Current News - usually anything up to the past 12 months is below, but if you are looking for a longer read, the archived news dates back to June 2010!! CHALGRAVE NEWS Have you got a news snippet??? Email me now with the info!!! Friday 9th December.I've got a flyer from Cawleys, who empty our waste bin telling me about their Christmas opening hours and their collection schedules, which are basically normal working apart from Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day, when they are closed and no collections will take place on the closed days.

Dell D830 Drivers Win7. OK, sounds reasonable so far. It then goes on to say that if your scheduled collection is on one of their closed days, then you will still be charged for the collection unless you cancel or reschedule the collection by email! So, you have to cancel a collection that they are not going to do because they are closed, otherwise you will get charged for it!! Bah Humbug said Mr Scrooge!!! Tuesday 31st October.Well that was brutal.the results of the Halloween Handicap, Trick or Treat Competition are in.

For the first time ever, the person with the best stableford score still won the trick or treat version, and in fact had almost the perfect card. The format is that your trick is that the scores on 3 holes are tripled and then become a minus score as well, which seeing as you then don't get the original score for the hole as well, means its a quadruple whammy. You really need to blob these holes!! The treat is more subtle, you just get your score on 4 holes doubled. A random draw for holes affected was done at the Halloween Party on Saturday eve, with the result that Holes 4, 7, 11 and 12 all were doubled and holes 2, 5 and 16 were tripled and deducted. Phil Billington knows immediately that this is not going to end well.

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That will teach him to get a 3 net 2 and 4 points on the 2nd!! That becomes a -12 and he also loses the 4 points it was worth in the first place!! Nick Hawker had 3 blobs on his card, on 4, 7 and 11, meaning his doubled score for those three holes was still zero!! Keith Esden excelled himself by accumulating -24 plus the 8 points he scored on those holes and blobbing both 11 and 12 to fall from a mid table 27 points to the only minus score at -2!!

Jack Beaney will be happier though, after a somewhat disastrous total of 14 playing normally which had him propping up the table, saw him end on 10 points in equal 10th place ahead of his Dad Mark who scored double what he did in normal play!!! Perhaps next year, we will enhance the treats and reduce the tricks and see if someone can get 100 points. Thursday 26th October.news from the mini 'awayday' from the guys who marshalled at Luton Hoo for a recent tournament, they all got a freebie round as part of the deal to help marshal the event. Peter Whitton, always a man who keeps the sartorial elegance of the section in the upper echelons, suggested that they all go in their blazers and ties as there was food provided afterwards as well.things didn't really go according to plan though, as after the game, all resplendent in jackets and ties, they were served their meals in the spike bar, surrounded by people in jeans and even one rather solid lady who resembled Bubbles DeVere and dressed like her too. Chris Baker also required medical attention due to suspected heart failure after ordering two pints of lime and soda at the bar and being charged £10.

Monday 9th October. News from the weekend is that the 148th ace was recorded by Dave Dickson with the Brandy Boys on Friday Afternoon.

The 16th, into the wind with a 3 wood, was the cause of much merriment from playing partners Peter Hunt and Gerry Wells who immediately recognised that they were not going to be buying the brandies!! Friday 6th October.Team Chalgrave comes 4th at the SmartGolfer Network Cup at Hazlemere!!!!! A fabulous day out, £25 each, including 18 holes and a superb meal afterwards, brilliantly hosted by Hazlemere. Stick the date in your diary, as it is 5th October 2018 next year and worth every single penny. Bizarrely, for such a brilliant deal, they only had 4 teams in attendance, so we actually came last!!!! Tuesday 19th September.An invitation from Hazlemere Golf Club for Club Members to enter a side for the SmartGolfer Network Cup on Friday 6th October!!

Teams of 8 players from any section of the club, the format is 18 Hole Stableford with Tee Times from 9.00am, with the best 6 scores from 8 to count. A delicious Two meat two course carvery meal will be served from 1.45pm, with an engraved trophy and other prizes to the top two/three teams. Amazing Value @ £25 per person!! Bourn GC are returning as current champions to defend their trophy, so maybe Chalgrave can take that off them?

To enter a team or for further information, call 06 for Gavin Cousins, Head Professional at Hazlemere GC Tuesday 19th Sept.an ominous start to today for the seniors.I arrive bright and early, take the till drawer through into the kitchen and kick the bucket on the way through.. Friday 15th Sept.with the news yesterday that unemployment is at a 40 year low, and also that rates of employment are at an all time high, I was quite hopeful that the interview that I had scheduled today for 11.00am for an Apprentice Greenkeeper, would be a positive experience..well. At 10.50, Rob came in to have a pre interview chat and for us to go through other course related stuff. At 11.15, we reviewed the written CV and confirmed that it did say effective communication and reliable, although to be fair, punctuality wasn't mentioned!

At 11.20 I rang the mobile no.' Is that Bill (names have been changed etc etc.) ' 'Who wants to know' is not really the answer I was expecting. 'I'm trying to speak to Bill as he should have been having a job interview with me at 11.

Are you Bill?' There was a satellite delay, whilst this question was considered, and then he said 'Is that Tom? (Names not changed, he genuinely asked if I was Tom!). 'No I'm Steve, are you Bill?' Another satellite delay before I finally received confirmation that Bill was Bill. 'You are supposed to be with me now being interviewed for a greenkeepers job' 'I went there and Tom didn't know anything about it' he said.

'I don't employ anyone called Tom, where did you go? To' 'South Beds Golf Club (who do have a head greenkeeper called Tom!) So, we finally established that he needed to come to Chalgrave Golf Club, and he said he could still make it today, at around 1pm! I said 'well, where are you now,as you are supposed to be in an interview with me and you were at South Beds at 11 presumably' 'I'm in Dunstable' 'Ok well it won't take long to get to Toddington from Dunstable so lets say 12 noon' We agree and hang up. 10 minutes later, my phone rings.'

I can't make 12, it will have to be after 1'. I pointed out that if he had made it to the correct address at 11, then it would have been pushing it to arrange to be doing something else at 12, if the interview had been going well. 'well I can't get there in time, I'm in Houghton Regis.'

'Well thats good going' I said! 10 minutes ago, you were in Dunstable and now you are in Houghton Regis, which is only 5 minutes from where you need to be.12 noon won't be an in issue then! Suffice it to say, the call didn't end on a positive note, so if anyone knows of a 16/17 year old who wants a proper apprenticeship job, then I still have a vacancy. Tuesday 22nd August.well its been a while since I added anything to the news pages!! Today though, there is a spectacular opportunity for confusion generated by todays competition.

Firstly its a greensome competition. Secondly there is the handicap allowance. Thirdly, its the seniors. So, as both players tee off and then they play the best ball, no doubt the course will be strewn with golf balls as the pairings forget to pick up the drive they don't play. There is already massive confusion over the need to calculate 0.6 of the lowest handicap and add it to the 0.4 of the highest, then round that up or down to get the team handicap.

You really don't want to know about the confusion generated from two players with the same handicap and the argument over who was getting the 0.6 and the 0.4!! Captain Bob came in last week to ask me about the greensomes format, and I did point out that one of the problems with the format was the the number of entrants needed to be divisible by 4 in order for it to work perfectly on a random draw and all teams to have a marker, otherwise someone has to accompany a pairing but can't actually play in the competition themselves. This morning, Bob is bemoaning the fact they are one player short of having everyone paired up and playing with another pair. Almost exactly one hour after they went out to start, Ben Hope arrives on his own, saying he was intending to play, had got himself ready to go, made himself a cup of tea, sat down for a moment to drink it and fallen asleep!! Chalgrave Seniors Section. A hotbed of comedy.

Friday 23rd June.. Just catching up with some news.Tim Bevan gets his first ace here, in the June Medal with a 22 degree hybrid on the 13th.and is also then the first person to gain from our new fully comprehensive insurance against such an event in competition, and will shortly be getting a cheque from the insurance company to cover his £60+ bar bill!! What is also remarkable, is that after an incredible 12 aces by club members in 2016, it has taken until June for the first one of 2017 to pop up and on the longest of the par 3's as well which has only seen 14 aces in 23 years!!!! There was also another hole in one story this week which I would think most of you will have missed.This week, the English Amateur Championship is being played at Sandwich in Kent. After qualifying in stroke play events, the championship is decided by a knockout matchplay competition over a number of days. On 21st June, Finland’s Casper Simberg finished his match off in style, hitting his first ever competitive hole-in-one to defeat South Africa’s Kyle McClatchie on the third extra hole. How pissed off do you think Kyle must have been, standing over his tee shot, knowing he needed to hole it for a half!!

Now, you would think that he had absolutely no chance whatsoever, but if you ever fancy a drive up to Lincolnshire, go and play The Hotchkin Course at Woodhall Spa. Probably one of the finest inland courses you will ever play, with some of the deepest bunkers you will ever see. When you reach the 12th hole, read the plaque on the left of the tee. It commemorates the event where one player, in matchplay, aced the hole and his opponent followed him in for the half!!!

Great Golf, Great Prices and more aces!! Monday 12th June.Captains Day has been and gone, but it will live long in the memory!!

Affectionately known as 'Cranes Day' as Husband & Wife, John & Karen launched their Captains Year on a hot and windy day on Saturday 9th. The Captains and their crew arrived at about 6.30am, and Nick Hawker and John Isaac were quickly allocated the task of putting up the new pop up gazebo at the back of the clubhouse to house the ice cream machine.

The Clue is in the name. No it doesn't!! 25+ minutes elapsed in total!! 15 minutes into the attempt, and with a growing crowd inside the clubhouse offering helpful advice, Nick finally capitulated and read the instructions.

A further 10 minutes passed before it could be said that it was completed! To put it into perspective, John Trott managed to get two more gazebos properly erected and secured, plus tables, chairs and food and drink, to the 1st tee and the back of the double green and still get back to add his helpful comments! Within the hour, the Chalgrave Breeze had won the day and only the one in the relative shelter of the 1st tee survived the Chalgrave Experience! Captains Drive In itself was a magnificent affair. Bob Hall, the new Senior Captain, bashed his inaugural drive down the left, finishing in the rough short of the dogleg.

Karen stepped up for the Ladies, and with the banter and general cacophony ringing in her ears, from the Mens white tees, battered it straight up the middle into the teeth of the gale!! It could have been tears of mirth, or just eyes watering as you looked into the wind, but we all knew that John was now on a hiding to nothing!! Contact was made and the ball soared skywards, and then sideways as the wind caught it, sending it into the deep stuff between 1 and 3. Karen won that by a mile!!

The rest of the day proceeded as normal, the usual mix of golf, banter, food and drink flowed as the 94 golfers on a shotgun start meandered around the course in tough, windy conditions. The strong wind and hot sunshine were a brutal combination, but Ray Bowles was well prepared as he proceeded to keep his head and face liberally covered with suncream throughout the day. Unfortunately, his team mates were miles ahead of him having emptied the suncream out and replaced it with lager!! It accurately reflects Ray's day that he didn't notice the pervading smell of fosters was following him around the course, even in that wind!! Finally, it came to the presentations. Prizes were handed out and Banita and Hannah from Keech were our invited guests to take possession of the cheque from Immediate Past Captain, Simon Ward, who handed over the magnificent sum of £8,647.07, raised in his year of Captaincy.

You would think that that was enough. Nothing could possibly top the gazebos and the lager based suncream.. You would of course, be wrong.

This is, after all, Chalgrave, where reality is stranger and funnier than you can possibly imagine. Mick Bewley tops the charts. Mick and Ronnie participated fully in Captains Day, and were in their usual fine form as the evening function got underway. Everything was reasonably normal as the meal started, but Mick had a bit of a wobble on the main course, and so removed the very expensive, titanium false teeth and placed them safely in his pocket ready for his dessert.

He forgot to replace them and today arrived at the clubhouse with a lower jaw gap, as they have gone missing!!!!!! So, I'm looking for someone who had one more drink than they paid for as someone has aperitif they shouldn't have!!!! Great Golf and Great Prices so you can afford the dental repair bills..

Monday 22nd May.News from the weekend.clearly the ladies section are getting too many members playing regularly now, as they had a complete disaster over the weekend. I'm working on the principle that the more members there are in a section, the greater the likelihood of two of them arriving wearing the same outfit, which in turn will simply activate the Chalgrave banter bus. So you can imagine the mirth when not two, but three arrived sporting the same jumper!! Cally, Anne and Chris all discarded the jumper on returning home so that it can't happen again. And no doubt went out and bought a new replacement.hopefully they will be identical as well. Monday 22nd May.An update from the Captain, Simon, regarding the inaugural Captains Tavistock Competition played on Sun 14th.

Simon has donated a trophy to be played for annually, with this being the only team matchplay event (Ryder Cup style) that we have running. 27 players particpated, 9 from the Men/Ladies/Seniors and the first winners were the Seniors. They accumulated 21 points to the Ladies 18.5 points and the rest of the club had their *rses kicked at 14 points!! Hopefully, we can expand the team numbers a little bit for next year as well. Friday 12th May.

Every now and then, one of those moments that you couldn't make up occurs. Even more rarely, it happens in front of a CCTV camera. Today was one of those days!! John Steele and Pete Warren had been out in a buggy, and they returned to the carpark where Pete proceeded to unload his gear and John started to do the same with his. It wasn't the fastest unloading I've ever seen, and so it seemed odd that John managed to miss the fact that whilst he had undone the strap which had held the clubs onto the buggy safely up hill and down dale over 18 holes and several hours on the course, he hadn't actually removed the clubs from the buggy and put them in his car. So, he jumped behind the wheel and drove off, intending to return the buggy back to its normal parking spot. There is a reason why the strap is around the clubs normally.

From my schooldays, it is the law of inertia, I believe. The clubs, standing unstrapped on the back, do not accelerate forwards at the same rate as the buggy, they just fall straight off the back, right next to the back of John's car, so he can put them in the boot. Except when he picks them up, unless he actually does have a driver with a hosepipe for a shaft, there is clearly some damage to his driver.

Great Golf, Great Prices and a place in Chalgrave Legends for John Steele Friday 12th May.A great new competition for members and non members!! Entry is open until 31st May 2017 and the winners draw will take place on 5th June 2017.

Winners will be notified by email. Click on the link below and enter your email address on the form! Thursday 11th May..Our new £162.1million access road is now open. Built specifically to make access to Chalgrave Manor easier from both the A5 and M1, you can now leave the M1 at the new 11a Junction and be enjoying a bacon butty in minutes, instead of queuing behind buses, lorries and the school run in Toddington. After endless years of design and planning, someone finally grabbed a ruler and drew a straight line from the M1 and A5 and whacked a big roundabout at the bottom of Lords Hill. For access to the golf club. For a brand spanking new road, its a bit bumpy!!

But don't worry, once you get onto our driveway, you will appreciate the smoothness of our tarmac, and then onto the smoothness of our greens for putting!! Tuesday 2nd May.The Bank Holiday is over and the Seniors are bringing normality back to Chalgrave.there is a senior out there today who will be losing a substantial amount of weight as he goes around the course. I know this as he clearly missed his cup with at least three spoons of sugar which are now all over the table and the floor instead of in his cup, therefore he will be burning calories that he hasn't consumed on the way around. I'm not sure who it is, but I'll be looking at all the scorecards that are massively over par to handicap. After all, the coffee cup and the hole cup are approx the same size, so if he's as accurate with the ball as his is with the sugar, I reckon about 140 shots should cover it.. Thursday 20th April. Golf and Politics.

These things are inter-twined. To keep you up to date with the election whilst you enjoy your golf, here are a few phrases for golf that have a political slant: A 'Theresa May' (Conservative): So far ahead in a matchplay competition that, quite frankly, it would be bloody embarrassing if you lost it now. A 'Jeremy Corbin' (Labour): A guy on the first tee, who clearly has absolutely no idea what he is doing whatsoever. He's got all the gear, he's read all the books, he just has absolutely no talent for the game at all. A 'Tim Farron'(Liberal Democrats): A very average golfer who promises much but has never won anything at all, ever. An 'Arlene Foster' (Democratic Unionists): Play her for money, there is no limit to the payouts you might get on winning.

A 'Gerry Adams' (Sinn Fein): Talks a great game, very steady player these days, but you still expect him to blow up suddenly. A 'Leanne Wood'( Plaid Cymru): A visiting golfer from some obscure, inconsequential course you have never heard of. A 'Caroline Lucas & Jonathan Bartley' (Green Party - Job Sharing!): Devastatingly bad mixed doubles players A 'Paul Nuttal' (UKIP): A golfer who hates visitors and societies. A 'Nicola Sturgeon': A nasty little five footer.

Friday 14th April.Tom Caulfield sets a new course record. In the long(ish) history of Chalgrave Manor Golf Club, no one has baptized their clubs and trolley TWICE! Aficionado's of my ramblings will recall that Tom Caulfield was the source of a story where the electric trolley, bag and all the clubs plunged below the surface of the 10th, and were retrieved by the greenstaff with a grappling hook! The trolley was still driving onwards despite its complete submersion!!

So, entirely appropriately, at the start of the Easter weekend on Good Friday, Tom was on the 7th, playing again with Peter Kane who was present at the first baptism, when he left his trolley on the left side of the fairway as they approached the green. Once again, the trolley seemed strangely attracted to the depths of the pond, lurching over the side and plunging down into the reeds. For a moment, the wheels gained traction on the surface vegetation and appeared to float on the surface, before gravity won the battle and for the second time in its life, the trolley disappeared beneath the surface! The pond on 7 is not quite so deep as the 10th, and the trolley handle still stuck up above the surface, like Arthur's Excalibur, held aloft by the Lady of the Lake.

Arthur, sorry, Tom, plunged down into the pond and grasped the handle, pulling it from the murky depths, before standing proudly, dripping wet and with a still working trolley as the remainder of the 7th pond poured out of his bag! They proceeded to the 8th tee, where Peter Kane provided a towel to dry his grips!! Tuesday 11th April.The seniors are almost 100 strong in total numbers and when the sun is out on a Tuesday, then it can get a tad busy!! Mick Moulton almost reduced the numbers though as he nearly ran down Seniors Captain, Tony Henderson, in the car par this morning.Nice effort, Mick, thanks for having a go. Having said that, there are 55 playing today, if the average age is 65, then there is approx 3,575 years out on the golf course today!! Still Tuesday 4th April.The Seniors Treasurer joins his Captain in the melee, having forgotten to bring his 'spare' driver with him today, so he pops his head around the office door and asks if he can 'borrow' his own driver and 3 wood, which he brought in late yesterday to have regripped.

