Day 308 - Christmas Eve Eve

We woke up to sunshine this morning: the first time in ages that there were blue skies rather than clouds overhead.  The decision to postpone the golf from yesterday looks to have been vindicated!

And so it was that 5 of us gathered outside the Pro Shop at 10:00 am today. Given that it's a working day, the car park, the courses and the bar are all remarkably busy: don't people have jobs to go to?

The Old Course was a bit crowded, or at least the tee box was, so we made our way down to the New.  Balls in the air and we had split ourselves up into one two- and one three-ball.  There was a slow group ahead of us but fortunately they seemed aware of the fact and by the time we had completed the second hole, both of us were through them.  After that it was plain sailing for a decently paced round.

The weather stayed mild, though as the wind got up in the afternoon and the sun started sinking it was noticeably colder than it has been of late. No complaints though: golf in the sunshine on Christmas Eve Eve is not to be sniffed at!

My partners both had excellent front nines and I was very much a passenger until we made the turn. If anything, the boot was on the other foot after that and I contributed better to the team score, including a great chip-in birdie on the 14th: 3 points gained when it looked as though all were lost.

Back in the bar, they chose David, who had scored best, as their proxy and ended up beating us by 1 point...all good fun and a most convivial afternoon.

Back home to start the Christmas cooking preparations: in my case a Nigella chocolate fruit cake, though it didn't quite look like the picture as I used a larger cake tin...  This got us thinking about how many people there were on the globe who are instantly recognisable by their first names...  we came up with Adele, Tiger, Rory, Nigella herself, certainly Diana when she alive, but there must be more!