16 - Think I may have found my level of incompetence...

It's early days, but I'm being traumatised by my handicap. Saturday was, I submit, very windy, and a pairs Stableford, which are always more tricky, I find. Anyway, I scored 32 points, 91 shots (ish). Now I have two holes where I don't get a shot, that's two holes where I didn't damn well score. Not too disastrous, I suppose, four over nett, would have been 40 points and a prize a few weeks ago though...

Pleasant round though. My partner was Chris Sutton, so I ran out of places to hide to avoid paying him the £50 I owed him for his Mizuno 24º rescue club. I can't hit with it, but bought it for Peter. Chris looks as though he may become a victim of the recession. He's an aero engineer and tells me that the particular job he does for a major aero engine manufacturer is being outsourced. He also tells me that the company doing the work are incompetent, which is reassuring.

The other two guys we were playing with turned out to be churchgoers (actually, I think Chris is too), making me the atheist in the minority. Still made for much harmless fun teasing them for using divine intervention when their drives went suspiciously straight. When mine clearly bounced uphill on the 14th to lie behind a tree I made the point, 'divine intervention is one thing, chaps, but I didn't think you would use it to cheat'. Still, nice for God to stop worrying about all the starving people, wars and disease in the world and watch a bit of golf for a change.