Yes, he did actually ask if he could borrow his own driver. Its only 8.15am! Its going to be a very long day I can tell. Tuesday 4th April.The Seniors Captain has been a vociferous defender of the Seniors reputation, defending his section to the hilt at suggestions that the onset of age also precipitates the onset of daftness and general absentmindedness, so you can imagine the difficulty that the early arrived seniors have had (and you would have to include me in that number!) in containing their mirth as Rupert Groves receives a phone call from Tony, saying he will be delayed in arriving today as he has locked himself out of his house, whilst getting ready to leave to come down and play! The consensus is, that the clubs and bag are locked inside the house, the house and car keys are also locked inside the house, Tony is currently stuck outside with a mobile phone, in his leopard skin onesie, waiting for his son to arrive with a spare set of keys. Monday 20th March.the Monday following the Annual Dinner Dance.a great night was had by all!!

A couple of snippets from the night, clearly the ladies section are becoming the new 'seniors'!! First we had Alison, not content with winning every trophy under the sun, including the much vaunted Lady Golfer of the Year, she came over to me to enquire why the Ladies Course record was not adorning the walls of the Clubhouse alongside the Mens versions? Now, I did feel that there was probably an element of 'self interest' here, so I ventured the question 'Do you have any idea who holds the record?' To which I received the entirely expected response 'me!'

(I'm sharp as a tack!). Apparently, the record card exists and I haven't put it up, was the gist of the continuing conversation, but I pleaded not guilty to that one and said I was happy to put the card up if it could be found. Alison made a bee line for Cally, who then headed into the Ladies Changing Room as she was sure the card was in there, framed and recorded for posterity.

Indeed it was, and Alison gleefully brought it over to me, I think, with the expectation that I would retrieve my electric screwdriver from the office, and affix it to the wall in my dinner suit!! Unable to resist the temptation, I said that, in fact, the net 67 from the 2015 October medal, should be a DQ as the card wasn't signed!!! (Yes - I know its a neatly written record specifically for the purpose of being framed and retained, but you need to add a few Cosmopolitans and Skittlebombs to the mix as well!) Completely affronted, Alison grabbed the framed card and headed for the bar to get a pen!! I said to Cally, that this would be good, and I felt that an error in spelling her own name, or some such nonsense was about to occur.. Having dismantled the frame, signed the card, then reassembled the frame, it seemed only fair to point out that the signature A.T. Savage adorned the markers signature section!!

So, when the card finally makes it onto the main wall, you now know the reason for the line of tippex where the Marker signs the card.. Now, you would be thinking that this might be difficult to top, but perhaps it was. Kathy had also taken a liking to the option of Cocktails at the bar, and the Cosmopolitans mentioned in Alison's story, bore no small part in this one!! We were offering Cosmo's and Mojito's, alongside the Jaeger and Skittlebombs, but Kathy wanted a greater variety than that that was on offer. After asking at the bar, Clare and Holly suggested that she should suggest a more densely populated list for future functions, so she came over to me and sat in the chair vacated by Alison moments before! After listening to an impassion plea for a greater variety of cocktails to be available, I said that I'm sure that by the next function, I would have at least five, The Cosmo, The Mojito, a Harvey Wallbanger, a Rusty Nail and a Prawn. 'What the hell is a prawn?'

'What, you've never had a prawn cocktail?' I asked innocently.. Rarely has fishing with the ladies section been so easy. Thursday 23rd February.The ladies section entirely defeated the Molers today.I arrived back at the club having been out for most of the day, with the few remaining Molers still in the Clubhouse drowning their sorrows about how they have been soundly beaten by Doris today.I thought this was slightly odd, as I didn't recall a Lady Member by the name of Doris, but assumed that she had recently joined. It turned out, of course, it was Storm Doris, not Doris Storm that defeated them. A few did try and play a few holes though in 50mph winds. Graham Busby said he went to lift the flagstick out of one hole, and in the bottom of the cup was a newt!!

I asked him if it was really small, and he said 'No, Why?' I said if it was really small, it would be my newt!!' Tuesday 7th February.I've finally capitulated and my life as I knew it is clearly over.I've filled in the form, and paid £5 to join a section of my own Club. I am now a paid up member of the Chalgrave Senior Section. I didn't quite go the whole hog and actually play today, but I will contemplate it next Tuesday if the sun is out!!! On the upside, the amount of news stories could just be about to take a massive leap upwards, the question will be how long will it be before no one wants to play in my group as they will appear on the news page later on!!

Thursday 19th January.Its been a bit quiet over the Christmas and New Year period, and as the cold snap hit, the numbers of people braving the cold winds also drops. However, there are still matches going on, and our Winter Scratch Team have absolutely excelled themselves with a brilliant win at Mowsbury last weekend. Leading from the front was skipper Dave Bromley (who played having sadly and unexpectedly lost his brother the previous Wednesday) and would have understandably been excused from playing but he did. His sense of duty and commitment to his team in his role knows no bounds. He is probably too modest to shout the result from the rooftops but I think it worthy of note especially as the team comprised several players who have not stepped up to the scratch team level before. Team composition was (in pairing order) Dave Bromley, Tim Bevan (W 5&4); Dave McGarry & Kev Clinton (W-2up); Adam Henderson & Gary Turner (L-3&2) and Tony Henderson & Frank McKenzie (W-2 up) for an overall 3-1 away win. Well Done Chaps!!

2017 Monday 19th December.news has finally reached me of yet another ace, as Mark Stroud aced the 16th with a 3 iron on Thursday 8th December, bringing the number of aces to a record equalling 12 in a single calendar year, equalling the standard set in 2012. So, we have 14 days, including today, to launch another one and make 2016 a new Club record! No pressure then!! Tuesday 13th December.oh dear oh lord.in 11 days time, I will be 55 years old and eligible to join the Seniors Section on the Tuesday Morning rituals.and if ever there was a time for a time machine to arrive and transport me back a few years, to alleviate the onset of madness, it is now! The prospect of what lies in store for me has never been more perfectly epitomised, than the organisation today for the Seniors Turkey Trott. A day where each player brings in a small gift to adorn the prize table, to be claimed by another player at the end of the round. Nothing, to me, heralds the arrival of Christmas more than the return of the decade old Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry.

Every year it is faithfully kept and returned to the prize table. These days, there is rarely even the attempt to disguise it by giving it new wrapping. But this is not what has stimulated my funny bone and filled me with dread with what is about to happen in my life, this morning. Every October/November I deal with the fixtures for the new year ahead and enshrine the dates in the fixture card. So the date of the Senior Turkey Trott has been fixed for the best part of 14 months.

There is also a clue in the name.so you can imagine the incredulous looks, even from the seniors themselves, when Chris Baker, newly installed as Seniors Treasurer, the man with the access to the purse and who was given one task for today, bring the Turkey, announced that, despite their being a Sainsbury's/Morrisons/Asda/Tesco/Lidl et al on almost every street corner, he has been 'UNABLE TO FIND' a frozen turkey for today's competition!! 'Forgot' would have been entertaining in its own right, but 'unable to find' is a line worthy of seniors folklore. According to British Turkey, over 10 million turkeys are purchased in the run up to Christmas. The major and minor supermarkets restock their fast moving lines on a daily basis.

How unlucky do you have to be, to walk into a Sainsbury's just as the last one is taken from the freezer and before they are replenished? I think the chances must be about a million to one. So to presumably, go down the road to Tesco and have the same thing happen, and then a day later, it to occur again in Morrisons brings odds of eye watering magnitude.to be the person looking for the 10,000,001 turkey and for everyone to have run out with 2 weeks still to go to Christmas is bad luck of staggering magnitude.

You may think the story ends there.it doesn't. 5 minutes later, Chris Baker puts his head around my office door and asks for an envelope.he needs one so he can put a £5 note inside because he has 'FORGOTTEN' to bring his prize for the table!

I've sent the greenstaff out onto the course to shoo away the swans and geese from the ponds and reservoir, just in case Chris tries to redeem himself by getting a fresh one!! Chalgrave has long been associated with Great Golf at Great Prices. To that we can add unbelievable Turkey Prices as I will have one for sale at £175 in a few hours time. Cabaret Night was utterly fantastic. A packed house, fantastic food from Lucie and her team, and plenty of beer flowed.To put it into perspective, Dave McGarry's guest Bill, is seen here pictured at about 1.00am, wearing a pair of white golf shoes, which seeing as he doesn't play golf, that's quite impressive!!.I'm not sure what happened to the ones he arrived in!! Friday 25th November.we have all had occasions where as hard as we've tried to get things arranged, things conspire against you and prevent it happening.and so it was on the Steve Rumball/Dave McGarry v Dave Appleby/Paul McGarry Winter Matchplay KO. The match was eagerly anticipated, but whenever we looked like getting it played, something always messed it up.

In the end, as the expiry date for the round was nigh, the game was decided on the toss of a coin. However, a simple 50/50 chance seemed a pretty plain way of doing it, so I enlisted the help of Lucie and Clare as independent adjudicators/coin tossers (you can make your own jokes up here.) They decided that Steve/Dave were heads and Apples/Paul were tails, and we played for each hole, and an agreement that if all square after 18, then sudden death would be played. Unbelievably, Apples/Paul stormed into a 5 up lead, as tails kept coming up trumps.

Dave/Steve pulled one back on the 6th, lost the 7th, won the 8th and lost the 9th to go to the turn 5 down after 9!! Steve/Dave won the 10th, raising hopes of a storming back 9 comeback, but Apples/Paul slammed the door shut taking the 11th and 12th to be dormie 6 going up the 13th. Faced with a long walk back to the clubhouse if they won 13, Steve/Dave sensibly lost that as well, losing the match 7 and 5, which I'm pretty sure is one of the heaviest defeats I've ever suffered on a golf course, especially without actually hitting a ball!!! For the record, the scorecard supplied by Lucie and Clare was: Great Golf, Great Prices and tails never fails. Friday 11th November.Like buses, there is nothing for a while, then three stories turn up together.firstly, the last seniors awayday at John O'Gaunt a couple of weeks ago, had a minor glitch.Dave Jones was given the duty to bring the Awayday Trophy with him.which turned out to be a bit of a disaster as he wasn't going.. But this was surpassed today by Clare, who managed one of the finest blags I've seen for a while. Derek Collins brought a club in to be regripped, with an extra thick grip, on Tuesday, and Clare arranged for Simon to collect it on Thursday and have it returned for Friday.

Derek arrived for his knock around a couple of holes on Friday, and Clare duly presented him with the club for his inspection, asking 'is that all OK?' To which Derek replied 'Well its fine. It looks a bit shiny, but yes its OK' as he coughed up the required £7 for the new grip and went off to play. Five minutes later, Simon arrived and asked where the club was that he needed to regrip as he hadn't managed to get in on Thursday to collect it!!

Yes, Mrs Puddick successfully sold Derek his old club with old grip back to him for seven quid!! So, Clare went off to retrieve the Club, giving it some waffle about how she felt that he wasn't quite as enthralled with the new grip as she felt he should be and she was getting Simon to do it again, completely free of charge..and finally, Rupert Groves was standing outside my office an hour or so ago, looking intently at the trophy cabinet.I asked if he was waiting for me, but he said, 'no, I'm just checking something.'

'What's that then?' 'and why are you looking at the Ladies Trophies?'

Rupert looked at me, looked at the Ladies cabinet, looked at me again and then sheepishly moved off to the seniors cabinet around the corner..there's more to this story to come yet so watch this space... Tuesday 25th October.Three in 6 Days!!!! Some of you need to get your finger out if you haven't had an ace at Chalgrave.Peter Leatherland joins the Club in April and aces the 7th just 6 months later.he also joined the senior section and picked the date of their Summer Awards trophy presentation to do it!! The bar was packed and Peter's is now known to all of the section... Sunday 23rd October.OK OK I Hold my hands up.I made a slight boo boo on the report from yesterday about the two holes in one last week.I took the information I was given as verbatim, which now means that I have to admit to not recognising the name of a Club Member, as Duncan McLaren is infact a 5 Day Member of a few years standing. Which then meant I had made further errors with my report as that makes Ross's ace the 10th of the year not the 9th. As I was also missing the info about which club was used for the Hole in One Page, I asked him what he used.'

I opened the face of a 9 iron and hit it very high!' Was the response.sliced it then.. Saturday 22nd October.Ross Daniels aces the 16th for his first ever hole in one, the 9th one by a Club Member in 2016. We also had an ace by a guest during the week, a gentleman by the name of Duncan McLaren. I'm not sure what disaster befell him on the 9th, but he was forced to open a box and select a brand new ball on the 10th tee. Faced with chunking a brand new ball into the water, he avoided that ignominy by acing the hole instead. The first ever strike of a club onto a new ball!!

One assumes that it won't ever get struck again and it is on his mantelpiece somewhere!! Tuesday 4th October. As a general Rule of Thumb, getting Tarby involved in any aspect of organisation is fraught with danger, and never has this been more perfectly confirmed as asking him to deal with a couple of cards to be signed by the seniors section.Tarby approaches Ade Purser who signs the card with 'A great bloke and will be very, very sadly missed' which then turns out to be Derek Collin's card on his retirement after 20 years as Treasurer of the Seniors Section and NOT the card of condolence for Ron Gray..Ron, of course, would have absolutely died of laughter.. Valerie, Derek's wife, apparently said 'That's very nice of Adrian to make such a nice comment.' Tuesday 4th October.news has come in of a hole in one.not here though, but worthy of reporting.Ben Hope 81 (and a half) years old - got an ace at a 163 yard par 3 at Anstey GC, near Coventry, on a Seniors day out with John Townley and co. I only know it was Anstey because Ben at least managed to remember who he was playing with so I could ask them!

I'd heard he had got an ace, so I asked him 'where did you play?' 'Er, can't remember!' 'Which hole was it?'

'Er, can't remember!' ' What club did you use?' '7 wood, 163 yards' 'Did you keep the ball?'

' No, I lost it a few holes later.' Friday 30th September.I'm out and about today, having collected a large pile of old newspapers (shredded and used for horse bedding by Mrs R) and delivering a bulk bag of logs. One of those glorious opportunities for a wind up was presented and grasped with both hands. I've collected the papers and arrive at the delivery address to drop off the logs. I open the back of the truck and some of the loose newspapers drop out. A builder, working near to my delivery address sees the papers and asks if he can have one, but I tell him its not this weeks, they are old ones.he looks at the huge pile of papers and sees the big bag of logs as well.

'What do you do with all the papers then?' 'I've discovered a way of reversing the process' I say! 'We take the papers, pulp them, and compress them in moulds so that they look just like split firewood logs' as I take a log out of the bag to show him. 'Listen, they sound hollow when you tap them and they are really light (both features of kiln dried wood!!)' He takes the log and taps it himself and studies it intently. 'Thats f**king incredible' he says 'I'd never know that wasn't a real one!!'

The logs were slightly moist by the end of the delivery from my tears of laughter once out of sight, and no, I didn't tell him!! Friday 30th September.hot on the heels of the attempted duck hole in one comes a real one, as Dave Ballard aces the 16th with a 6 iron, and then generously buys everyone in the Clubhouse a beer.in his description of the magnificent strike, he said 'I didn't even think it was that good a swing!' To which Godders instantly responded 'its not, I've seen it!!' He may miss 90% of the conversation most of the time, but he ain't lost it when he hears things!! Thursday 29th September..the molers are in as usual and Roy Evans, Pete Nicholls and Eddie Ballarano have a relatively uneventful front 9. They arrive at the 10th, where Pete Nicholls tees off and puts his ball on the green above and to the left of the flag. A duck wanders up the green from the bottom and has a close look at the ball.

Moments later, Roy Evans tees off and his ball thuds into the green about 10ft from the bottom. Presumably, because they didn't shout 'fore' (or perhaps 'DUCK' was an option?) the duck ran, yes not waddle or walk, it runs down the green, and clouts the ball off the bottom of the green with its bill!! Eddie opted to put his in the bunker so as not to offend the duck!

(Well that's what he says, but if he can hit a sand target that is 15ft x 8ft with such unerring accuracy then he should not be off 23!!) Personally, when the story was being recounted in the bar, I felt a sense of disappointment when I discovered that the duck just knocked the ball off the green. I was expecting that the ball had rolled across the green into the hole! Then a birdie would have got an ace.

Roy correctly replaced the ball (ball at rest moved by outside agency Rule 18-1) but failed to get a birdie despite a birdie getting him. Friday 16th September.apparently El Capitano Simon Ward has a new technique for ensuring that that his team members don't forget they are playing in a Club Match on a Saturday Morning. At 6.05am on FRIDAY morning, he sends a text to his team reminding them they are playing the following day. In various parts of Bedfordshire, 11 wives/girlfriends hear the phone make a noise as it wakes them up. They, in turn, wake their other halves and shout at them about texts arriving at some unearthly hour that wakes them up. Ten minutes later, after everyone has settled back down and drifted off to sleep again, the second text arrives, correcting the first text which had a mistake on it, waking up the same wives/girlfriends who again wake their other halves and shout even louder at them 'WHY ARE YOU GETTING BLOODY TEXTS AT 6.15M ABOUT A BLOODY CLUB MATCH TOMORROW AWAY AT COLMWORTH???

So now, the whole team has been properly reminded, and it is likely that they will continue to be reminded at every opportunity over the next 24 hours. Great Golf, Great Prices and a text from the Captain at 6.00am Monday 12th September.a blast from the past.Andy Cusack, a member here well over 15 years ago, decided to call in and play 9 holes or so as he fancied knocking a ball around as he contemplates an imminent move to the Derbyshire Dales. The thought he was in the wrong place the moment he turned off the main road. Smooth tarmac greeted him instead of a rutted, potholed track. That track used to be framed by rows of small sticks about 2ft high and are now glorious trees. My office was much tidier as well, he said (I could be making that bit up.).

A few hours later, he was back, genuinely astonished at the transformation of what was a bare agricultural field into what the course has become in those 15 years. Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes to help remind you what we have achieved in just 22 years.

Thursday 18th August. News from the Tuesday Seniors.who have returned from marshalling the Pro's at Woburn and its clearly affected them!! The Tuesday competition saw 54 players compete over 18 holes off the yellows. 15 of them were at par or better. Eight of them swanned into the clubhouse with their 40+ points all thinking they have nailed this to the floor and won the event.

Frank Howarth, 75 years old, 17 handicap, plays loads of competitions midweek and weekends, shot his age. 75 shots, 3 over gross, and 50 stableford points to win it.

Normally, 50 points would bring forth the accusations of banditry and dodgy handicaps. Ken Goodland played with Frank and said it will be a round he will never forget. Par's, birdies even an eagle. If it could be chipped in or putted in from miles away it unerringly found the hole or stopped on the rim. Utterly staggering.

I don't think Frank will be off 17 next week though.. Thursday 18th August.News filters through of some decent scoring.firstly Rob Weir eagles the 6th for the second consecutive round, chipping in for a 3 nett 2 and 5 points for his total. Amazingly, he lost ground to his playing partner, Phil Billington, who had already been given his Srixon ball back by Rob, who had retrieved it from the hole as the albatross 2 (nett 1!) had accumulated 6 points for Phil!! 11 stableford points on a single hole!!

