Sean's Space

Thursday 12 May 2011.

A kind of a tense day on which I was stressed and uptight. Kevin McGeough gave me directions to Finbarr Oakley’s place when I met him in Glenda’s where he drank cappuccino and I quaffed some of a bottle of apple juice. I opted for the bottle when the girl came over and showed me the bottle. “The bottle is €4 and a glass is €2,” she informed me. Kevin paid saying, “You bought me my breakfast last week!” Ate ¾ of a stone-baked pizza which Rosanna bought yesterday in Lidl. Nicely cooked, quite tasty; with a glass of apple juice: for lunch. Packed my kit into my iQ and made my way over to Oakleys’. Mary and Barry there. Finbarr did the donkey work and transferred my bags, shoes, trolley into his 2010 diesel Toyota Avensis. We reached Bettystown far too early for the 17.10 start. So we had coffee, chipped a little, putted. Then I sat for 10 or 15 minutes in the sun on the chair outside the pro shop under the 1^st tee until our opponents Conor Carnegie and Gerry Quinn turned up. I skied a good few drives and pulled most of the others; missed 2 short putts. We 4 putted 18 but our score was 85 gross. Conor and Gerry had an unspecified score, higher than ours, but both of them played better golf than I did. Finbarr hit some great drives and irons, particularly 5 or 6 6-irons. We scored 6 on the first par 3 hole and generally had a poor return on the par 3’s. Both Aisling and Dessie rang on my mobile when we were coming off the 17^th and Finbarr and Conor pitched a few balls from behind the hillock onto the 18^th green. So concentration levels dipped and the rules of golf flew out the window. Took no shower at all today and did not exercise a.m. Dressed as yesterday except that I wore Hush Puppies black brogues. Wore Brendan Tinnelly’s ball maker on the peak of my cap. Very handy. Putted using the set up Alison Nicholas used for chipping on Monday in Blackrock. Quite good results. I drank a pint of iced tap water and ate a dinner of cod goujons nicely cooked, coleslaw, tartare sauce, salad, chips. The journey home was accomplished, it seemed, in an instant. I shouted at Finbarr when he was pulling off the M1 because I could not believe we had already reached the Ballymascanlon Roundabout. I consumed corn flakes, 1 ¼ sliced bananas, milk; for supper. To bed before 01.00. Depressed and dejected after the golf but I did not feel tired. Not as easy to manage the Powakaddy trolley in Bettystown as it is in Greenore. Conor is getting a new trolley with a range-finder in it; and a set of Mizuno irons. Finbarr’s name and mine first out of the hat for the qualifying round of the Pierce Purcell Shield on Saturday. I felt intimidated, worried, unworthy. However Finbarr is playing well. “You will have to cancel the choir on Saturday!” Kevin Gallagher, team captain, exclaimed. I sang dumb. Handed the blonde girl in Glenda’s a pair of rosary beads from Medjugore which I found in the stones at my feet as Kevin and I stood talking outside the shed while he had a drag before we departed. Lovely hanging baskets on display hanging from vertical ropes in the shed.