Why do I attract foolish behavior
PEOPLE often ask me how I come up with the ideas for my column, but I seem to have an unlimited supply, because I just keep attracting people who do idiotic things. For example, during my last skiing trip, we were joined by several other people on one day. Things went smoothly until lunch, and for the skiing uninitiated, it is very simple. You ski to a mountain restaurant, take your skis off and lean them up against a rack while you eat. Then you reacquaint yourself with your skis afterwards and ski off.
Simple! Apparently, not so for everyone.
We skied for about 10 minutes to the next lift, and were then happily sitting on a chairlift on the other side of the valley before one of our adopted party noticed that the skis on his feet weren’t his! Considering we still had over 20 miles’ skiing left to return home, the extra detour to retrieve them was quite novel.
We were assured by the miscreant that his skis looked just the same as the red pair he had inadvertently taken. But when he located the errant pair, the differences were starkly obvious. The ‘borrowed’ skis were plain red, with the make written round the tips, whereas his were red, silver and black, with an entirely different make emblazoned down the full length of the skis.
It is rather like leaving a set of Ping clubs in a pink bag outside the clubhouse, and then walking off half an hour later with a set of Nike clubs in a pink and white bag. Moreover, to equate fully to the experience, you would then have to play at least five holes with the alien clubs before it might occur to you that they weren’t yours! However, that wasn’t the only parallel between skiing and golf I thought of.
On the Sunday evening as I was waiting at the carousel back at Manchester airport for 45 long minutes, contemplating whether it was physically possible to die of boredom, it suddenly occurred to me that at airports all over the country, dozens of lady professionals would be doing exactly the same thing.
I thought back to when I interviewed Laura Davies and she said that the best and worst parts of her job were the travel. And she is right on both counts.
My number of air miles has risen dramatically since I joined Lady Golfer, and I have thoroughly enjoyed every trip, but I hate the process of getting there and back. I hate sitting around at airports, I hate queuing round those ridiculous endless chicanes, and I hate having some jumped-up little jobsworth triumphantly pouncing on a tiny tin of tuna mayonnaise in my hand luggage trying to decipher if I can blow up a plane with it, while all and sundry are looking on trying to stifle their giggles. Laura is right that things have got 10 times worse since 9/11. At least you used to be able to pass the boredom of flights by eating and drinking your way through the contents of your hand luggage, but now even that small avenue of pleasure has been denied. Then there are the people you are surrounded by on the planes. No matter how careful I am, I always seem to get a screaming child on the next row. On one flight last year one demonic wailer didn’t shut up or draw breath for an hour. No matter how loudly I turned up my ipod, I couldn’t drown it out. I didn’t know it was possible for a human being to turn such a surreal shade of red.
Admittedly, the mother was doing her best to soothe it, while the father was so embarrassed he tried to pretend it wasn’t his, but I just wanted it hermetically sealing in a plastic bag.
And I would have been more than happy to tip out all my ridiculous bomb-making equipment masquerading as toothpaste, lip balm and deodorant from my own plastic bag in order to provide it!
Failing that, I wondered if I could be convincing taking it to the toilet and then apologising to the mother for accidentally flushing it out into the stratosphere. I just take my hat off to all the touring professionals out there who do this travelling week-in, week-out. You deserve medals. I was not amused when they left my clubs on the tarmac at Alicante airport, and I wasn’t reunited with them for five days.
But if I had needed them for a tournament on which my livelihood depended, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Then I probably could have turned my tiny tin of tuna mayonnaise into a lethal weapon! Most people are envious of the lives of golf professionals, but I am just in awe of you all. To think that throughout the season you spend five or six consecutive days playing highly focused practice rounds, followed by highly focused competition rounds, and your one day a week off is spent travelling to, waiting in and flying between airports before it all starts again. Wow! I don’t know how you keep it up. Wait a minute – an interesting trip has just been e-mailed to me. I guess it’s time to put the ipod back on charge and dig out the plastic bags again. Now, where’s that tin of tuna mayonnaise gone...