That would have been useful on Charity Day!! Monday 1st August.The club is returning to normal, or at least what passes for normal here, after the mayhem of Charity Day on Saturday. As always, the golf was of secondary importance to the prime purpose of raising funds for our Captains Charity, Keech Hospice. As I said on Saturday night, our fundraising and the destination of our funds had a particularly poignant and relevant meaning this year, as on Friday a large contingent from the Club were at Bedford Crematorium to support Steve and pay their respects to Beryl. Steve and Beryl were both supported massively over the past few months by Willen Hospice, and it cannot be underestimated the importance of the fundraising that we do so well, and the selection of our local Hospice Keech as the recipient of our donations.

The day, as always was a brand of organised chaos for which we have become rightly famous. Club Captain Simon Ward lead by example, forgetting to pick up one of his golfing partners on the way in and having to drive off to retrieve him when he finally remembered about an hour after arriving! Fancy Dress was again donned by at least half of the teams, the Captains two guest teams both said they would have also dressed up if they had been told!!

Some decided just to go Fancy Dress and ignore the film theme. The Morris Dancers were a classic example of this, but it would have been churlish to criticise them for this, given the worrying level of skill and synchronisation they showed when performing their dance routines in the early evening, gave a clear indication that rehearsals have been going on for some time.

My playing Partners, Sean and Tony displayed a level of mastery of the art of BBQ cooking rarely seen as we catered for 120+ people without breaking sweat. Well, OK maybe we did, but the BBQ's were pretty hot.

Sam Groves donated his hair. £180 was donated to the cause for a No1 head shave. Dave 'The Hairdresser' McGarry did the honours and he enjoyed himself so much that when a set of heated curling tongs came up in the auction, he bought those for £20 as he contemplated a possible new career. The Hawkers assisted by Mick Parrett and Paul Northcott won the Fancy Dress, having played 18 holes in full Alice in Wonderland regalia.

They didn't however, win the golf. Fines were levied for anything I could think of in the presentation, Don Parrott collected Dave Millards prize for a nearest the pin, so he was fined for impersonating Dave Millard. He subsequently was required to collect something as Don Parrott, and so was fined again for impersonating Don Parrott on the basis that he had admitted to being Dave Millard! After the prizes were claimed and the auction completed, we launched into the disco for the remainder of the evening. This morning, we tallied it all up and we have a grand total.

Rupert Groves generously offered to double the funds raised on his son's haircut. I'm never going to pass up an opportunity like that, so I've contacted all of the sponsors, players, auction purchasers and ad hoc donators, and they have all agreed to withdraw their original monies and re-donate them to the Sam Groves Haircut Fund. A cheque for £5,195 instead of the expected £180 would be much appreciated! That is the staggering sum raised by a 120 people playing golf.

£5,195 is a magnificent sum of money to raise in a whole year. We still have 10 months to go. Watch this space.. Sat 23rd July.John Ainsworth aces the 13th, to make it three aces (so far) in July. This one was a first though, as I cannot recall anyone getting a hole in one with their driver! Just goes to prove, it doesn't matter what club you hit, its where it ends up that counts!!

Friday 22nd July. Congratulations to Chalgrave's Abbie Roberts who won the County Junior U16 Nett Championship with a nett 67 round South Beds Golf Club. Her main focus is football and she plays for MK Dons girls team plus the U16 England Girls Football team - in fact earlier this year she captained the U15 England team for their trip to Germany. Friday 22nd July.my prediction comes true as Colin Barden shoots a gross 77 in the Pro Am and beats his Pro partner by 8 shots gross!! Stenson and Mickleson picked the wrong partners as well, as Colin Clough and Karen Crane failed to capitalise on their majestic final rounds at The Open. Rob Peck had the distinction of winning the amateur only comp and hanging onto the lead thanks to the 70 scored by Argentinian Emiliano Grillo.

Monday 18th July.Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the Amateur Scores so I can work out the result of the Pro~Am, but Colin Barden is in with a shout.of beating the score made by his Pro, Greg Chalmers who shot an awesome 85 on the last day at The Open! The two lowest scoring Pro's were the top two, Stenson and Mickleson, so the pressure is on Colin Clough and Karen Crane to have done their bit to lift the trophy.we will see!! Monday 18th July.Two aces in three days, as Steve Jenkins aces the 5th on the 15th July and Captain Simon Ward aces the 10th on Sunday in the Pro ~ Am, to record his third ace here and join a very exclusive Club of now El Presidente John Gibson and Capitano Simon Ward who have three each to their name.. Clearly, if you want multiple aces, you need to be on T'Committee!!!

Thursday 14th July.I know its been quiet on the news front, I have been rather busy with stuff and have got behind on stuff.but here's a snippet for you that shows the differences between the generations and the way we are attached to our technology.Brian Gidley played golf today and left his mobile phone in the buggy afterwards. We retrieved it for him and put it behind the bar in the safe for him. He's left us know he will collect it on SATURDAY when he is next in! How many of you would live for 2+ days without your mobile?? Friday 1st July.news from the Captain, Simon Ward, who ventured off piste and played Luton Hoo in the County Seniors Championship last week, along with past Champion Tim Bevan and also Mick Parrett. The consensus was that if you think the rough at Chalgrave is tough at the moment, then the Hoo will change that perception right away!!

Impossible to find the ball, and if a miracle occurred and you did, another three ratchets up the scale of impossible in terms of actually getting it out! Mick Parrett marked the occasion by aceing the 153 yard 16th, but even this magnificent feat didn't get Chalgrave onto the podium this year. Apparently there was a tie for 1st place, and those involved had already got changed out of their wet golf gear, into jackets and ties, had dinner and a beer and themselves sorted, before having to get back into the wet gear and go out and play extra holes to decide the winner!! Tuesday 21st June.In or Out?? Rick Maughan is definitely IN, on the 5th, with a 7 iron!! To hell with a referendum, this is far more important!!

The third ace of the year and worryingly, 4 of the last 5 aces have come from the seniors section!! How is that possible? Unless of course they have miscounted!! Definitely a miscalculation by Rick as he chose one of the busiest seniors days of the year to record his first ever ace. We have been indulging in referendum debates in the clubhouse all week, not always with a great deal of success. In or Out of Europe raised as a question earlier this morning, brought the response, 'we are still in, a draw was enough!' Which perhaps indicates the level of seriousness (and confusion) with which the referendum is being taken.

To assist you in your deliberations in your decision we might divide the clubhouse on Thursday into four sections, IN, OUT, UNDECIDED and WHAT REFERENDUM. Having purchased your pint (or 0.568 litres) of beer you then have to sit in your declared area. Visitors to the Club will not be allowed to sit with the OUTS as they don't want immigrants. On the other hand, there could be unlimited numbers of visitors on Thursday, sitting with the IN's but they might not have brought any money with them and the IN's will have to contribute to their beer and green fees. Meanwhile, both the INs and the OUTs and the Undecideds will debate having Rules/Laws passed by unpopular unelected people who foist taxation/charges upon all for what appears to be the benefit of a relatively small number. I don't agree with England Golf and its structure either. Tuesday 14th June.A great group of people, a significant number of the Club Captains who have been responsible for the £100,000+ raised.

Monday 13th June. News from Captains Day.as we welcomed Simon and Cally to the start of their Year.the golf went down a storm, without a storm in sight.Mick 'Moses' Bewley still managed to get wet, losing his balance whilst playing a shot close to the edge of the pond on 7 and sliding down the steep slope and ending up flat on his back in the reeds (or bulrushes!!). There is no truth in the rumour though, that he parted the waters of the 10th and walked directly to the green. Tim Bevan amassed a superb 43 points to win it, shooting a gross 71 in the process, with Graham Samsa second with 41 points.

The course was in magnificent condition, probably the best its been so far this year. The evening dinner was superb and we were delighted to see Steve and Beryl Bradshaw make a short but most welcome appearance. Moses then led the Children of Chalgrave to the Promised Land, otherwise known as the dancefloor where he performed miracles for the rest of the evening! Probably the highlight of the evening though, was the presentation of the cheques to Banita and Mark, our guests from Keech.

As well as the magnificent £10,391.56 that we raised last year, we also had a photocall of a fantastic group of Club Captains who have been the lynch pins of the unbelievable £100,467.31 that we have now raised for Keech to date. I hope to have a photo of that presentation very shortly.

Tuesday 7th June.Senior Captains Drive In.the start of a new captains year, Tony Henderson is at the helm and Bob Hall is Vice Captain. Well, they had a hard act to follow. Rupert is organised within an inch of his life, technology is his friend, and his ability to delegate and keep on top of tasks is exemplary. Today had a nostalgic feel to it.Peter Whitton was not available to guide them through the computerised sign in, but that seemed to go OK.

First problem was the absence of a printer for the cards, and for the start sheet, so the start sheet was copied from the computer screen by hand.well, most of it was anyway!! The handwritten start sheet was quite challenging to read, so Tarby, who wears glasses but gets really close to what he needs to read and then peers over the top of the glasses, started to read out which groups were off which tee, except he couldn't read the handwriting that well. The situation was compounded by the fact that there had been some subtle name changes in the translation from computer to handwritten list; Jerry Atkinson became Jerry Atkins, but Jerry Atkinson didn't know if we actually had a Jerry Atkins as a member, so he was unsure if it was typo (or should that be a hando??) or not. Mick Howard, however, appeared on the list twice. Meanwhile, oblivious to the chaos in the lobby as half the seniors tried to find out where they were playing and with who, coupled with the fact that no one actually had any cards, Tony and Bob casually made their way down to the 1st Tee and with the half of the section that has sussed out who they were playing with and where they were starting, launched into Captains Drive In.

Eventually, everyone had disappeared to their starting tee for a texas scramble, apart from a folorn three ball in the lobby who didn't appear on the list at all. So I sent them off to start on the 11th as a group. The three groups that went down to start off the 10th, were greeted by the sight of Kathy Tabor and Kate Tilcock, and a vast array of cakes and snacks, along with a tipple or two. All of them declined to partake of the delicacies before them (for clarity, that's the snacks and cakes not the two ladies - although thats also not to say that the two ladies are not delicacies in their own right. I'll stop digging now!!) and the 12 players said they would partake later on. Well that will be a challenge then chaps, when you start on 10, you will finish on the 9th green, so you either will be walking all the way to the 10th tee and back again to the clubhouse for a sausage roll or you won't bother/remember!

I know what my money is on. Amazingly, they all managed to return to the clubhouse where Captain Tony held court for the prize giving. I have no idea who won, but I believe that Mick Howard, who had 2 chances to win, came last and second last.. All in all, the reputation of the seniors is clearly in extremely safe hands.after a year of normality, chaos has returned!

The Tony and Bob show is well and truly underway. Tuesday 31st May.Hugh Kerr sends me an advert he has received. A dramatic coastal destination. A masterpiece unveiled.

An icon reborn. From the 1st of June, the legendary Ailsa course at Trump Turnberry will be available for play following a highly anticipated renovation. Experience the exhilarating changes on this famous course and become part of golfing history as one of the first to take on the reborn Ailsa course. Tee off from just £539* per person, which also includes overnight accommodation in one of Trump Turnberry’s lavishly upgraded bedrooms, inclusive of breakfast, and a three course dinner in hotel’s 1906 restaurant So, one round of golf, breakfast and dinner, plus an overnight stay, or a whole years golf and access to free golf at 30+ courses. Great Golf, Great Prices but not Donald Trump's ones!

Monday 11th May.I've often been asked if I make the news page stories. I don't credit myself with that level of wild imagination! Whilst I might get quite elaborate on the description for comedy purposes, every scrap that appears on this hallowed page is a genuine story. So you can imagine my delight at coming in this morning to be told that Tom Caulfield of the seniors section, has been inducted into the Chalgrave News Page Hall of Fame, after an escapade so magnificent it may take me a while to describe it. The only, and sincere regret, is that what follows is fractionally out of screen from the CCTV camera located at the rear of the 10th Green. So Tom was playing his normal Friday social round, when he arrived at the 10th hole.

The fourball all teed off and there was a bit of uncertainty of the location of one of the balls which had headed towards the trees to the left of the green. As they rounded the pond, all the players headed for the treeline to search for the ball, Tom pressed the 'roll on 10 yards' button on his trolley and went off to help.

He failed to appreciate that the slope leading to the green is reasonably significant, and that gravity will try and pull a rolling object down a slope. So the trolley turned right.and trundled down the hill, getting angry squawks from the ducks and geese as it disturbed their slumbers. Perhaps it was the urgency of the squawking that alerted the guys to the impending danger, as they looked up just in time to see the trolley, bag, which was complete with Tom's wallet and his house/car keys, do a bad impression of Evel Knievel's Grand Canyon Jump.

They turned just in time to see the trolley reach the edge and plunge in. Tom, abandoning the search for the ball he was looking for, despite 5 minutes not elapsing, and raced to try and locate the trolley.

Using one of his playing partners clubs, he was able to hook the trolley and pull the handle back above the surface but was unable to drag it out of the pond, so he set off for the greenkeeping shed to enlist some help. Jamie and Danny, after a 10 minute delay to wipe away the tears of laughter which were preventing them from driving anything, made it to the 10th pond, but the trolley had disappeared! The raft was unhitched and Jamie started trying to hook anything under the water on the last known location of the trolley, and miraculously managed to hook it. They dragged it to the surface and as it rose from the depths like the Henry VIII's warship The Mary Rose, the reason why it has disappeared was obvious.the wheels were still driving it onwards!! Had the pond been solid on the bottom, it would have been back at the tee!!

As the water cascaded from the bag, Tom grabbed his putter, holed out and then played the back nine!! For the record, he didn't get any penalty strokes either, as 'exception 1 of Rule 13-4' Section (b) allows that as he did not improve the lie of his ball (which wasn't in the hazard), there is no penalty for 'placing his clubs in a hazard!' I'm trying to find out who the manufacturer of the trolley is, as to still be running 10/20 minutes after it was submerged is pretty damn impressive.

Tom 'U Boat' Caulfield has so far not be available for comment!! Great Golf, Great Prices and Hall of Fame Seniors. Friday 22nd April. Captains Awayday at The Bedford was won by Scratch Team Captain Dave Brommers, with the Club Captain Mick Yule in 2nd place. The accolades though go to VJ 'WONGA' Mistry who turned £1 into £20 in just 4.5 hours. As is the norm, there was a 2's competition, but Don Parrott was unable to stump up the requisite £2 and had to borrow £1 of it from Wonga Mistry.

The 'loan' was granted on the terms that as he had paid half the entry, he would be entitled to half the winnings. In absolutely standard Chalgrave folklore, there was just one winner, Don Parrott who scooped the entire £60 pot and to great merriment was forced to honour his word and offer half to Wonga. VJ, in a very non wonga manner, took £20 not the £30 he was entitled to, but this amounts to any eyewatering profit of 2000% return on 4.5 hours of lending. My mathematical calculation is that amounts to 10,680% per day and 3,898,200% APR!! Thursday 21st April.Alan Loveday aces the 10th for the second time here at Chalgrave, almost 11 years after the first one.

He's getting weaker as well as the first ace in 2006 was with a 9 wood and this one needed a 5 wood to make it. In another decade he'll need a driver!! It was bl**dy cold out there as well, so he had a blinding result afterwards as well, as they all wanted coffee!! The round of drinks cost £21!! Its only the second ace of the year so far, after nearly 4 months. We had ten in total last year. Tuesday 19th April.Dave Burden is a changed man in retirement.

Today, he is amongst the first here, fit and raring to go. Its a team event today, 4 players to a team and Dave is full of banter and laughter as he teases and cajoles the arriving seniors about which team they will be in and who their playing partners will be. A the 8.00am cut off time approaches, he glances at the Whitton Computerised Draw System and realises there are 39 players entered, so as Adrian Purser arrives he congratulates him on rounding the numbers to the perfect 40 and wanders outside for a bit of chipping practice prior to the start. As the 'explosion' of seniors to occurs as the disappear off to all parts of the course, Dave pops his head back around the front door to peer at the list to see which tee he needs to head off to, but struggles to find his name on the sheet.

Slowly it dawns upon him, that he was so busy taking the p*ss out of everyone else, that he actually didn't sign in himself, so having been here for best part of 1 1/2 hours chatting to 40 other blokes, he hasn't got a game! Great Golf, Great Prices and opportunities for solitary practice. Friday 15th April.Another two days of torrential rain had an impact on golf today.first the Beadlow Early Bird society capitulated at 8.00am without a ball being struck in anger.

Had coffee, decided that it was just too miserable to contemplate golf, and rebooked for June instead. The brandy boys came in for coffee and decided against it as well. Late morning and the Friday boys were here, the rain had abated but there were ducks swimming on the bottom of the 18th. As the forecasted more heavy rain started, they sensibly capitulated and came in before the onslaught.

As the rain grew heavier and the ducks on 18 were suffering from exhaustion as it was a long swim to the edge, Kathy Shaw and Denise Brooks turned up to play their matchplay KO match! Now its been a while since I've seen the traditional Chalgrave 'I'm going to play this whatever the bloody weather throws at me' demeanour and to be fair, the ladies usually exude far more common sense than most when the conditions are arduous.

Not Kathy and Denise. Somehow, they managed 9 holes in torrential rain and flooded greens. For the record, Kathy is one up and they are coming back to finish this, come hell or high water, or in their case even higher water! I would take my hat off to them but I'd get wet.

Great Golf, Great Prices and Wet Ladies!! Tuesday 12th April.the weekly chaos of the seniors ensues, and there are no holds barred today.two have arrived without their trolleys which it turns out, is small beans.Steve Howarth is probably one of our more 'remote' seniors, making the pilgrimage every Tuesday and Thursday from Bricket Wood, near St Albans up the M1, through the road works and speed restrictions to the club. Today, he has his trolley.but no clubs, having left them in the garage, next to where he picked up the trolley from.so a round trip of about 45 miles for a cup of coffee and somewhere to read the paper. Before you ask, yes I did offer him a spare set to use, but the bag of clubs also contains shoes/hat/gloves etc and all the rest of the senior golfers paraphernalia required to participate on a Tuesday. Monday 11th April.news from the Saturday Club Match against Tilsworth, who we trounced 5 - 1. The match always features a 'Nearest the Pin' with a £5 entry fee and a £40 prize with the balance going to Keech. So on Saturday the 5th was the designated hole, and debutant Adrian D'Arcy teed off with playing partner Barry Moorhouse having first agreed that if either won the Nearest the Pin, they would share the proceeds.Adrian then watched aghast as the ball took a hop and a skip and nosedived into the cup for his first ever ace!!

