excited about golf and the "good walk spoiled" tag in many ways hits home. However I spent a number of my childhood years on the north east coast of Scotland where everyone golfed and, during those years, I golfed every day when I was at home. As a consequence of that you'd think I'd have some residual competence. I do not. Rugby intervened between 15 and 30, and it was only when my wife started to play (golf, not rugby!) that I picked a club up again.

Today I played very badly - I need to play every day for a week to go about the game competently at all and so I rarely play well before Easter. It was however a fantastic day - the sky was clear, the sun was out, it was dry all day for the first time in ages and the wind, which blew hard throughout our round, provided at least some excuse for my poor display. When I was 13 how I played mattered; I enjoy it so much more now it doesn't.

Trees

I don't have room to plant many trees. It doesn't stop me doing so from time to time. Strangely on New Year's day both a friend we had staying (who I suppose at least has the excuse of having started, but not finished, a forestry degree) and my brother, who came for lunch, expressed a desire to plant some trees. It is a desire I too have been secretly harbouring against the day when I have the space to do so. I half considered clubbing together, buying a field and just planting the things randomly when we had the time and money. If this is a mid-life crisis I suspect it is a harmless, in fact even mildly entertaining, one - there is to my strange mind something quite funny about three mad old chaps planting trees in an otherwise empty field.

My office has for some months been engaged in a programme of confiscating waste paper bins, preferring us instead to put our rubbish in a variety of strategically placed re-cycling bins. It is not the concept that bothers me - it is the fact that we believe we should have someone spend their time thinking about this stuff when there seems to me so much else to do. I have no problem with recycling - the majority of our household waste is paper (we read a lot) and bottles (we don't hold back on the drink front) and we pretty religiously manage to put it in the appropriate box for collection. It doesn't mean we don't have bins about the place. On Friday the office bins in my department got a reprieve. I will try to put my stuff in the re-cycling bins. To salve my conscience (and more importantly because I enjoyed doing so) I planted a tree this morning to offset my wastefulness. In my view much better environmentally, economically and for my sense of humour.

Liquid

My daughter has come home from school today with a homework instruction to create a list of liquids and volumes. After her bath we are going to my (substantial) drinks cupboard. Am I a bad parent?

New Year Gloom

For some reason I have started this year in a gloom. I shouldn't feel like this. We had a good New Year, with friends on Hogmanay and fantastic village fireworks at midnight, and a house full on New Year's Day. My father was then in hospital for tests, which, if it hadn't been for the fact that they were generally good, would have been a reason for gloom, and so ought instead to be a reason for celebration, and I am pleased. They now seem to be plotting a trip to Australia. I think they should go on a freighter from Berwick which one can apparently do and would be an adventure. If I had time (and they do, although my mother is not a sailor) I'd definitely do it that way.

To say its not like me would not be entirely true as I'm inclined towards aggravation, although usually my mood is more positive. Work was busy in November and December and, while I managed to do Christmas things (including our daughter's school's really lovely carol concert) , it was generally in a rush. Then Christmas came and everyone seemed to disappear off the face of the earth so the last couple of weeks have been quiet. I know (and have known for the last two weeks) that they'll all be back tomorrow desperate to make progress. One of my team returns from a secondment and it will be good to have him back to provide an extra pair of hands. We have managed without him, but I think it may have been more of a struggle that we think.

I have just dismantled two lots of Christmas decorations, never the most cheerful job and we have spent the last hour tidying our daughter's room. She has so much "stuff" and it is so plastic. To be fair she's not a greedy child - her note to Father Christmas ended "It doesn't matter if I don't get it all." - but she seems to accumulate huge numbers of dollies, animals, paper, paints etc. etc. We are relatively doting I suspect, and I hope we provide more than just the material. I do however feel a strange (self imposed) pressure to provide and provide. For her first Christmas, knowing years of plastic things lay ahead, I bought an original illustration from "Noddy Goes to the Fair" and found a reasonable copy of the book. It (the picture that is) moulders away on the wall behind her blackboard. Presumably years of providing Christmas cheques lie somewhere between now and when I can next impose my taste on her!

I usually read John Macnab when I'm in this fettle - it is the ultimate comfort read - but I suggested it as my book group book for December and, even for me, to read it again now is too soon. We banished the television from our bedroom last year, but its only gone as far as the spare room, so I think we'll go there and watch Foyle's War - I'm not sure it'll cheer us up, but at least its proper Sunday night TV.

I promise to brighten up soon - not to be grumpy is one of my New Year's resolutions!