The International – Once Again….

It is amazing how time flies – especially as one gets older. I can well remember when I was a child that a week, a month and especially a year took ages to arrive. Now it seems that if I close my eyes for more than a minute, take a blink, suddenly a year has flown by. For that matter, so has the past twenty-five years. As the man said ‘Tempus Fugit’.

You may remember that I spoke before about ‘The International’ – an annual golf game I play between England, Ireland and Scotland at our local club. Sunday 1st June last was this year’s affair. After all the shenanigans with the Irish Captain four years ago, I was asked to play for England and in doing so, that year ‘we’ beat the Irish by one stroke with ‘yours truly’ being the hero of the day with the best score.

The following year was an absolute disaster with me having the worst score of the eighteen players. My excuse was that I was under pressure being the holder of the trophy.

This year my nerves were even worse but I held it together and came third overall. Ireland won the trophy. We are considering calling them Mexicans from now on as the whole team were a bunch of Bandits.

We had a nice meal afterwards and the sing-song was great. I sang until I was practically told to shut up. Stone cold sober – but I could not care less. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. When I sang ‘Four Green Fields’ and ‘The Island’ quite honestly, you could have heard a pin drop. After that I gave them a couple of my most rude jokes (all males present) and again quite honestly, they were laughing for a good ten minutes.

Late home and to bed after midnight with the alarm set for five a.m. left me completely shattered at work today. I thought I might have been able to have a snooze when I got home at 2pm but unfortunately the engineers were in relocating a new central heating system. I think I will go to bed tonight at about 8pm.

Another wonderful day and one to file away in my memory bank as one of those memories that will last for a lifetime. Thank God.

------------------------------