So, half the winnings, £20, less the £5 entry fee, and a £50 bar bill.Barry, meanwhile was chuckling away counting his £15 profit!!! Monday 11th April.I'm sitting here on Monday, drained, after a catastrophic round of golf. I'm not talking Jordan Spieth collapsing in the Masters. I'm talking Pete Warren, Lee Nash and yours truly in the Apple Designs on Sunday. Overnight, someone broke into the course and added about 2,500 yards to the course without me noticing. We did, to be fair as a three ball, have a very tight match between ourselves, with just a single stableford point separating the three of us after 18 holes.

It started bizarrely, as I pulled on a glove, marked up my ball and then ran back up to my office to put my golf shoes on. Four decent shots later with a stroke for a three pointer to start, I was a happy bunny. Then things took a turn. Suffice it to say, that 17 stableford points is not exactly the highlight of my golfing career. I don't think Lee and Pete on 18 points each will be looking back with much joy either! Tuesday 5th April.News from the weekend medal..Don Cook gets a PAR on the 7th!!!!!! Now the more churlish of you would be thinking that this is a particularly hash bit of sarcasm from me, singling out a club member for what achieving what hopefully is expected to be achieved, and the severity of the sarcasm is compounded by the fact that I generally don't make reference to players scores unless they achieve something exceptional, so a par doesn't really cut it, does it?

Except it does on this occasion, as Don hoicked his tee shot way over the left mound and out of bounds and was therefore obliged to play this third shot from the tee, which he promptly holed for a par!! So before you ask, no, its not a hole in one. The clue is in the 3 on the card.. Friday 1st April.

Following George Cox and Colin Tipping falling for the April Fool, I am delighted to announce that Taff Rowlands and none other than Peter Whitton, a man who normally arrives on the 1st of April, pokes his head around my door and says 'I know what day it is, don't even think about trying anything' have just come back into the Clubhouse after playing the front nine. Now I was talking to Taff as he got a coffee before they started, about the hot air experiment and asked him to let me know later if he could tell any difference between the 3rd green and the rest when he came in. At the time, I was convinced that Peter Whitton turned away to mask his laughter at the preposterousness of the suggestion and I was grateful to him for not exposing the prank at that moment. So you can imagine my delight, when Taff pokes his head around my door, gives me the 'thumbs up' and says that the 3rd was 'noticeably drier' than the rest of the holes they played. As I wanted to drag the prank out a little, I walked out of the office to where Peter had joined Derek Collins and Alan Laid for morning coffee, to discuss the greens heating system option with them all.

You can imagine my unbridled delight when Peter Whitton said he didn't think that he recognised the difference quite as much as Taff did, but still thought that there was some improvement. So, you can imagine his crestfallen face when I continued with the conversation for a short while before mentioning that my life was now complete as I didn't in my wildest dreams ever think I would catch Peter Whitton with an April Fool gag. Peter looked slightly baffled and said 'but its not even April' whilst Alan and Derek laughed and Taff still didn't realise it was a prank. The penny dropped though and it may be a while before Peter speaks to me again. We have taken the opportunity today with the early morning frost, to conduct an experiment that may have a far reaching impact on winter golf here at Chalgrave in the years ahead. We have added some pipework to the biomass boiler and connected it up to the course irrigation system.

This enables us to divert hot air from the kiln into the irrigation system and then using a short connection open a pipe into the under green drainage system as well as have a surface outlet pipe. As the 3rd green is closest to the boiler, we set off the experiment at 6.30am this morning when the greenstaff arrived and by 7.20am we had hot air rising from the hole cup on the 3rd hole as well as a surface level open pipe feed.

One of our early starting golfers, George Cox was able to see the benefits of the system and agreed that the greens surface on the 3rd was way softer than the previous two holes he had played. Hopefully, we can extend the system through all 18 greens and will be able to bring the same sort of under soil heating and drying to Chalgrave Golf Club, that you see at the Premiership football stadiums. This will enable not just better, softer greens throughout the winter, it will also reduce the potential for damage when we currently use the greens in frosty conditions. The video of the experiment can be seen here: Thursday 24th March.Pete is off on a cruise soon, and his missus, decided that he needed a haircut before he went.so rather than take advantage of the on board facilities (would that be a crew cut?) Marcia had a bash with the clippers herself. Pete has spent a lot of time in the pro shop looking at baseball caps today.. Tuesday 22nd March.Seniors. Dave Jones runs the Seniors 'Bonus Ball' and comes into the office proffering a £10 note.

No, I haven't won, he just asks for 2 x £5 notes in exchange. So I dig him the requested fivers out of my wallet and hand them to him. He takes them and offers me one back saying 'can I have 5 ones please?' So now I'm baffled as I'm unsure if Dave is not capable of just asking for a five and five ones in one go, or worse, he thinks I'm not capable of dealing with a multi denomination change request in one go!

Friday 4th March.Hot on the heels of Peter Kay trying to kill Colin yesterday, young Ben Hope has a go at himself today!!! Octogenarian Ben was trundling down the 3rd, (playing on his own as he doesn't like to hold up the youngsters!) and he had hit his ball down the slope, where the newly dried and cut grass allowed the ball to have sufficient momentum to reach the ditch and come to rest near the top on the far side.as he approached the ditch, Ben realised that he could get a club on it!! Yes, I know he was playing on his own, and that the proper, sensible course of events would have been just to lift it out, put it on the fairway and whack it again. After all, what was going to happen? Was he going to go one shot or one hole down against himself??

But clearly, clear lucid thoughts were not exactly flying about in vast numbers at that precise moment, a fact made clearer when he decided that he was still a twentysomething young man and he wasn't going to bother with the bridges provided for the purpose of crossing the ditches, but was going to hop across with the casual fitness and agility of his youth. It was, to be fair, a massive fail. Actually, it was a massive fall as well. By all accounts, the leading foot didn't even vaguely get close to the opposite side and Ben keeled over. Landing rather solidly on the fairway on the other side.

Things got worse, as he now seemed to take on the skills of an upturned tortoise, and despite rolling into every conceivable position, was unable to right himself and clamber to his feet. Fortunately, his plight was seen by Gavin Puddick, who was waiting for Clare and went to his rescue! Ben recounted the story to me a short while later, and thankfully he is absolutely fine and laughing about it himself. I asked him what happened to the ball? He said he lifted it out, whacked it onto the green and walked off with a 5!! Now, there is one bit of that story that isn't believable!!

Thursday 3rd March.Colin Clough heads out onto the course with Peter Kay for a swift and convivial nine holes.as they make their way down the 8th hole, they are discussing yesterdays news that Doctors think contact rugby should be banned in schools due to the chance of injuries etc. Colin said, with staggering perceptiveness, that life, in general, is dangerous. They finished the 8th and teed off the 9th, their last hole. Pete was down by the ditch, a line he favours off the tee on 9 for some reason. Colin was some 60/70 yards further ahead, in the rough on the right hand side, confident that his 2 shot lead was going to be enough to secure the beers from Pete in the bar afterwards. Pete was also confident that the 2 shots was going to be too much to overcome, and so played an attacking shot of such mastery and guile, in order to try and recover the position.

He thumped into the back of the ball and the ball soared skywards. 'That's a decent contact,' he thought, as the ball looped higher but with a slight hook (Pete is a leftie) to the right. At this point, he realised that the trajectory of the ball and the line of its flight and his playing partner Colin were all in a line. As you do, he shouted 'fore!!' Colin looked at Pete, realised that a ball was coming at him and wrapped his hands around the sides of his head, just leaving the very top of his head exposed, from a vertical assault.

With an accuracy that has been sadly lacking from the Russians in Syria, Petes golf ball, approx 3cm in diameter, had a target area of no more that 10cm diameter from a distance of 70 yards. The moral of the story, is never ever predict that life in general is dangerous, especially when you are 2 shots clear of Peter Kay.

Tuesday 1st March.Well I did say that the seniors would have to pull out all the stops to get close to the comedy burglars, but they had a decent go at it! Senior Captain Rupert Groves nailed the day perfectly, as it was Brian Gidley's birthday YESTERDAY, which according to Rupert makes him 18 years old!

So despite the fact that the seniors would not normally allow an 18 year old to actively participate in the regular weekly events, they have given him special dispensation to continue and celebrated the occasion today with an 18th Birthday Party, complete with card and large 18th Birthday Badge! It was also their first day back on the earlier start times, starting at 8.30am for the summer, but predictably one forgot.

Bob Given arrived late, they had to re-jig the entire start sheet to accommodate the extra player, who then played 2 holes before the heavens opened and Bob decided enough was enough and went home, so he was last to arrive and first to leave!! Just a normal Tuesday really! Monday 29th Feb.We had a break in last night, minor irritation levels in that they snapped the chain on the gate, forced a window and nicked the change out of the coffee machine which amounted to about £50.but in reviewing the CCTV for the Police today, these two display levels of comedy incompetence that deserves a mention on the hallowed pages of the Chalgrave News page. They arrive at about 11.30pm, in what the police believe to be a stolen BMW X5 which is doing the rounds by all accounts at present. They park up nicely in view of a CCTV camera and wander around the building analysing where best to break in. They opt for the window by the kitchen door, probably because its nearest to where they parked the car.

They go to the boot of the vehicle and equip themselves with the nefarious required tools of their trade, including a 2ft long crowbar to force the window. Suitably equipped, they head for the window, then hesitate and return the the vehicle. To shut the rear tailgate which they had left open!!! Now I don't know about you, but I close the rear tailgate on my Navara when I'm about to leave it for a bit, just in case some dodgy character happens to take a passing interest to the contents and decide to take the opportunity of an open rear tailgate as being one to good to miss!! I can't quite frankly, think of any other reason why they might otherwise need to shut it!! Maybe my carpark at 11.30pm at night is such a hive of activity from the crim network that they think it is unsafe to leave the vehicle open for a few minutes!! The police forensic chap who was here had to sit down for 5 minutes as it was just too funny!

Once in the building, they force open the coffee machine to nick the aforementioned £50, they both have 2 kicks each at my office door which fails to give, so they go and give the Pro shop door a single kick as well, which also fails to open. As they make their way out, one of the little darlings, who clearly are attending a fancy dress party as muslim ladies in burqa pretty soon afterwards, nips back behind the bar, opens the fridge and removes 2 cans of red bull!! Not armfulls! Just a couple as that's all they need, although one does think that had they drunk them first they might have had more chance of getting through the doors.The Police said the gate was shut when they arrived just ahead of me, so the nice chaps kindly shut the gate after them on the way out as well!!! I am absolutely baffled as to how the seniors are going to top this tomorrow!! Monday 29th February..At last!!

Happy 'Happy Employers Day' to all my fellow employers!!! Once every 4 years, this day arrives, where your staff who are Annually paid, come in to work for a whole day for nothing!! This year, and indeed today is the extra day, my staff work for 366 days for the same annual salary that they get for 365 normally!! So, today, I'm even happier to see you all than I normally am!!! Sunday 28th February.Proof that playing with the Seniors on Tuesday is good for your health.I know that seems like a slightly mad statement, but blame Hugh Kerr!! Hugh emailed me this morning, complaining that the claim that I made on Friday that golf would be more exerting this weekend thanks to the reopening of Holes 1/2/3, which adds some 1200yards to your round of golf.

Hugh, claiming to be 'scientifically minded' has an app on his phone which measures the distance walked, and so had a recorded distance of 4.79miles walked on Tuesday 16th February, whilst playing with the seniors, playing 15 holes.so he reasonably expected to add an additional 2/3rds of a mile to that total on Sunday. On Sunday, whilst covering the full 18 holes, his walk amounted to 4.4miles!! So his exercise amounted to around 0.4 miles less, instead of the expected 0.6 more!! Aspersions may be cast concerning the relative straightness of strike between Tuesday Seniors and Sunday morning boys. They may or may not be correct.

Hugh feels cheated out of the extra exercise that he was expecting on Sunday and asks for suggestions. Well, Hugh, if you fancy a long walk, play on Tuesday then as the Seniors will be venturing out of 18 holes. Make sure your phone battery is charged, let alone your trolley one, as you could be out there some time!! Friday 26th February.Some very bad news for you all if you are planning on playing this weekend. Golf will take longer and will be more exerting, requiring you to walk at least 1200yards further than you have been doing.

Following a stupendous effort by the greenstaff, all of the fairways have been cut, as have all the greens, including the 2nd. Whilst the 2nd remains very soft, with the continuing forecast for crisp dry days over the weekend and the fact that we didn't get 1.5 tonnes of mower stuck whilst driving over it, the first three holes will return for play with immediate effect. Anyone with a trolley weighing more than 1.5 tonnes must still start on 4.. Tuesday 23rd February.The seniors, and Dennis Richards is in and clearly thinks, from our conversation, I'm just shutting the 2nd hole for the fun of it.

So I ask him to go and play the first three holes as part of his seniors round and give me a fair evaluation of whether the 2nd fairway is firm enough yet to play on. Please play it, I say, fill your boots, have a proper go! He dragged the Senior Captain and another senior, Colin as well.

15 minutes later, they had filled their boots as I had suggested! With a certain amount of moisture! There is a very good reason why the 2nd is as wet as it is. Its been raining since October. The fairway is probably the flattest fairway we have, so there is absolutely no water run off.

The rain just lands and soaks in or lies on the surface. The fabled Chalgrave wind, that dries out the rest of the course in no time, is virtually ineffectual on this hole because of the dense woodland to the left of the hole, so the hole is completely sheltered. Still, there is less water on the surface at this precise moment, than there was about an hour ago, as it is now residing in the golf shoes of Dennis, Colin and Rupert!

Perhaps next time, they will listen to me!! Friday 5th February.Well we have had a few days of dry (ish) weather and danny has managed to get around most of the holes to cut fairways.

The ones that he hasn't done are just too wet/soft. We took the mower up to the 2nd fairway to get it stuck there just to make sure that it was as soft as we thought it was though! We have been busy though, as the greenstaff have planted some 750 trees over the last few days as well, with a further 350 to go in next week. The majority are on the banking to the left of the 5th and 6th Holes. On the 5th, we have planted trees to the rear of the 5th green and to the right hand side along its whole length, so that in time, the entire hole will be framed by trees. The 6th Hole, the planting is mainly to the left side, with some in quite close proximity to the tees, with the objective of trying to block the mishit shot that might head in the direction of the houses. The medal tee will be quite a challenging tee, as the existing trees to the front right will be complemented by the ones to the left and it will be like hitting from the thin edge of a wedge out onto the fairway.

By the end of next week, all the new plantings will be protected by spirals some on the banks may be uncovered this weekend. The majority of these trees are fast growing hybrids. We have used them to great effect before, so we know that they like our soils and that they grow with great speed.

They can be 20ft or more high in 5 years! The remaining trees to be planted will largely be in existing plantations, such as between 6 and 8, to replace trees which have not survived. Particularly the new stock that is in play, we will be putting a woodchip mulch circle around them and there is plenty of space between the trees to allow a drop away from a sapling. When you stand on the 5th and 6th Tees now, you could be in the forests around Center Parcs (if you have a very vivid imagination!!) Thursday 4th February.Bill Potton wins the award for the the most pointless adjustment of the day.he comes in after golf, puts a £1 coin in the coffee machine, selects the + strong button for more coffee and then completely negates that by pressing the + whitener as well! He did leave the 'larger cup' option alone, which was handy, as the drink would have overflowed the cup. He then didn't remove the first cup he had poured and pressed the buttons again for the 2nd cup and overflowed the first one!! Absolute mayhem from one bloke!!

Ron Gray is not here with the molers, he is in hospital with a bout of pneumonia.we had a text from him today, saying he has had 90+ texts and international calls from as far away as Australia and the Isle of Wight!! If you are bringing Ron to the upcoming Quiz Night on 19th Feb, don't ask him the geography questions!! Tuesday 26th January.The Seniors always manage to create mayhem where things really should be so straightforward. How complicated can a raffle be?? So when Past seniors Captain, Chris Burrows donated a brand spanking new, Adams Golf Super S Hybrid to a raffle to raise funds for Keech, you would not of thought that too many things could cause any great issue.

Indeed, the raffle was brilliantly successful, with £200 worth of tickets sold to the section that current Captain Rupert Groves adds to the main Charity Fund.so the day of the big draw, and the winner is..Chris Burrows!! So Chris decided to donate the club for the second time, and again the section put their hands in their pockets and this time accumulated another £120 to Keech. Today, Clare drew the winning ticket and the winner is.Seniors Captain Rupert Groves. Galactic Civilization 2 Ultimate Edition Torrent on this page. so.they are now selling tickets for the third time!!!!

Monday 25th January.pictures arrive from Graham Busby taken last week. The course was frozen solid, but the sunshine had cleared the frost and left the reservoir a glistening mirror, enabling the 4 resident swans to create an optical illusion that they can walk on water.

Thursday 21st January.with the ground frozen, we had a chance to get out with a mower and Danny Sanders has done an amazing job cutting the rough on almost half of the course. I will tell you now, that sitting on a mower for 6 hours in these temperatures is unbelievable dedication to duty!

We have rain forecast for tomorrow, so we will see what things are like before the weekend, as the temperature is due to rise again. Today, we have had all 18 holes open, as the frozen ground made the 2nd firm enough to play. We will be reviewing that for the weekend, but we currently expect that the medal WILL go ahead over the weekend, with the competition played over either 18 holes or 15 holes, dependent upon the condition of the 2nd hole. Tuesday 19th January.The Seniors are in and at last there is an expectation that a ball will bounce on the fairway as the temperature has plummeted to -5 overnight. Brian Gidley, as you would expect, is heading out to play a few holes in shorts, a polo shirt and because its so cold, he has added a sleeveless sweater, albeit a lightweight one. Chris Baker is playing one of his last few rounds before he heads off to Rio De Janeiro. He said he got a blinding deal on the tickets, but I'm not convinced that he realises the Olympics are not until the summer, and that the hotel he is booked into is an incomplete athletes village!!

Either that, or he has really been scammed and he thinks the Winter Olympics are about to start over there! Thursday 14th January. At long last, its stopped raining.its now snowing!!! And Brian Gidley has just arrived to play with the Molers, in his shorts!!! Normal times at Chalgrave Manor Golf Club. Its a bl**dy madhouse!!

Thursday 6th January.I get back to the club and find the Thursday Molers, Graham Busby, Bryn West and Ron Gray, plus Peter Kay all clustered around the computer in the pro shop, whilst Clare searches for Enrique Iglesias 'I'm a freak' video for them.Lets just say it will get their pulses racing.which is entirely ironic as it turns out the reason why they are looking for it is that Graham Busby wants it played at his funeral! Ron Gray decides that he needs to start work on his then, and is searching for 'Sound of the Underground!'

