Blog ≫ 2022 ≫ The Puttshack scores are in
Our big birthday day out in London went very well. Here is a record of our golf scores from Puttshack, now followed by a round up of the day1:
| Puttshacker | Score | Supertubes | Holes in one |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balls Harvey | 431 | 3 | 4 |
| DAVIDBRAINES | 386 | 1 | 2 |
| Dusty Springfield | 361 | 1 | 2 |
| Paul Clarked | 334 | 0 | 1 |
| Duck Eggs | 331 | 0 | 1 |
| Randy Beans | 327 | 1 | 2 |
Seemed to spend a lot of it moving from place to place, and some waiting around too. We did the Emerald course at Puttshack, White City, and had a couple of drinks there after (I had a cocktail and a Brewdog Punk IPA). Ro's score up there was enough to get him to number five on the day's leaderboard, and Dave and Julian also made it into the top twenty. More details later.
OK, I'm BACK with more details, first a bit I dictated when the journey started out. 4am start remember!
Off to London for the day for Julian's 50th birthday. He's coming over especially from Copenhagen for it. Easier and cheaper for him to come over to England than for a group of us to go out to Denmark.
Set my alarm for 4:00 a.m, today incredible and I woke up actually 5 to 4:00. I don't normally look at my watch if I wake up in the night needing the loo, because then I know I can't get back to sleep but today I thought I've got to get up so early anyway, what's the harm, and it was about time to get up. That was good. I got up and put all my clothes downstairs already for the day and had my shower the night before. I got dressed, got a little bit of breakfast, and headed downstairs to the study to eat it so as not to disturb anyone. I made a coffee with the coffee machine which would have made some noise, so I'll find out later today if that woke anyone up2, and then wrapped up warm. I decided to put my big coat on today. I was originally going with just layers and just a thin coat. I don't know why but I don't like having a big coat on if I'm going to go to London. But so cold right now. I needed all the help I could get.
As I said on earlier blog posts, I've changed my plan, been forced to change my plan, couldn't drive into Folkestone in the beetle and decided not to disrupt Clare and the boys any more by taking the other car. And I didn't trust getting a taxi in because what if the taxi was late or didn't turn up? I would not have a backup plan and I hear taxis are in real shortage at the moment because of the strikes, because of the cold weather, and just a lack of taxi drivers. It's probably something to do with Brexit. So I walked in. It's a 45 minute walk and I often do this walk on Saturday morning to go to parkrun. No Parkrun today for me, so that little walk is my only exercise.
Coach was 10 minutes late which is ok, and there are only three other people waiting for this one. Last time I got the coach in there was quite a little queue. I'm guessing there were six other people on the coach already who've got on at the only other stop, which should be Dover. There were three at the front, maybe in the reserved seats, you can only reserve seats at the front. I don't have reserved. I'm sat in the middle near the loo. There are three people sat right at the back, young people chatting through, girls. I'm dictating this as we drive in because it's quiet enough. I won't be doing this when there's more people on. I wouldn't be doing this with someone to next to me. It's been so dark, not been able to see where we are at any point. Pitch blackness apart from the occasional house lit up by Christmas lights.
Now we just pulling into Canterbury coach station which would be the first stop, the next one to pick up any people, see how busy this is. If it's quiet again after this I might write some more. Otherwise, I might add some more notes when I get to Victoria. I'll be at Victoria about an hour before my friends, and then for a fun day. Oh one more thing on the temperature it's been below freezing on the walk, but when I got on the bus there's a big digital display that shows the time and its guess at the outside temperature. Maybe when we got on it was said 6° and it's dropped and dropped and dropped is now saying 0° which is more like it. Don't know how it thought it was 6 degrees earlier right? Can't have been. People are piling on at Canterbury now so I'll turn off. Someone has a guitar or something in her backpack, don't know why that has not gone in the hold. Someone else with her bag next to her on the seat, I don't think so. I have reclined my seat a bit. I would not do it if someone was already behind me, but I think it's ok, it doesn't go back much.
Someone is buying a ticket, I thought it would be all booked up because of the rail strike. Driver says he has three seats available. I remember last time it was well over booked and people couldn't get on by the time we got to Gillingham or somewhere.
Lady with the musical instrument just complained about the delay being caused by people trying to buy tickets on the day. I think from her accent she's is Polish.
OK looks like I had to stop there with the dictation, but I might have some more notes from what I sent to my friends on the journey.
I didn't take many pictures at all this day but I can illustrate so far with a picture of the freezing dark bus station, and then my view on the coach.
Some things I can remember from the journey, the coach was busy, I did see snow along the way, but it all went smoothly. I was sat quite comfortably, I had coffee, smoothie, and sausage rolls. Nearly needed the loo along the way but made it to Victoria OK.
I was sat for a while waiting at Victoria, but then it turned out Andy had got there early too and we could have met up. Just before settling down to wait though, I tried to pack the memory foam neck pillow I had borrowed off T1 into my back, and only succeeded in squeezing all the water out of my water bottle over my change of clothes and sleeping bag, bah.
We met at the station Wetherspoons, everyone got there eventually, messed up journeys all over because of strikes. We stayed there longer than expected and ate our brunch there, burgers. It was just that we had a table, it was cold outside, and we wanted to chat. There were no huge plans for this day. I think our next planned stop after this might have been Puttshack in White City.
The rest of the day is a bit of a blur really, and not because we drank a lot, but we had a great time. We went to a Brewdog pub on the way to Puttshack as we were a bit early. After to other places in Kengsington, I think The Anglesea Arms was one of them. These West London pubs are good in theory but a bit too nice for me. We found our apartment we were staying in, and unloaded. It was absolutely freezing, but we tricked the heating into staying on, I could leave my wet things to dry, and we headed out again.
Another posh pub, then into Covent Garden. We were buying Jules some whisky for his birthday from The Whisky Exchange. We got away lightly with only a £175 bottle, some of them went to over forty grand there...
I nearly ducked into The Harp as he was taking so long to choose, but did not. Then after I tried to get everyone into The Harp. I know a place, it's just near here, it's good. Yes, you are always going on about this pub, we know... It was obviously too crowded for a group of six, so we went in The Chandos next door. It's a Sam Smiths and it was really good. We met up with one of Jules's friends who was coincidentally over on a work jolly.
After this the group broke up, those heading back to Fareham headed off and just three of us went for dinner. Eventually to Zizzi which was really good. Then to a CASINO! I have never been to one before apart from Las Vegas. It was OK. I did not gamble. Good to know there is a twenty-four hour bar we could go into if we felt the need. Two of us went back to the apartment, the birthday boy stayed playing poker. He did not win, and came back about forty-five minutes later.
A really good trip, so good to be out with these boys.
The journey back the next day was fine, I didn't need my emergency coach ticket, the normal train was running normally. Only a slight delay meaning a bit of a loiter at Ashford.
I walked round to Jim's to collect the boys, he took us home, and we were there before Clare even went to work.
Some December gig history, this day twenty-one years ago The Darkness, back in 1996 on this day Placebo, and thirty-one years ago today I was at Atom Seed.
Estimated 724 cups of coffee from my espresso machine3 probably comes to £1.61 a cup (including actual coffee and now servicing3 but not the electricity).
- I added most of this a week later.
- I still don't know if I disturbed anyone here, I don't think so.
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