Just a normal Thursday at Chalgrave really!! Monday 4th January.For the first time in several years, I have been forced to close some of the course. The first three are closed as the 2nd hole is impassable at present. The final part of the 17th, the sideslope approaching the green, is so slippery, that I have decided that social golf only for those who are desperate for their 'golf fix' playing holes 4 - 16 are available. Having ventured out onto the course yesterday, I can honestly say that in the 22 years that we have been open, I have never know the course to be this saturated across its entire area.

We need some clear days with strong winds!! 2016 Thursday 31st December.Storm Frank has swept through, the course is rather wet but the sunshine and winds will dry it out as they always do. Its been a pretty dire end to 2015, weather wise and we hope that the New Year will bring better golfing weather. On behalf of all of the staff at Chalgrave Manor Golf Club, I wish you all a very Happy New Year!!! Thursday 17th December.Bob Hall, current Senior Vice Captain, so he will be taking over the reins of the section from Rupert next year, cements his place in the folklore of Seniors Newspage entries..after a morning on the course with The Molers, he has come back into the clubhouse and participated, as always, in the banter and camaraderie of a Thursday lunchtime in the clubhouse. The mornings golf activities had clearly required some sustenance and he duly ordered a sandwich from Lucie at 1.52pm. At 2.00pm, he received a phone call from us, asking him what we should do with his sandwich, now he had gone home!!!

If the Senior Vice Captain is indeed a sandwich short of a full picnic, its because he ordered it and b*ggered off home!! He duly returned to the club to collect it!! Thursday 17th December.Pete gets a phone call from a scottish guy, wanting to play golf. Pete came in and recounted the anecdote, but his scottish accent sounded indian/pakistani to my extremely deaf ears!!' Roughly translated it was ' Can I play golf today and what's the green fee?' '£20 sir, on our loyalty card scheme' 'Can I have a buggy please???!!' 'No, sir, the buggies are not out, its been a bit wet recently!!'

Says Peter with consumate drollness. 'But its the hottest December ever' is the reply. 'Yes Sir, and its been raining, following hard on the heels of the wettest November since records began. The course is too wet, the buggies would churn the course up and slide everywhere.' 'Well lots of other courses have got them out' 'Well sir, if you want a buggy, you will have to play at one of those then!' 'But you are my last hope!!' Is the final response, at which point he realises he's just shot himself in the foot and hangs up.

Tuesday 8th December. Almost 23 years to the day he joined, Pete Graydon draws the curtain on his illustrious career as a Chalgrave Member.

Joining at the end of November 1992, Pete and Fiona are now relocating to Portand, in Dorset, just down the road from the famous Chesil Beach, so Pete's skills at playing in a Chalgrave Wind for 2 decades will still be in demand. Pete sent me a message: 'I must say the last 20+ have been fantastic, watching a course grow and establish itself, made many many friends and golf buddies, I would like to personally thank all those people who have driven me to the club, all over the county and Britain. But there are far too many to mention individually. I will miss the banter etc the most.

I wish you and club all best for the future, I will of course be keeping an eye on the Facebook and web site.' Pete is in a very small select group of people who have been both Club Champion and Club Handicap Champion, along with recording 2 aces along the way as well. Pete also mentioned that he will be in over the weekend, so it would be a good time to scrounge a drink. So, Pete and Fiona, its been a blast! I hope that you will keep checking in with the Club and have got a big enough house down there to accommodate the Chalgrave South Coast Tour 2016. Tuesday 8th December.Chris Baker is a real enigma.here is a man who in recent weeks has spent money on hedgehog wheels for his Go Kart Trolley and has also just invested a not inconsiderable sum on a new, superlight Lithium battery, so that the already light GoKart, equipped with supergrip hedgehog tyres is now powered by a battery pack that weighs about the same as his putter.today, he arrives for the seniors medal and he is carrying his bag..I actually daren't ask him why..

Thursday 3rd December.the result for the If Only is in.33 played, 2o didn't finish and 2 were DQ'd for not signing the card!! For the first time in the club's history, I believe, a score of Nett 78, 6 over par, won the competition!! Danny Glass and Mick Parrett were the only two to record sub 80 rounds! (thats nett to handicap!!) Braddy finished third in shots but was ousted to 4th place and out of the money as Steve Emmett got the flag further up the course despite finishing in 4th over 18 holes.with Alan Gunney in 11th with a nett 114!! Monday 30th December.at the end of the committee meeting we had the Captains November Raffle Draw. The prize is a superb Christmas Hamper, generously donated by the Seniors Section. Rupert Groves, Seniors Captain!!

Rupert wasn't at Committee and is still unaware of his victory, but even with out trying, the Seniors manage to make you laugh.!! Tuesday 24th November.a bittersweet day for the Seniors Captain, Rupert Groves. Being the leader of a burgeoning and vibrant section and leading that section by example has the occasional downside.today was one of those days. Despite the poor weather, the section once again turned out in force.which proved rather costly when the Senior Captain launched a 7 iron from the 5th tee, landed it gently and drifted it down the slope into the hole for an ace.The seniors gleefully celebrated the occasion at the bar.so the last two holes in one, or entries to the Not the Joe Silva Club, have been recorded by the seniors. Tuesday 24th November.The latest addition of the Decisions on the Rules of Golf has arrived on my desk.I know you all knew the Rules perfectly well, but there are 29 new decisions to grapple with, along with 81 further decisions where the ruling has been revised ( which presumably means that the previous decision has been changed and the revised decision is now the 'new one'!! So, with 110 new rulings, it is entirely possible that Dave Holland could break a new Rule on every shot on the round..

A number of these changes relate to the application of penalties to scores after a round has been completed, mainly to put an end to the armchair viewer spotting an infringement and ringing up to complain, with the previous result of players being DQ'd, but to a point, this will also affect our own games. For example, a player who removed an OOB stake as it was in the way, and he didn't know that he was not permitted to remove the stake (you can only remove hazard stakes as 'obstructions' OOB stakes are a permanent fixture and you must play the ball as it lies), would have the penalty added after his round.

If, however, he knew the rule correctly but still removed the stake, the penalty would remain as a DQ. This surely breaches one of those basic tenets of law, that 'ignorance of the law is no defence'!! However, in addition to the 2 shot penalty added for removing the OOB stake, a further 2 shot penalty is added at the end of the round (for each occurrence) so perhaps it does pay to know the Rules! However, just to add a bit of confusion, if you breach a rule that you didn't know, and its penalty is disqualification, then you will still be DQ'd after the round as before. For example, you have played a 'wrong ball' on the 12th and failed to correct it before teeing off on the 13th. These changes come into effect on 1st January 2016, there are new copies of the Rules of Golf in my office and are available free of charge to anyone who wants them.

For the real armchair enthusiast, the Decisions book is a great book to have, as it explains the backgrounds and reasons for a decision in a Q&A format. Notable changes are of course the 'anchoring' rule, where long/broomhandle putters are no longer able to be anchored against a part of the body. Whilst players may still grip the club against the forearm, if you intentionally hold the forearm against the body to create a stable point around which the stroke is made, then this again becomes anchoring! The New Decisions also deal with errors on Stableford Scoring, so if you incur a penalty after the round, the stableford score for the hole will be adjusted AND a further 2 shots will be deducted from the final total.

Perhaps one of the most relevant changes, to amateur golf, is Rule 14-3 which deals with the use of Measuring Devices. Previously, if the device enabled to user to gauge slope angle/windspeed or other conditions other than distance, its use on the course in competition was prohibited. This effectively meant that your mobile phone, despite being one of the most advance pieces of technology, equipped with apps to give you distance to the hole, becasue it also gave you wind speed/direction etc you could not use it.

The revised decision now only results in a DQ if you USE the mobile phone facility that is in breach of the rules. All this, and more, applies from 1st January 2016. Thursday 19th November.I just popped in to the club, as I needed to sort a few things out.

I was only here an hour, but Brian Gidley provides comedy gold in that time to keep the news pages ticking over.The Thursday crowd were all in the bar, Lucie in the kitchen and Clare was going through stuff with me, so Brian popped behind the bar to sort his drink out as no one was available.Aidan was with me and he went into the bar to help Brian, who seemed a bit flummoxed.' Ive got a brandy' says Brian, 'is this the port?' As he proffered a glass to Aidan of a deep ruby coloured liquid.'

Where di you get that from? Questioned Aidan on smelling the glass. 'out of that decanter' said Brian.

'Thats Blackcurrant juice' said Aidan. 'Oh, OK' said Brian as he downed it in one!! I wish I could say I was making this up, but I'm honestly not.. Tuesday 3rd November.a story from the weekend, of a lost ball on the 8th hole.now you would be excused for thinking, well, that's not difficult, we've all done that. There are copious opportunities in the 500+ dogleg yards to do that, the trees to the right off the tee, the rough to the right along its entire length, the trees to the left alongside the 12th, across onto the 17th and finally the plantation and long grass that wraps around the back of the green.

Well that really covers all the bases doesn't it?? Apparently no.

The Ladies section managed the impossible. I know there have been occasions when people have considered the greens slower than they might like, and felt that a trim would be in order, but never has it reached proportions that a ball has been lost on the green.until Sunday, where two fourballs ended up on the putting surface at the same time, but only 7 putted out as one ball was, apparently lost.

As all players left the green, someone pointed out the ball left forlornly on the putting surface and one of the ladies went back to putt out.should have gone to specsavers. Tuesday 3rd November.In a moment of complete madness I agreed to the installation of the new coffee machine, in the period between the seniors disappearing to play golf and returning to the clubhouse after the round. The new machine has a coin slot in a different place. That was the start of the problems!

It also has touchscreen type buttons instead of physical ones that you can press in. There is also a small cup shelf, where you place the mug ready for the dispense. Unfortunately, it would appear that the mug also fits underneath the cup shelf, which makes an almighty mess when the coffee drops onto the empty shelf, splatters about and then drains through into the cup below, doesn't it Bob Hall?? Finally it once again has a coin op system that accepts a variety of coins, between 5p and £2. That is going to stitch up whoever has been paying in 1p and 2p pieces for the past 4 weeks!! Clearly, in the seniors, there are some real coffee connoisseurs. Derek Collins for example, was intrigued by the options of instant and ground.

'Which one's cheapest?' I'm not going to tell Peter Kay we have a new machine, as he will stay up all night worrying about how it works!! But I will get a text from him by 7.35am tomorrow!!

Sat 31st October.The Halloween Handicap is the usual carnage, except for some reason, maybe because it actually fell on Halloween itself, it was way worse than usual. The usual rules applied.There were 4 holes where the stableford score was doubled, the 'treats' but there were two holes where the scores were tripled and then became minus scores, the 'tricks' Tricks are worse than you think, as the original score no longer counts either! You have to feel sorry for Frank Howarth, who had a 2 nett 1 on the 16th for 4 points. It was a trick hole, so his 4 points became -16, but he didn't get the original 4 either, so it is effectively - 20! Add that to his -6 (worth -8) with the other trick hole, and with -28 points on two holes it will not surprise you to hear he didn't win!!

Normally, someone with a middle range score happens to score well on the treat holes and scores particularly badly on the tricks. So their score improves dramatically. It didn't happen. Most went backwards, some substantially.

Lorain Ronis came in with 20 points and finished with 1. The top three all had lower scores than their normal scores, they just happened to score badly enough on the trick holes to survive. All a bit of fun, and my thanks to all who played as the surplus helps to fund the Halloween and Fireworks Party that starts in a couple of hours time. Thursday 22nd October.an item on last nights BBC news is making me think.Wentworth are changing their pricing structure for members. Where previously it was £8,000 per annum to be allowed to strike a ball off the hallowed turf, from April 2017 that will rise to an eye watering £16,000 per annum.

You may think that is a tad excessive. That is not the half of it. If you are an existing member, in order to be ALLOWED to pay the new £16,000 fee, you will first have to stump up a debenture (effectively an interest free loan that won't get repaid) of £100,000 in order to have the opportunity to pay the £16K a year!!

But in an absolute masterstroke of marketing genius, this is being touted as a great deal, as if you are not currently a member, it will cost you £125,000 for the debenture.so, from an existing members point of view, they are saving £25,000!!! I am really worried about the exodus that is going to occur as members leave in droves to sign up for this.. Monday 19th October, just getting the website back up to date after a weekend away, and the Competition Committee Cup gives an example of how to play golf! John Trott accumulates a meagre 26 points on the way to a lower third of the table finish.but clearly that was 17 holes of mediocrity and a 2 on a par three. The two though, was the only one in the competition, netting him a cool £26, only £4 less than the winner, Dave McGarry who had to play well for 4+ hours for an extra £4!! Tuesday 13th October.now I know that the Seniors section seem to spend most of their time creating hilarious newsworthy items, effortlessly and without really trying to, but currently leading that burgeoning section, regularly seeing over 55/60 players on a Tuesday, is Captain Rupert Groves and his deputy Bob Hall.

These two, as well as leading the section in their inimitable style, have been driving a senior section fundraising exercise in a way never previously seen in 20+ years. I know they have been doing it but I didn't realise just how effective they have been, until Rupert plonked a cheque on my desk to pass to Vince as the FIRST payment into the Captains Charity, Keech Hospice. It totals a smidgen over £1,000.

Gentlemen of the Seniors Section, I applaud you. Tuesday 13th October.The final word on the Woburn Masters, the eventual champion and our senior marshal.Patrick's role standing on the 3rd fairway, of course, was as a ball spotter!! One might churlishly suggest that as he didn't see the ball that hit him (otherwise he would have got out of the way!) that he wasn't perhaps cut out for that role. The national papers though, missed one of those golden headline opportunities, for which I can't take credit for myself, it was Peter Whitton, this morning, that pointed out that FitzPatrick HitzPatrick should have adorned the back page of The Sun! We even have a photo of the winner, checking with Patrick that (a) he is OK (b) do the glasses work and (c) was there any chance of the binoculars being used!! Monday 12th October.Patrick fires off an indignant email, as it would appear that I have been given duff info by Pete Warren.Patrick was marshalling the 3rd fairway not the 2nd when he was struck by the ball from the eventual winner.so Patrick was the direct cause of Matt Fitzgerald's only bogey on front 9!!

I was going to make comment on the earlier missive, that a small donation to Patrick from his substantial winnings would not have gone amiss, as a par was perfectly acceptable score and he could have stopped it being worse.However, with a bogey, perhaps there is a reason why such a contribution was not forthcoming. Sunday 11th October.Chalgrave seniors marshalling at the Seniors Masters have a direct impact on the outcome of the trophy.Patrick Ng, the man with the smallest surname and a physical stature only surpassed in size by Braddy, is marshalling the 2nd fairway as Matt Fitzpatrick tees off.

At home, Pete Warren is watching the Masters on Sky TV, and realises instantly that as the ball lands on the fairway and bounces forwards, that the marshall the ball hits is Patrick, keeping the ball nicely on the fairway from where he made a par and went on to win a cool £500,000!! Pete Warren rang Patrick to check he was OK, as by then, he was battered black and blue, as Pete had replayed the impact 400 times on Sky TV!! Sat 10th October.more comedy from the clubmatch.a Henlow player arrives by the side of the 18th green in a buggy as we finish the hole.

We are the last group out, and he asks if we have, by chance, found any car keys on our way around the course. Regrettably no, but I furnish him with the benefit of my 20+ years of running this place, and say to him, that before he goes out and scoures the course, he should go and empty his golf bag, completely. Take all the clubs out, shake it upside down, unzip every pocket and turn that inside out as well. The keys, in my experience, will be in the golf bag. He says thanks, and heads back to his bag to check again, and then 10 minutes later, we see him forlornly heading back up the 18th in search of the elusive keys. He lives, apparently, in Sandy!! An hour and a half later, all his playing partners and team mates have gone home, he comes into the bar looking sheepish, having just driven around every single hole, bar the first three, when, as he glanced at his bag which was on the buggy with him, he noticed a small zipped pocket he had forgotten about..If he ever decides to leave Henlow, he will fit in well here..

Sat 10th October.I'm playing in the Club Match at Home v Henlow. We get around to the 10th hole and we are waiting as group in front has not yet cleared the green.so you stand about having a chat, as you do.and the opposition venture the comment, 'I love this hole, I nearly had a hole in one here once, have you had one Steve?' On here and on the 5th. I nearly choked with laughter when he asked my playing partner, Joe Silva, if he had ever had a hole in one. Thursday 8th October.something I forgot to put up a while ago.and Phil Greenhill sent me a reminder of my error! It is a note of thanks from Phil. If you wouldn't mind, could you post something on the news page thanking the members & friends of Chalgrave for their help over the last few years, we managed to turn around a golf society that barely covered its own costs into a donation of £2,623:00 for the British Heart Foundation in memory of my Dad, Peter Greenhill.

Cheque presentation made on Charity Day, you can use any of the photos from my facebook albums if you wish. Some have played in it, many gave to it, including you. If you could thank all those that have helped from all The Greenhill clan.

Although we have now drawn a line under the actual Golf Society Days/Weekends as we thought 10 years was a good number, we now have the occassional auction, on facebook, of varied items in aid of varied charities. I was always happy to support it Phil, and I applaud you and everyone who took part in it for honouring the memory of your Dad in such a great way.

Friday 2nd October.some late news this week as Patrick Ng announces he aced the 10th AGAIN, to join the Two Holes in One Club, having previously aced it with a 7 iron in 2013, this time a 7 wood was required as he aced it in a matchplay game against the Seniors Captain, which I'm sure must breach some rule of ettiquette somewhere.' Can you let Joe Silva know I've got two now' said Patrick.. Thursday 1st October. OK OK OK, I give up. I will hold my hands up and admit to a senior moment..about 7 days ago, one of the club members, (a senior I believe!!) was having a problem with his Go Kart Trolley. So I said I would sort it out, send it back to Go Kart and get it fixed.

We put the trolley in my office and I said I would let him know when it was back.An hour or so later, I had a bit of a eureka moment and realised that the problem might not be the trolley itself, but rather it might be the battery or the charger. I tested this theory by putting my battery on his 'broken' trolley and, lo and behold, it worked perfectly! So its either the battery was flat as he had forgotten to charge it, or he had not connected the charger properly, or the charger is broken.

I emailed and messaged him with the good news, that it wasn't the trolley and I needed the battery and charger to test them.. I got messages back.' No idea what you are talking about, I don't have a GoKart trolley!!' So, the person who I thought it was, it wasn't. I cannot, for the life of me, remember who it was! I was working on the basis that seeing as I had said they would collect, fix and return the repaired trolley within a week, that someone by now would have put their head around my office door and asked if the trolley is back yet, but it hasn't happened.

Probably because there is another senior moment going on elsewhere and some one somewhere is wondering where the hell they left their Go Kart Trolley!!!! So, if anyone knows who it was, can they please point them in my direction!! Sun 27th September.Today, there was a sudden lurch in the time/space continuum and the world changed forever. I witnessed something that shocked me to the core, as it is a clear indication that we are all getting older.Ronnie Cooper came in and ordered an orange and lemonade.Ronnie joined as an Associate Member in 1999, so its taken him almost 16 years to not order a pint of bitter. I've attached a photo as Mick Bewley will never believe it. Sat 26th September.7.10am.

I've just opened up, and first in is Steve Glover who has set the bar high for the day.we are standing in the bar and he says, 'have you been decorating, I can smell paint?' I said, 'not painting, what else do you think it could be?' He looks around him and offers 'floor polish??' 'One of those words is close ' I said. 'Polish' he says!!

'Should have gone to Specsavers, Steve' was my response!! He looked around again and finally noticed the 96 square metres of carpet, hard flooring and a dancefloor!! How the hell is he planning on seeing a small white sphere this morning??

Thursday 24th September. Note to self: at no point ever take the greenstaff on at eating. Whilst I fondly imagined that I was reasonably competent in this department, I am now a chasened and heavily defeated man. I took the greenstaff out for breakfast as they managed to achieve the figures for heat output from the biomass boiler that we need to do each year, in 10 months. The past month, where the log business has gone mad, and the course has been growing like the blaze s, has been challenging. They selected the Harvester, 'eat all you like Breakfast' in Hockcliffe as the venue, not necessarily just for the volume of food. Jack and Danny seemed very interested in the crayons and the colouring in sheets as well!

Jamie's breakfast didn't fit on his plate. The small bowl to the edge of the picture contains his 5 hash browns. Toast has already been consumed, as has coffee and juice. My 'full english' paled into insignificance alongside this gargantuan mass of food. Before you ask, yes, it was finished! Thursday 24th September.all done.the club bar area has undergone an upgrade. Gone is the grotty green carpet.

Also gone is the portable dancefloor. In its place, a permanent wooden dancefloor and the thick, plush carpet. Meanwhile, the beer and coffee prices have remained the same.

I know, that's very nice of me!! No, you can't wear soft spikes and definitely not metal spikes in the bar area!! Friday 18th.honesty and Integrity from the Handicaps and Competitions Committee. From the submitted cards, Parrett and Hawker appeared to be in 2nd place in the Parrett Hawker.but it turned out that Messrs Cook and Davis had not only added their handicaps together incorrectly, they also calculated the 3/8th combined incorrectly on the incorrectly added handicaps!!!!

Fortunately from their point of view, their obligation is to put THEIR full handicap on the card correctly and all mathematical errors thereafter are the responsibility of the the Committee to correct. So Parrett and Hawker were moved down to third in the Parrett and Hawker, by the Chair of Handicaps Hawker, who was sick as a Parrett!!! Friday 18th.news from County Comps, as Cally successfully defends her title winning the Beds Ladies Past Captains Championship for the 2nd consecutive year.and I'm expecting great things on Sunday when the County 36 hole mixed foursomes takes place at Aylesbury Vale.there are 22 pairs entered, of which the Chalgrave contingent make up 9 of them!! I'm expecting an email by Sunday night telling me about a clean sweep.No pressure then!! Thursday 10th September.Nothing like starting the day with a sarcastic rant at people who waste your time.PRS is an organisation who charge licences for the playing of music to then, in theory, pay out royalties to the songwriters. They are, in my experience, pretty incompetent in their recordkeeping. Which makes you wonder if the money ever makes it to the songwriter.so my email missive this morning.

Dear Mrs Francis Not for the first time, I have received a Final Demand threatening m e with unleasing the dogs of hell upon me for failing to pay your invoice. Not for the first time, you are wrong. Our cheque, No 7677 for £108.38 was debited from our bank account on 19th August 2015, and presumably credited to your account around that date as well. Not for the first time, we have completed your ridiculously amateurishly created form, returned it on time, received your invoice, paid it and then had threatening letters as your systems of accounting must be on a par with the original form.

How complicated can it be to use a computer? Surely in this day and age, you can create an online form and use a computerised accounting system to keep track of incoming payments. Then, you would not waste so much money in sending out umpteen reminders, threatening letters and such like, all with reply paid envelopes in there as well. Not for the first time, I won't get any response or acknowledgement from you for this email, confirming that you have infact received our cheque and that you have made an error, again, and that you apologise for the ongoing incompetence in your office. I have been in business for 22 years with the golf club.

We have had a PRS licence as long as we have had a clubhouse. I have NEVER not paid you or indeed any supplier who has sent me a correct invoice. If I had a choice in the matter, I would go elsewhere. I look forward to not hearing from you shortly!

Yours Sincerely, extremely so, Steve Rumball Managing Director Chalgrave Manor Golf Club Tuesday 8th September.I have today received the most bizarre letter ever. Someone has taken the trouble to print a sticky label with our address on, stick that to the front of a white self seal envelope, add a self stick 1st class stamp, not a franked mark, and of course add the 4 white pages of A4 that have been folded twice to make them the appropriate size to fit into the envelope, finally sticking down the flap and putting it into a postbox somewhere near Gatwick, as that is the Royal Mail Centre that processed it. Page One of the 4 pages says: ERROR>>>ERROR>>>ERROR>>>ERROR>>>ERROR>>>ERROR>>>Pages 2, 3 and 4 are completely white, pristine nothing printed on them whatsoever! I took it out and handed it to Rupert Groves, saying that this letter arrived this morning and it must be for the seniors section, as it makes no sense whatsoever!!!!! Monday 7th Sept.despite having a ladies section with one of the smallest active group of players amongst the Bedfordshire County Golf Clubs, our ladies keep flying the Chalgrave flag deep into the county competitions. The latest to feature are Lorain Ronis who won the 1st Nett Prize of the County 1st Division and also winning the Silver Coronation Medal, which dates back to 1929! Not to be outdone, Cally and Sue overcame South Beds in the County Foursomes and are now waiting to hear who their opponents are and the venue for the next round.

Next round is a slight understatement. It's actually the FINAL!!!!! The match will be played at neutral venue at a date still to be agreed.I hope to be able to report a favourable outcome in due course! These are fantastic achievements and a testament to the competitiveness of the ladies section. Thursday 3rd September.A snippet from the Molers.Dave Burden is out with John Townley and Terry Payne, for the normal 'social' Molers Thursday Golf Round.Dave is always good for a bit of witty repartee, and today was no exception.he said 'Terry and John have been having a right ding dong battle out there from the start, after 5 holes they were still level, nothing to separate them.' Literally nothing to separate them.they were still equal on zero points after 5 holes.I'm waiting for them to come in to see who won. Monday 24th August.the news page is not normally the haunt of factual golfing stuff, so in order for 'normal' news to make it signifies something of outstanding proportions has occurred.and indeed it has.

I also usually add my own wording to a missive sent through for inclusion, but again, such is the magnitude of this achievement, I would not want to detract from it by making any alterations/additions myself. It stands up, and speaks for itself. So, from Dave Bromley. As Captain of the Chalgrave Scratch Team today I am very proud of them. We played away at Millbrook today (where teams very rarely get any points) and we came away with a 2 and half, 2 and half draw so getting the 1 point we needed to ensure us getting the runners up spot and so getting the promotion to the top division. What an achievement for a club of our stature where our lowest handicap I think is 5 to be playing against the county elite where most of the players will be scratch or better.

It's gonna be tough but what an experience it's gonna be for the lads. So once again my many thanks to everyone who represented Chalgrave in this years county summer scratch, that is. Scott Kelly, Mick Parrett, Tim Bevan, Colman Horgan, Paul Northcott, Dave McGarry, Steve Howarth and myself. Be proud of yourselves and I hope the club as a whole is as well.

Once again, it is a great achievement to gain 3 promotions in a row and to now be mixing it with the County Elite. Friday 14th August.I have some 2 for 1 tickets on my desk, for the Travis Perkins Senior Masters 4th - 6th September at Woburn. Gone, it would appear, are the days when they would send us a few complimentaries for sticking up a poster to advertise it! Still, if you are planning on going, instead of £15 each for a day ticket or £30 each for a season ticket for the whole tournament, you can do it at half price! 10 tickets are available on a first come first served basis, it would be nice if you popped a small donation into the Captains Charity Jar.

Tuesday 11th August.Chris Baker.(what - again!!???) arrives in my office with the usual sheepish grin on his face which normally precedes an admission of something daft along with a request for assistance.I may be deaf but I tell you what, I think I'm psychic!! He then explains that he was running late this morning as he couldn't find his glasses, but he eventually found them.so presumably he put them on which one would think would improve his eyesight, and then promptly walked past his trolley battery and didn't notice it, so he wants to borrow mine..I did, of course, as I'm a kind and generous soul, allow him to do so. I didn't mention the fact that he wasn't wearing his glasses.. Thursday 6th August.it is rare that Mick Bewley and Ronnie Cooper are struggling to find something to take the rise out of, or find something hilarious to discuss at length at the bar, but when an opportunity is plonked in front of them on a gold plated platter, tied up with yellow ribbons and a bow, and bells (literally!) on it, they are not going to pass up on that opportunity!!! So yesterday, when their golfing buddy Paul Godfrey turns up in his new car, the sarcasm, humour, cutting remarks and general p*ss taking reached a level not seen in years.the 'own goal', an exocet missile strike from 5 yards outside of the box, screaming into the top corner of his own net.is the new car.gone is the blue convertible, renault megane, and in its place is a red convertible Noddy car. I'm not sure of the make, as it is so small I 'm not sure that there is space for the manufacturers logo.but suffice it so say, its small, bright red, and Paul being a solid, chunky, reasonable tall bloke, looks bl**dy enormous sitting in the drivers seat.Mick and Ronnie have had to have the day off work today as they are so dehydrated from the amount of tears of laughter they shed last night. Thursday 6th August.an update from the Chris Baker GPS saga.and an example of how 'many a true word said in jest' is so true.so Jamie found the GPS, still clamped in its holder, which somehow Chris had manage to dislodge from his trolley between the 10th green and 11th tee, in the woods.

He has performed his own modification of the design, attaching an ultra strong 'curly cable' as added security between the device and his trolley. The was a curly security cable supplied to him by First Capital Connect to keep his keys on when he was a train driver.Jokingly, I said 'Just for clarification, you didn't ever lose your train then?'

Well sort of, I took the wrong one once.' .and Chris still wonders WHY they gave him early retirement.

Monday 3rd August.Chris Baker comes in at lunchtime, not a happy bunny. He was, you will recall, the recipient of many Go Kart accessories in the past few weeks, in a concerted effort by his wife to keep him at the golf course and not at home. One of those accessories was a GPS device holder. This had already caused Chris a number of problems, not least the fitting of it to his trolley. It didn't fit, he said.

I pointed out the second sentence of the fitting instructions.' If you have an auto handle, please start at No 6 on the fittings instructions'. Chris, of course, with an Auto Handle, was starting at 1. A while later, he returned.

'It doesn't fit together' he said, holding two sections that clearly needed to be fitted together. He passed them over. 'CLICK' as they fitted together! Hand them back, away we go. I didn't expect to hear any more, but yesterday Chris, at lunchtime was despondent.

The GPS Accessory Holder, complete with held GPS had fallen off his trolley (presumably as he still hadn't fitted it correctly!!!) I said 'take a buggy and go and get it, you must know where it is?' 'Well, No' was the rather odd answer. 'Chris, the point of a GPS sat nav is that after you have taken your tee shot, it tells you how far you have to go to the flag, which aids your club selection for the next shot. Therefore, if you are on the 6th, and it says 325 yards, and then when you play your next shot, its not there anymore, it can only be somewhere between the previous shot and where you are now. When did you know you had lost it?' 'The 11th' says Chris.

'OK' I said, 'when did you look at it previously?' 'I don't know, I was playing cr*p (by which I presume he means he was coming up 20 yards short of a green because he had used the wrong club because he hadn't used the Sat Nav!). So, off he went in the buggy to search, presumably just the first 10 holes, but to be honest I didn't dare ask, he was gone a long time so he probably did 12 to 18 as well.all to no avail. The GPS holder and Sat Nav is out there somewhere.

Look on the bright side, he has 60 seniors on the case this morning who can look for it. In the Baker Household, there could be many bittersweet moments.Mrs Baker spending endless hours trawling Ikea for a piece of furniture, then having it wobble and collapse inside a week. However, at least she still knows where the collapsed sofa is.

Monday 3rd August.Last Tuesday afternoon, we suffered damage to the 4th green, as a Red Vauxhall Corsa, Registration MM08RUY came into the course, did a number of handbrake turns on the 4th Green and then left in the direction of Toddington. The act of vandalism, criminal damage, call it what you will, was witnessed by a Club Member, who recorded the numberplate, but was unable to manoeuvre back to the gate to block it before they got away. He came down to the club and reported it to me, and I went up into Toddington and immediately found the vehicle. Perhaps it was the bright orange shirt with Chalgrave Golf Club on it that gave me away, but he knew I was after him and sped off.

The police are on the case, and so am I. The car has been seen regularly around Toddington, and we believe that we now know who the driver is. Once I have this confirmed, I will be pursuing a civil action for damages, nothwithstanding any criminal prosecution that the Police may follow.

If the lout can afford a shiny red car, he can afford to pay for the hours of work it has taken to get the green back into a passable condition. One week on, you can still see the tyre marks. If anyone spots the car in Toddington, I would be pleased to hear from you. Tuesday 28th July.There are times when this Club just takes my breath away. At no stage of the original 'back of a fag packet' business plan - the very first draft was 'Build a golf course. Grass, how difficult can it be to make it grow?'

Which was handily short as I didn't and still don't smoke and fag packets were hard to come by to write the business plan on - did I ever envisage that the combination of the business that now exists and the fantastic membership that makes the Club what it is, would make such a magnificent contribution, annually, to a massively worthy local charity Keech Hospice. The aftermath of yet another superb Charity Day, where raffles, book sales, auctions, hole sponsors, random donations and Captains Charity Fines, the appearance of 130+ golfers in various 'standards' of golfing apparell, from the normal golf gear, to the bizarre sight of Paul Northcott in a tutu and a headband, all combined to produce the quite magnificent total £4,750 raised on the day for Keech.

This will take the Captains Charity cumulative total contribution to Keech Hospice to a smidgen over £95,000 and the question is really will Mick and Ann be able to break the £100,000 barrier this year? Even Captain Mick's own inability to grasp the concept that Charity Day is a mechanism for getting loads of people to play and contribute to the fund, whilst distributing prizes and goodwill to all and sundry, by leading his own team to the 1st prize failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the assembled masses!! At one point, I had all four clubhouse staff on the dancefloor, with Hollie as the American Diner Waitress, Aaron as Elvis and Clare and Lucie still going strong after 10 hour shifts! One of my team, Archie McIntosh, a man with a Chalgrave background who knows how to party, but now embraces the quiet demureness of a Dunstable Downs Member put it perfectly.

'No other golf club does a social quite like Chalgrave. Looking forward to next year' My sincere thanks to every single person who contributed, to the Greenstaff who pumped thousands of gallons off greens at 6.00am after the Friday deluges, to the golfers who came, played and paid, to the hole sponsors, the evening guests, the Clubhouse staff who worked and partied hard all day, the Captains, and the immense contribution to the smooth running of the day by Vince. Thursday 23rd July.Just catching up with stuff from the weekend still!!

TWO new entries on the Not the Joe Silva Club Board, as both Rian Maginn and Colin Barden ace the 5th, Rian on Saturday with an 8 iron, and Colin in a downwind gale on Sunday with a wedge...no sign whatsoever of a Silva ace though. Tuesday 14th July.It has been a regular feature over the years, the Tuesday seniors ability to cause chaos at the drop of a hat.

Today was a masterpiece in the creation of effortless chaotic mayhem, arranged and orchestrated by the Seniors Section Captain, Rupert Groves. At 7.45, just before the bulk of the seniors section arrive to sign in, Rupert arrives, burdened down by a large batch of colour photographs taken on a recent Seniors awayday, which he has for free distribution to his section. He proceeds to neatly arrange these for viewing and collection, on the narrow shelf in the lobby area.

Over the next five minutes, roughly 50 seniors arrive to sign in, which means that they have to pass through the lobby area into the bar. The first 20 odd make it, as they follow the time honoured general club traditions of completely ignoring all signage and notices and other paraphanalia on the way through.indeed Taff Rowlands made it past 4 times in 5 minutes. A few had a passing glance but clearly couldn't see well enough to recognise themselves or indeed any of their fellow seniors and probably thought that this was a random display of photo's I have put out, of old geezers playing golf at a club that wasn't Chalgrave!! Ken Goodland started the downward spiral, recognising himself and claiming his photograph. Suddenly it clicked. All the passers by returned, searching for themselves amongst the 50+ pictures of an old bloke with a set of golf clubs on a fairway on a green background.

Factor into this, Tarby and John Steele who are picking up pictures at random and holding them 3' from their eyes in the hope there might be some spark of recognition. Come to think of it, how DO they know what they look like now? It might have been 30+ years since they last saw their own reflection accurately? Anyway, as you might imagine, once Tarby and John made it into the area by the lobby door into the bar, it was as though there had been a lorry overturned in the M1 Roadworks. Those in the bar were stuck, and traffic quickly backed up past the junction with my office. The lobby slowed and jammed as well, but the influx of new seniors at least had a load of photo's to look!

Tarby and John finished looking at the photos but were now wedged up against a shut door to the bar, with a solid mass of seniors behind them, and a door which opened towards them..eventually, they managed to get it open and seniors exploded in all directions like a champagne bottle wielded by Lewis Hamilton.the mayhem subsided and things returned to normal, well whatever passes for normal on a Tuesday morning. Five minutes later, Rupert passes through the lobby, clears away the remaining photo's, completely oblivious to the 10 minutes of mayhem he had caused!!! Rarely has a Seniors Captain managed to cause such chaos so effortlessly!

Monday 6th July.Chris Baker comes in to order some accessories for his Go Kart trolley, which his much better half is purchasing for his birthday.these bits include the hedgehog wheels, which are brilliant in the winter period, making sure that the trolley doesn't slip and slide about in virtually any horrendous weather conditions.it strikes me that Mrs Baker is an extremely willing golf widow who is trying to ensure that there is no excuse whatsoever for Chris being unable to play. Friday 3rd July.we come to the end of a torrid week, but one thing that this week has shown, is what an outstanding group of members and staff we have here. On Wednesday, one of our club members, John Mould, suffered a heart attack whilst playing golf with his mates, Frank and Richard. They were out at the back of the course, but fortunately were in buggies and they got him back to the clubhouse in double quick time. Peter was on duty and activated the defibrillator and with the help of some more club members, they operated the defib and performed heart massage until the emergency services arrived. We had ambulances and the East Anglia Air Ambulance arrived and landed on the 9th fairway.

After extensive work by the emergency services, John was taken by normal ambulance to the L&D. The Doctor from the Air Ambulance went with them, so he could continue to help John. Sadly, despite the herculean efforts by staff, club members and the emergency services, John had suffered too great a trauma and passed away later that day.

I am immensely proud of my staff, in particular Peter Kay, and our club members, in the efforts that they made to help John. Tuesday 30th June.'

New boy' Jack Cook started work with the greenstaff yesterday, on his probationary period, which will possibly lead to him taking an apprentice position with us. After a 6.30am start on his first day, he was still here at 8.45pm having played some golf (also for the first time!) with Danny and Jamie after work. After being here for 14 hours + on day one, he still had a smile on his face and was here again at 6.30am today for more!! Good start Jack!!! Thursday 25th June.following the capture of illegal immigrants at Toddington services yesterday, I have asked Pete/Clare/Lucie and the Greenstaff to keep an eye out and make sure that they charge visitor green fees if any make their way across the course..

Thursday 18th June.OK I have given the albatrosses serious consideration.I am happy to have a record of albatrosses, and players who have achieved one will be known as 'Trossers'. If you achieve more that one albatross, you will be a 'Big Trosser' and anyone who manages to get the whole set of albatrosses on all our Par 5's here at Chalgrave, will be known as a 'Complete Trosser'. As far as I am aware, Paul Northcott, Colin Barden and Graham Tarbox are Trossers, there may be more trossers in the club I'm not aware of. Anyone wanting to be on record as a Trosser needs to contact me ASAP with the details of the Hole and approximately the date that you became a Trosser. Thursday 18th June.we may be a 'small club' but we do BIG things.

On Saturday on Captains Day, amongst all the silly stuff and the golf (which was also silly at times), we did something serious and big. Immediate Past Captains Steve Howarth and Alison Savage handed over a cheque to Keech Hospice for the sum of £6,143 taking the total contribution that our 'small club' has made to Keech Hospice to a grand total of £90,0075. Wednesday 17th June.an email from Colin Barden, pooh poohing the 100+ holes in one and wanting to know when I am starting an Albatross Club.having just holed his second shot on the 3rd from about 190 yards for a 2.

To be fair, he has a point, as I know of probably 5 or 6 albatrosses in the 20+ years we have been going. When I get one myself Colin, I will give it serious consideration!! Wednesday 17th June.I receive an email from Chalgrave's most remote member, USA Associate Section Chairman, Phil Barter. I gave him an update on what has been happening and he will be over in September and will pop in and see us. Phil reminded me of a picture that used to adorn the website, of him, on some far distant Captains Day in the past, teeing off on the 10th hole in only his grundies. He had started on 11 so it was his last hole and as usual there had been a bit of alcoholic refreshments around the course. In a moment of bravado, Phil announced to his playing partners, that he was about to get a hole in one on the 10th, and to celebrate, he would jump into the pond, so he had prepared himself..as he was about to draw back the club, Nick Hawker, one of his playing partners that day, said 'thats OK Phil, it's a gimmee from there..'

Sadly, I don't believe that PB jumped in.. Tuesday 9th June.I've been away for a couple of weeks, hence the lull in the news page, but I return to a seniors Tuesday for my 2nd day back and things immediately return to normal.my first thought as I see Graham Tarbox signing in for today, alongside Seniors 'newbie' Harry Lyons, is that could be part of a 4 ball from hell.with 18 holes of continual 'I can top your last story'!. Harry Lyons confirms he is entirely adequately equipped to be part of the seniors section, by putting his head around the door and asking if we have 'free wifi' in the club, to which I reply 'yes, for about the last 5 years!' Harry said he didn't know, so I took him on a tour of the clubhouse, pointing out the numerous signs which are emblazoned 'free wifi' and show the access code.as I said, perfectly qualified. Tuesday 19th May.Mark Harvey and Vijay Mistry get a poor reward for their third magnificent victory in the Daily Mail Foursomes as they make it to the 4th round.very few have ventured that far. After a magnificent victory at home they have drawn the short straw and have to go and play at some dodgy track called Woburn.its a tough life!!!

Tuesday 19th May.an update from the Seniors Matchplay of yesterday.after waiting for an hour to meet up with each other whilst only being 40 feet apart, one in a car and and one in the clubhouse, apparently Rick and Ken then decided that the weather was so bad that they would abandon the opportunity to play and agreed to meet up on another day to play!!! I wish I could tell you that this is made up but its not.its all true!! We have to go through it all again! Monday 18th May.Dreadful day, rain in large lumps hitting the ground. Rick Maughan arrives at 8.00am, as he has his Seniors KO to play. Grab a coffee and wait for his opponent, Ken Forder. One hour later, no sign of Ken, so he pops his head around the office door and I give him Ken's home number.

The response, he left at 8.00am. 2 minutes later Ken appears in the office doorway. He has been sitting outside in his car for 40 minutes waiting for Rick to arrive!!!

Its Monday, 9.12am, and the seniors are causing chaos already! Its going to be a long week!!.. Thursday 14th May. Dennis Richards is in with the molers, comes in after his round and complains about bits of grass on his ball! I said 'just to clarify, are you complaining that we are cutting the fairways?' So, I assume that if next week, we let the fairways grow so that they look like light rough (and they will do as we are cutting some of them twice a week at the moment in the current flush of growth!) and Dennis chunks it 10 yards down the fairway as he can't get into the back of the ball, he will be a happy bunny (or moler!)!

Thursday 14th May.Pete has returned from his 4 day cruise to the Channel Islands and beyond and 'regales' us with stories of the force 9 gale that followed them around!! They went to Guernsey, but Pete only knows that becasue the Captain told him that over the PA system. The ship was too big to dock in port, so the weighed anchor off the coast and would normally be transferred by small boat to the quayside.except that the weather was so bad that they would not launch the small transfer boats and the rain/cloud gales actually meant that at no time, as the visibility was so poor, did they actually SEE Guernsey! So, the Captain set off for a different port for them and ended up in Le Havre.the ferry terminal.

Only Pete could take his Missus on a 4 day cruise to a ferry terminal!! Sunday 10th May.Kelvin aces the 5th with a 9 iron to record his second ace at Chalgrave, although for some reason the first does not currently appear on the list.

People often quote statistics about the chances of an ace, or winning the lottery, or meeting Elvis in a pub in Toddington. Here's one for you. If your name is Kelvin Weedon, the odds of you winning the bonus ball lottery in 5 years, is greater than the chance of getting two holes in one!!!

Thursday 7th May.just seen a card from the Molers.where the back 9 score of the marker (who diplomatically and cunningly didn't sign the card) was a meagre 8 stableford points.which surpassed the score of the player, a certain Mr Steele, by 7 stableford points!!! There are rumours of over 150 divots being taken on the back nine between them!! Thursday 7th May.a sad day in the history of Chalgrave Manor Golf Club, as it is the funeral of Kay Annis, a fantastic lady whose spirit and determination has been awe inspiring. Kay was the absolute mainstay of the establishment of the ladies section at Chalgrave, and inspired many new golfers to become the players that they are today. It has been an honour to have known her and she will be greatly missed and never forgotten. The funeral is at 12 followed by a gathering here at the club to celebrate her life.

Friday 1st May.Pete is taking his Missus on a short cruise, to Guernsey etc.the shipping forecast shows gale force winds in the Channel.Good Luck with that Pete!! Friday 1st May.Greenkeeper Jamie brings me a putter he found on the course.it sadly did not survive the experience. It was in the deep rough at the back of the 15th Green. I am assuming that someone did drop it by mistake, but it was in such a strange place that there is the possibility that it got slung there after missing a short one!!

My point though, is this. If it was slung there, then it was hit by the cutting deck of a £28,000 rotary mower. Fortunately, the bits remained under the deck when it was smashed apart by the blade. The blade and the deck did survive the experience as well, but could easily have been substantially damaged. If you are going to chuck putters away, can you please ensure that you follow the Adrian Purser technique and make sure they are lodged high in a tree where they can't get hit by a mower. Sunday 26th April.Every year brings a new batch of Virgins for the Gibson +50, and this year saw three new arrivals in the +50 category who were clearly taking it with the seriousness that was required!!

Dan, Joe and Nick sporting 'L' plates and babies dummies!! Friday 24th April.Congratulations to Mark Harvey on his debut at a Captains Awayday.we know Mark was on the Captains Awayday, because he turned up here at 8.30am instead of Mentmore!!

Captains Awaydays have long been the source of humorous anecdotes on travel, Tim Smith gained the Tag of Squadron Leader after his high speed flight to Woodhall Spa many years ago, Richie, as I recall, did a 250 mile round trip to go to a venue about 50 miles away, Kelvin and his van at Magnolia and Mick Yule, more Budweiser than you can imagine and a coach at Kingsthorpe all spring to mind. The clue, Mark, is in the word 'awayday'!! Tuesday 21st April.there is something about Tuesdays that just tickles your funny bone, and today we had a classic example is this, in visual humour.just short of 12 noon, with the seniors spread out all over the course, the sun beating down and all things looking well with the world, we had the slightly bizarre sight of a senior, perspiring hard, who had lost his trousers and all his golf gear, running across from the 4th tee and around the back of the 18th green. Clearly, his knowledge of etiquette and his desperation to recover the trousers and clubs from where ever he had lost them was of greater priority than David Andrew's golf swing as he played his shot towards the 9th green. Stopping in mid backswing, from the clubhouse it appeared that a few choice words might have passed.it was at that point that I realised that my expectation of the ridiculous as a state of normality on a Tuesday was in fact the culprit, and it was a random 'senior' jogger on the public footpath and not a dishevelled, clubless Tuesday senior!!

Tuesday 21st April.Seniors in vast numbers.64 of them today.Peter Whitton's state of the art Seniors Competition Entry Programme on his computer, which allows them to enter, prints their card for them, allocates them into a random draw system, is simply a state, not a state of the art!! It can't cope with anything over 60!!!

That's probably the first time a computer has understood how I feel on Tuesdays!! We also have a glitch on the irrigation system, so we are manually operating the system this morning to water the greens and we have got all of them watered on the first 12 holes before the senior shotgun start at 8.30am. I told Peter not to use any tees after the 11th as start points this morning, as they might get wet otherwise.here we are at 9.30, with three bemused, damp seniors on the 18th green as it waters itself whilst they try to putt out!!!

Friday 17th April.yet another new member of the 'Not the Joe Silva' Club, as senior George Cox aces the 16th with a rescue wood.with his two playing partners looking aghast, and just Clare and Pete in the Clubhouse, George decided against his Friday after round coffee for some reason!! Sunday 12th April.The last day of The Masters, and Spring is here at Chalgrave as well.as determined by the arrival of the Apple Designs Spring Trophy, so it must be Spring!! Utterly brutal, was the best way to describe it. A proper, Chalgrave 4 or 5 club wind, that never, at any time seemed to be downwind. It was either into your face or a crosswind.

The 12th, stroke index one, from the elevated tee, was about as tough as it gets. Drivers at the 16th green, 160 yards away.

The greens were firm and fast. Downwind putts required the slightest of touches to send the ball miles. I haven't seen the result yet, but anyone who played that to par had a miracle round. Friday 10th April.with the General Election looming, Chalgrave Manor Golf Club shows just how up to date we are and ahead of the game on these things.today, the big story is airports and new runways.whilst they are talking about it, we are already doing it, as the new runway construction is underway outside the clubhouse/terminal 1. Actually, I have half a dozen seniors in for coffee as well.might change that to Terminal 6 then.

The new runway. Thursday 9th April.this is what I have to deal with.John Litchfield, him of the tissue paper in the end of his shoes a few weeks back, accosted me to complain about inaccuracies in the story, saying that he takes size 11 not size 9 shoes!!

It then turns out, that earlier this morning, he had had the SAME problem with tissue paper in the SAME shoes this morning, as he had repacked the shoes with tissue paper (so they keep their shape!!) after he used them last time, and forgot to take it out AGAIN this morning!!!! Hopefully, if you do come back as something else after you pop your clogs, JL will come back as a goldfish as he is clearly already highly qualified.. Thursday 2nd April.The Ladies March Stableford result is in, and clearly the Ladies are seriously keen on improving their game as well as indulging in some serious self analysis, as a massive 29 points won it..and according to the result sheet, the CSS was 75 (33 points) and Reducation Only!! So, hopefully, by the time the next ladies event comes around, they will have been re educated enough to break 30! Tuesday 31st March.Over the past two decades, I have had the privilege of playing Chalgrave in all kinds of weather conditions. At times, the course is magnificently benign, as calm and still as a windless lake surface and just as beautiful. At other times, a tricky, blustery wind can follow you around the course, so that every hole seems to play into the wind.and then you get the rip roaring Chalgrave 5 Club wind, where you take 5 more clubs than you need from 120 yards and still often don't get there.today, we have a new one.the Chalgrave HHHITS Wind, an acronym for the Chalgrave Ha Ha Ha its the Seniors wind!!

This makes a Chalgrave 5 club wind look calm!! This is a rip roaring sabre tooth tiger, with bad breath, right in your face, sort of wind. There is every possibility that today, we will have 6 x 4 balls of seniors, all playing the 17th at the same time and none of them able to hit the group in front with their next shot!! If any of them get a par on 17 today, I will go out and buy a hat so I can eat it!! Thursday 26th March.just uploaded onto the Facebook page a new photo album containing the pictures taken at the Annual Dinner Dance 2015. I have a proper printed copy for all of the trophy recipients, but if you want a high quality digital file of the photo, have a look and email me at the number of the photo(s) that you want.

I will email the file back to you. The link for the Facebook Page is Don't forget to 'like' the page as well and then you will get all the Chalgrave stuff onto your own facebook news feed!! I had a letter today from my waste bin people, telling me they were putting my prices up as our bin was always too heavy. I was of the opinion that they are taking the p*ss and I had a bit of time before tonights AGM at the club to compose my response to their letter. I don't really care what they say. If they don't impose a price increase I will just let life go on.

If they do, I will get someone else to empty it. But I felt it a worthwhile exercise in letterwriting.. Dear Ms C Thank you for your letter of 19th November 2014 where you advised that you have been reviewing your waste collection rounds and have determined, somehow, without the use of scales that our 1100 ltr general waste cart is 'consistently over the expected weight for general waste services' You then helpfully point out that this can be caused by a high proportion of food waste or glass weight or other heavy and non compactable material. I immediately reviewed your extensive website, but despite an exhaustive search I was unable to find out what the 'expected weight for general waste services' was.

I did have a long read about the Materials Recycling Facility or 'MRF' at Wellingborough and Luton, from which would reasonably appear that whatever is in the cart, goes to these sites and is sorted/recyled at that point. Our cart contents will not have changed almost at all in 15/20 years. We have a small kitchen, not a restaurant, banquet hall or or other such food and beverage function suite. Given that our food sales takings per week average at about £250/£300 per WEEK and you empty the cart every week, we would have to have people bringing in food waste from outside of the business to chuck it in our cart, to make the food waste on weekly basis amount to any substantial weight or volume. What we buy in, we sell. We put the empty wrappings in the bin. The only way it might leave the premises in the same volume is via the sewer, but generally I find that people are here for a short time and tend to take that bit with them.

We have a small bar, which does have bottled beers. We have two small 'trugs' or plastic handled buckets which we use to store empty bottles as they are used, which are then emptied into the cart. The volume of bottled beer that we buy in on a weekly basis, which again, unless we are shipping in empty bottles for the sole purpose of disposing of them in our cart, amounts to around maybe 40/50 bottles. Therefore it would be difficult for us to be disposing of more than we buy. We sell, in our bar and golf shop, plastic bottled water and energy drinks and cans, and golfers often bring their own as well. As they have to carry them around the course, they tend to avoid the glass ones as they can break if dropped and they are heavy to carry 4 to 5 miles around a golf course and generally not resealable on the golf course.

We empty our litter bins which contain this stuff once a week. Plastic bottles and aluminium cans are, in my opinion, a lightweight compactable trade waste and indeed I would estimate that this makes up over 50% of the volume of the cart contents on a weekly basis. The other week, we did do an evening function, and for the first time in many many months, the cart lid almost didn't shut, due to the number of black bin bags therein. Given that these bags were bulky because they contained polystyrene plates and bowls from the buffet, once again I would consider that to be a compactable trade waste. I would therefore be grateful if you could provide me with the legal definition of the 'expected weight for general waste services' and the industry standard or even British Standard that defines this. Can you please also itemise the weights over which my waste cart has exceeded those industry standards on a week by week basis over the past 6 months, on a paper/cardboard/glass/foodwaste subsection so that I can review our working practices here, cross referencing it with our schedule of functions to see if we can identify when and who is nefariously disposing of heavy waste in our general cart which is causing difficulties for the lifting hydraulics on your lorries. Or perhaps you can review your letter suggesting that you are increasing our prices and consider that this may in fact be an error and that our prices can remain as they are.

I will be happy to meet you onsite here on any day that you might choose so that you can lift the lid of the cart and review its half empty interior. I look forward to hearing from you shortly. I would hazard a guess that if I was Tesco, or Tesco was next door and on the same power grid section, that a bloody great fleet of generators would be here a week in advance and they they would have been pre tested to ensure that they worked and provided sufficient power. Tuesday 12th August.Richard Muckleston wasn't the only senior in a day early.a couple of other regulars, as always, pop in after their round for a coffee.' What does cafe au lait mean?'

'Coffee with milk, white coffee' I reply. 'I didn't want that, I wanted Chocomilk' 'Well the machine has been the same one for a few years and its predecessor had the buttons in the same place as well, so lets call it 5 years, so why did you press the cafe au lait button, not knowing what it would dispense and expect to get chocomilk when for the past 5 years the button marked chocomilk has always been in the same place and dispensed chocomilk when you press the button?' 'I don't know'..Fawlty Towers was based upon real life events.I know how they felt!!!! Monday 11th August.Richard Muckleston, him of the predawn practice routine to hone the cr*p chipping to perfection on Tuesday mornings is now here on Monday morning, 24 hours prior to his Tuesday round, getting in some extra practice!!! I can tell you having watched him chip for the past 5 minutes, the skill and technique that Richard must have, to mishit the ball, that well, that often is at a level probably only attained by a tiny minority of players.

Practice makes perfect. Richard has finally perfected the mishit... Tuesday 4th August.one of the hottest selling golf products of the year has been the Go Kart Trolley. I'm not surprised as it is a storming piece of kit, great value and superb customer support. We sold another two in the past week, one of which was bought by Greenkeeper Danny Sanders. I picked his bag up last week and I'm not surprised he needs a trolley, the weight of it..although I wouldn't have put it past Jamie to have loaded it with a few bricks a year or so ago and just not mentioned it.so he wanted a trolley and as a staff member, also wanted a staff discount.so I said he could, if he ordered the pink one, as I hadn't sold one of those yet.

I was joking but he said yes, so I gave him a small discount for being staff and got him a pink one. So here you have it.Danny Sanders, the only gay in the village.. Tuesday 4th August.about time we had a seniors success story..John Walshe playing the 14th, tops his tee shot off the whites down the hill. He made a less than perfect contact with his second and comes up just short of the ditch. Things don't really improve with the 3rd and he is short of the 2nd ditch. An average to poor strike and he is about 80 yards from the pin after 4 shots.

The 5th is a scuttle along the ground, which crosses the green at some speed, striking the flagstick and burying itself in the hole cup. The group passing behind the 14th green on their way to 12th raise their arms and roar their approval. John arrives at the green and enquires 'did anyone see where my ball went???' Sat 26th July.Charity Day.the day starts at 7.30am as we start to get organised for the onslaught of players and additionals.hot and humid, and fancy dress is a vicious combination.

My team were moderate, resplendent in Hawaiian shirts, but this was quickly conquered as the boys from Hawaii were followed by the Hula Hula girls. Bear in mind this 4 ball included Ray Tilcock and Neil Tabor, you can see how this is going to quickly degenerate!! Chris Burrows and Alan Janes in nurses outfits is something that is seared into my brain! Peter Whitton, Alan Laid,Taff Rowlands and Doug Oakes were superb, as they came dressed as old men and carried it off perfectly!! And then we came to the heavy hitters.Pete Ward, Gary Pratton, Ian Hillier and Rob Peck as old women.crinolene dresses, grey wigs, surgical stockings and the image was disturbingly close to Norman Bates 'mother' rather than Nora Batty. Even more disturbing is the sight that greeted me at 2.00am as I cleared the club up.at the far end of the mens changing room, Gary Pratten's dress is hanging perfectly from a coat hanger, clearly it is important to him not to crease the crinolene as it appears that further wear is likely!! Any normal bloke would have stepped out of it, kicked it off into the corner, scrunched and dirty, having performed its task and never to be used again.but no.

On a coat hanger, ready for further use. John Isaac again appeared in a dress, as did Gary Turner and both look as they are enjoying it far too much! The auction was a spectacular success, raising almost £1500 on its own, with some spectacularly appropriate purchases. David Isaac and his mate bought a family ticket for MK Dons before realising they don't have kids.

Chris Burrows, Senior Captain, bought a £60 Go Ape voucher, an extreme adventure game involving rope bridges and slings high in the tree tops culminating in a long, fast zip wire to ground level before you climb back up into the trees!! Bob Hall bought a 1/2 flying lesson, which will no doubt end in chaos as it was taking him 20 minutes to decide if he was going to bid, so 30 minutes flying probably wont even leave the ground!! All in all, a spectacular success, raising thousands of pounds for Keech. More details if I can remember anything else over the weekend!! Fri 25th July.OK OK I had top have a shocker at some point.late last night I had an email from Kev Branch, querying the result of the Pro - Am. Now some people might just say that they thought there was an error, but Kev took it upon himself to point it out in the style of the news page.writing to tell me that he has been an accountant for the best part of 25 years and I had now thrown his whole career into dissarray, casting doubts onto every form and set of accounts that he had ever done.

The basis for this problem, that he had, for as long as he could remember, worked on the basis that 1 + 2 = 3 and indeed 2 + 1 = 3 as well. Having seen my first attempt at producing the result (done in something of a rush with chaos going on in the clubhouse - that's my excuse!!) he was now having doubts as I had managed to make 1 + 2 = 3 and 2 + 1 = 1!!

Apologies, the website is corrected, as is the main board and the post I put on yesterday slating the Pro's for failing to support their partners no longer applies as the only change from the amateur score was that John Crane leapfrogged Karen Crane thanks to the performance of HIS pro.now why did I mention that AGAIN??? Thurs 24th July.the result for the Pro Am is in.and a family disagreement is on the cards.Karen Crane having beaten John on countback on just the amateur scoring section, but her Pro, Branden Grace had a shocker with a 74 and shot her down to 18th place, whilst John was partnered with Shane Lowry who shot a 65 and got him onto 3rd Place. The Pro Am is notorious for destroying the hopes of a low scoring amateur, and this year was no different as Greg Stack shot a gross 71 off 10, (and got a cut to 7 for his troubles!!) but his pro Manero Mannassero was 1 shot worse with a 72, opening the door for Mark Gibney and Charley Hoffman to sneak through and take the title with a combined 131 shots!! Thursday 17th July.How complicated can this be???

The entry sheet for the Pairs Championship is up, and there is an entry on there, on a single line from Godfrey Cooper who presumably needs a partner to play with as the second box is blank.except that I understand about these things and realise that infact Godfrey Cooper is a pairing already, with Paul Godfrey and Ronnie Cooper!! Sometimes, I just want to go home and lie down. Friday 4th July.Our 'LifePack' has arrived. Funded by the Club Members, through fundraising, and me, we now have a Defibrillator in the Clubhouse.

It is, supposedly, utterly impossible to get it wrong. The people who wrote the manual and designed it though, have not met my seniors section!! If they can't switch on a golf trolley (see 1st July below) this could be an issue!!! Tues 1st July.Seniors.what else???

You don't need to know what day it is, you just have to watch the carpark.John Steele arrives at about 8 and spends 10 minutes assembling his trolley, adding the wheels and the battery, fixing on the bag and generally getting ready to go.except the trolley won't. A small crowd of 'knowledgeable' seniors gather to assist, checking the connections and there is much manual pushing of the trolley to see if pushing it backwards and forwards will miraculously engage the electrical system despite the fact that its not designed like that!! Eventually, they all nod sagely and declare it dead, so the bag is unstrapped and mounted on a buggy and off they all go, abandoning the now deceased trolley, still with battery attached, in the car park.I am, of course, intrigued by now, and with the trolley abandoned and available, I wander out for a look myself. I have long understood the basic principle that you should check the basics first before delving deeper, so I started from the beginning. I switched the red button on and turned the knob that regulates the speed.

Off it went!!!! I started to laugh.

I disconnected the cables, reconnected them again, just to make sure there wasn't a dodgy connection that had resolved itself. Switched it on, off it went!!! So, chaps.if in doubt, try switching it ON!!and THAT is what tells you its a Tuesday!!! Tues 24th June.arrive to open up for the seniors at 6.58am.and Richard Muckleston is already on the practice green honing his mishit chips to perfection.he finally comes in for a coffee and I ask if he has perfected the mishit yet, and he says 'its much better than it was, I reckon I am 50/50 now as to whether it will come up off the ground now!!' Sat 14th June.some early snippets from Captains Day.got here to open up at 6.00am and the golfers were arriving from 7.00am for registration. Adrian D'Arcy was here for 8 and back home by 8.10, collecting his golf clubs!!! Whilst all and sundry were having coffee and beer, Gary Turner was diligently practising on the chipping and putting greens, followed by the nets.

By 1.30 pm, he did not figure in the top 10 thats for certain!! Jose Silva was presented with a small memento on the 1st tee, to commemorate the monumental international incident that occured last night in Brazil, but for some reason failed to see the funny side of being presented with a portion of Dutch Edam.and whilst we are talking World Cup, it worth recounting a story concerning our Club Member and England Manager namesake, Graham Taylor, who emailed me a few days ago to say take him out of all competitions as he had decided as a last minute thing, to fly to Brazil to follow England until they get KO'd. Today, I noticed on Facebook, that he was still in the UK. Apparently, having made it to Heathrow on Friday for a flight to Brazil, he didn't make it past check-in as he didn't have a return ticket!! Despite frantic calls from the mobile trying to get a return, the phone died and so did the dream of seeing England play Italy tonight in Brazil.unless watching it on TV still counts!! Tuesday 10th June.there are some Tuesdays that I look forward to with a great sense of anticipation.

Today is one of them. Ball no 37 was the Bonus ball on Saturday. No wwhilst I have that number in the Club Bonus Ball draw which netts me a very nice £40, I also have the same number in the Seniors Draw, which only pays out £25 for the same £1 stake (stingy lot!!), but let me tell you, the 'boos' that I get when I go and collect my winnings are worth every penny of the £15 difference!! Peter Whitton said on completing his round to day, that the greenstaff don't put the holes where his ball goes.

I said its not normal to put the flags in the rough. Tuesday 3rd June.the seniors are playing a texas scramble for Senior Captains Drive In.and I have to pop out to pick something up.so as I go past the 5th tee on the way out, I am somewhat surprised to see a seniors 4 ball, 40 yards SHORT of the bunker on the 5th and about to play their second shot!! (Well hopefully it is their second, third or more would be even more embarrassing!!) I mean, seriously?? A texas scramble, 4 tee shots on a par 3 and the best you can do is a 50ish yard chunk to the start of the fairway on a par 3??? Tuesday 3rd June.Senior Captains Drive In.51 seniors in attendance in somewhat poor weather to witness their new Captain start his year. 'Chris 'I don't need an umbrella, I've got eyebrows' Burrows absolutely smashed it up the 1st fairway, hopefully not reaching a peak to his Captains Year with his very 1st shot!! Time will tell.

Sunday 1st June.the 20th Birthday Competition.American Greensomes, not a format we have played before. It was surprising. The format is reasonably straightforward, 2 players playing as partners, both drive off in the normal greensomes manner.

Each player then both plays a second shot, using the ball hit from the tee by their playing partner. Where ever those two balls finish, they then pick the best ball and play alternate shot as in normal greensome/foursome golf to the end of the the hole. So, on the basis that you get to play 2 balls twice, you would think that the scoring would be better than normal greensomes! Clearly not the case as 38 points won it, with only one other pairing at par!! Sat 31st May 2014.A momentous day, 20 years to the day since we opened. I had invited all of the Founder members, The Shareholder members, the Life Members and any Past or Current Captain who was still a member to participate in an Invitation Tournament, to celebrate this milestone.

We had a great meal afterwards, and were entertained by 'Richie Soul' until after midnight. As the witching hour approached, Tim 'Braveheart' Murphy commenced the 'Dance of the Captains Jacket'. This will, hopefully, become a tradition because I would dearly love to see it again.Its components are many and varied. It requires the outgoing Captain to be in a fluid state of inebriation at midnight, reasonably incomprehensible in speech, but flowingly smooth in movements across the dancefloor. The dance clearly has its origins in Scottish Dancing, high hands, twirling capes (or in this case) the new Captains Jacket and a zig zagging coverage of the dancefloor that would have graced 'Strictly'. From a H&S perspective, the pockets of the Captains Jacket do need to be checked in advance to ensure that they don't contain something solid, like a mobile phone, as this stage of the dance could result in decapitation of the casual revellers amongst whom the outgoing Captain twirls. The dance moves on, possibly as the memory span of the outgoing Captain is somewhat fuzzy, and the cape becomes the weapon of the Toreador.and the casual revellers, those that have survived decapitation, are now the bulls.I'm reasonably sure we segued into Tom Jones and 'It's Not Unusual' before returning to the role of toreador and finally the clock struck Midnight.

The once pristine, new burgundy jacket of the incoming Captain was now a bedraggled, slightly stretched and mis-shaped jacket. It was held forward temptingly by the New Immediate Past, and instantly withdrawn as the new Captain reached for his prize, in the childish prank style of the Krankies. Finally Steve G Howarth grasped his prize. Club Captain 2014. Have a good one Steve. Practice the dance for next year though!!

It will take some beating!! Weds 28th May.Seniors Match. Pete is in the bar when they come off, and a particularly tall opposition golfer (Steve Howarth size!) comes to the bar, says to Pete, 'a pint of Fosters and some peanuts.shorty.' Pete's hackles come up immediately. 'Did you call me shorty??' 'I'm not having that!!'

'No' the tall guy says, 'Peanuts, salted!' Tues 27th May.Committee Meeting.the weekend competition starter, Steve Emmett recounts a story from the 1st tee on Saturday, amidst the gloom and torrential rain. Pete Graydon, even before the start, is bemoaning the fact that the Sunday players have an advantage as the forecast for Sunday is fine and Saturday is wet and windy. He says to Steve, 'If the winner of this competition comes from Saturday, I will bare my *rse in a shop window!' 1st Andrew Young (played Saturday) 2nd Steve Howarth (played Saturday) *rse, shop window, will try and get a photo for the website.

Tues 27th May.Those great laid plans.the Seniors Captain's Farewell, moved from January to the last week of May to try and ensure decent weather, is met with torrential rain this morning. Friday 23rd May.

Now I know that the storms and the approaching onset of thunder and lightening can affect people, but the 9 Hole Competition?? What other reason can there be for FOUR players, in two different groups, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, playing the FRONT nine instead of the BACK nine this week? The sign in sheet on the bar makes it absolutely clear which nine to play??? Tuesday 20th May.Subliminal Advertising is a cunning thing.

Doing something that does not appear obvious but it has the desired effect. The seniors have become notorious for the chaos and mess around the coffee machine on a Tuesday morning. Empty milk cartons and used spoons discarded on the table top, sugar spilled everywhere, used cartons put BACK into the basket where the new ones are etc etc, all this despite a notice which politely asks people to put used spoons and cartons into the bin which is all of 6' away..so today, I changed the notice. They didn't read it, I watched them, but picture 2 is how the table was left!!!

Sunday 18th May. The Chairmans Cup.is is one of those strange things in life that two extremes can result in the same effect, in this case, a new nickname.' Laser Dave' and 'Putting Pete' were born on Sunday. 'Laser' Dave Bromley is the new Scratch Team Captain. We wont say anything about his debut against Millbrook where he had a 10ft putt to win his match and the overall match as well, on the 18th. A 2 putt would secure the half. A three stab lost it!!

So definitely not 'Laser' for the putting!! So it was the other end of the scale, where his driving was splitting the fairways with unerring accuracy, so much so that it was causing comment from his playing partners Pete Graydon and John Sullivan. On the 8th, the drive prompted some discussion about exactly how accurate he was, as the ball came to rest on the 'join' between the coloured stripes of the fairway from the direction of cut.

A bit of jovial banter was stopped dead in its tracks when they realised that the particular 'join' was the exact dead centre of the fairway. Laser Dave was born.

'Putting' Pete was in the same group for the completely opposite reason. The ball would not go in at all.TWO four putts, a number of three putts, interspersed with a single putt on 12 and no putts whatsoever on 17 as an eagle three dropped in from 140 yards.

The euphoria of the eagle was quickly dispersed as he managed 3 putts on 18!! Saturday 11th May.Captain v Vice Captain.

A convivial, good humoured event that provides an opportunity for a bit of banter and general joshing between the incoming and outgoing Captains.Victory this year for Jock Murphy and the Captains Team, but it also raised that strange scenario, where normally, in Competition, if you take just 2 shots you can win anything from £5 to £50 for the 2's..so when Cally Hawker stood on the 5th Tee and took just one, in a competition that was jam packed full of people who would stay for a beer afterwards, there was no surprise when Nick, who was partnering her as well, looked suitably distraught. Even Joe, who was playing in the event as well, didn't want a Hole in One on Saturday!! So, nothing for the 2's as there was no comp, just a £94.50 bar bill for picking the wrong day to do it!! Tuesday 29th April.Seniors.Coffee machine, £1 in get a coffee, get a spoon, one sugar, get a milk pot, take the top off, pour contents into bin and drop the empty plastic container into the coffee..I want to go home now..Looking on the bright side, at least he used the bin, which is more than most of them do. The current trend is to leave the wet, coffee stained plastic DISPOSABLE (the clue is in the name chaps!!) spoon, ON TOP OF the laminated notice which says please put the spoons in the bin!!! Sun 20th April.Easter Sunday and I have to open up.short staffed and no one else available.but the usual chaos is going on.Dan Glass arrives, not intending to play, but to take the mickey out of the 50+ year old friends of his who have 'qualified' to play in the +50 competition.except the joke is on Dan, as the 'Altzheimers +50' is next week!!

Tim Murphy arrives at 9.00am, have you seen Darryl?? Yes at 7.30am with all the rest of them!! Tim makes some amends to his error, by recounting a story from yesterdays Club Match v Colmworth.9.30am and he is still one short, no sigh yet of Phil Gibbons, so he rings him on his mobile.it is answered pretty promptly.' Hi Tim, yes sorry, I took a wrong turning but I'm on my way and will be there by 10.' Which seems a bit odd, as Phil has been a member for years and one would assume that he knows his way from his house to the club by now.except that he had made a slight error and gone to Colmworth not Chalgrave!! Now, Phil lives in Irchester, so a match at Colmworth was the equivalent of a pop around the corner, which was then turned into a speedy run down the M1 to make his start time!!

Tim, having rectified his error of a late arrival by recounting a greater error made by someone else, then blotted his copybook virtually immediately. Sitting in the clubhouse, he decided to use his time productively to put the remaining photos from the annual dinner into envelopes with peoples names on so that they can be collected. I thought it was odd when I saw him, so I let him do it 5 or 6 times before I queried, it, just to make sure that it wasn't a one off.so I said, 'you do know that those are self seal envelopes that you are licking, don't you??' Bonkers this place! Thurs 17th April.Chris Baker comes into my office, and croaks at me 'I've lost my voice.'

I see this as an immediate bonus, as Chris talks 19 to the dozen most of the time. In fact, my instant response is ' that's good news, can you go and snog Tarby as well please??'

Meant as a jest and in good humour.this backfired, as Chris then explained at great length, Tarby's round today, in such exquisite ball by ball detail (despite the lost voice) that Tarby must have recounted it at least 200 times already (about halfway through then for Tarby!!). This is very much a downside, as it means that I will have to sit through the same thing in due course before Tarby goes home!!! Tuesday 15th April.John Townley, the 'Senior' senior, is still currently out of action following his fall a month ago as he scurried about the house in haste, looking for his golf gear!! He has been to the L&D for a scan etc, to try and identify what exactly he has done, and he popped in to show me the letter he has received from the L&D explaining the circumstances, what action has been taken and what will happen next.I quote.' She sustained the injuries in a fall and she has suffered discomfort and lack of mobility since'. I said 1 thought that getting a gender reassignment at 84 was probably ambitious, but looking on the bright side, when a full recovery is made and golf can recommence, there is no reason why he can't play from the red tees then!!

Mon 14th April.a missive from Pete Graydon, who was seeking reimbursement for the loss of a share of the 2's money, having 'holed' a 15ft putt on 16 only to see the ball strike the back of the hole and rebound back out, remaining resolutely perched and overhanging the lip but refusing to drop. The 'claim' was based upon the spurious suggestion that the hole cup was a mere 5mm below the putting surface. I had a quick look and probably 12mm is a more reasonable estimation.

Still a bit too close really, but worthy of a robust defence of the claim, I felt.

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