Golf Etiquette

Etiquette is an important part of golf, more important than the balls, the clubs, the players and the actual course itself. Without etiquette golf is just a bunch of rogues hitting a 2 inch white ball across a field aiming at a hole twice the size. However it seems that this is becoming apparent as etiquette works its way out of the golfing scene.

Golfing is a proper sport. When you begin to regularly play golf and gain a handicap, your local course becomes extremely important, every shot in the round is vital, and the frustration that is generated when you duff a shot is soul destroying. So you can begin to understand the anger when hooligans play on the course you know and love.

Pushing in the line for tee-off is a good place to start. Tee-offs are given at very specific times, 7.06am for example. I have witnessed four grown men throw punches on a golf course because a group of two started before their tee-off time. Now I’m not advocating violence but NEVER, ever start before your designated time, it is given for a reason. If you’re late and miss your time you are going to get some serious bad looks because it messes up the whole choreography of that day’s golfing.

When you hit a duff shot and your club decides to carve the ground open like it has no other cares in the world, the divots that are made, especially when the ball plummets onto the green, need to be repaired. A sneaky golfer may try to avoid doing this because the chunk of grass he’s ripped out has landed 30 feet away and he doesn’t want to waste time, but the bunker that is created from their mistake can ruin other peoples game and make the course look a state.

It appears that the old fashioned tradition of shouting FOUR! when hitting a wayward shot has been eliminated from the grand old sport. It may not seem like etiquette but when someone gets hit with a 40 gram dot travelling at 150mph you’re going to hear something about it.... when they regain consciousness.

It may seem particularly funny to make loud noises on a golf course; because it’s a quiet, tranquil area where people have to keep their concentration for a long period of time. It isn’t. If any of you have seen Jackass you’ll know what kind of “air horn banter” and you’ll know what kind of rotten, golf club related death that came to the man that pressed it while golfers took their swing.

The moral of this story may seem pointless to you but is important for golf players to know that any future players of their beloved sport (if this very positive blog has enticed you to play) do not break the rules!

Olympics

Here's an interesting fact, that may or may not be true, depending on my sources. Did you know that an Olympic torch used by the runners cost £500 to make. Now this is all well and good if we didn't have to have a new torch for every single runner. There were 8000 runners so the Olympic torches alone cost this country's tax payers £4 million pounds. What's wrong with having one torch? or maybe two if the first one conks out? Not only that, people who have carried the torch and wanted a souvenir have to buy the torch from the Olympic committee for £250. Now strictly speaking do we not already own these torches considering we payed for them? It was estimated that we spent £8 billion on the Olympics, which makes £4 million one two thousandth of what was actually spent. If we hadn't spent that money every person in the U.K. would have an extra 20p. Fuck you Olympic committee I want my 20p back.

I don't know the words but I'm going to mumble them anyway so it sounds like I do

Stop pretending! We can all hear you doing it. Just because the music is loud doesn't mean we are suddenly impervious to the fact you are just making sound and not actually singing lyrics. In the car, in the shower, in a club, it's all the same and it doesn't help your cause because if anything you just sound a bit special. Not only that, it also ruins the song for the people who do know the words because they are practically correcting your idiotic screams. If you don't know the words, just miss them out and sing the rest it's still as fun and saves you some dignity.

Meaningless words

My account of a brief history of words

If you actually study words, it's hard to believe that there is any logic behind them at all. Whoever first constructed a word, I assume will have just made it up from the sound they made when they saw it. For example upon invention of the wheel I imagine someone making this sound out of curiosity "WOOOOOOOOO" (a rough guess). Onomatopoeia was formed. Then, humanity being the greedy race that it is, wrote the letters down on paper as some form of ownership so no other cave man could steal it. However letters didn't exist yet so they formed their own interpretations of shapes they thought the word looked like. Then, billions of years later the more intellectual minds on earth thought, these meaningless markings should be more bold and more distinct to make them easier to learn and understand. Hence letters were formed. Hence words were formed. This is the reason that when you say a word too many times in a sentence you start to question the word's meaning and how it actually got called it in the first place. Take for example the old tongue twister, "Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry". Say the word Lorry more than five times and you began to wonder why it's called a Lorry? What is a Lorry? Look at the word and try to make sense of it because I can't. Is it a cross breed between Large and Worry? Someone probably has some pretend logic behind it but I really don't know what to believe anymore. Its all a Falsity.

Time

I have a very strange relationship with time. It seems to be something we can control, you know time flies when your having fun and all. It sounds strange but whenever I look at a clock it has an unintentionally coincidental time on it, and when I say whenever I mean every time. For instance, I may see a well known date, or a consecutive row of numbers.  I haven't got a clue what it means, if, of course it does mean anything at all but I am starting to have reason to believe that it does. Three days consecutively  I have woken up at 9:11, on the dot. You may think habit? When making lunch twice out of these three days I've looked at the clock when it hits 12:34. The other day it was 11.11, an early brunch. Even now whilst writing this blog I looked at the clock displaying the current year 20:12. Still coincidental I can only assume. I would like to think at some point though I'd be able to develop and manipulate these time powers in order to do cool things like predict the lottery. At that point, I'll make this blog into a book.

9,11,12, 20,24,34

Crying children

This is probably a touchy subject, that I can't really comment on as I'm thankfully not a parent yet, but I'm going to anyway. Crying children, understandable. Crying children in public places, horrific. I am fully aware that parents have no control of their child's vocal chords but it seems that they choose to do it in all the wrong places. Shops, cinemas, churches, you name it, they've screamed their heart out there, leaving the rest of society with a headache and a ringing sound in their ears. I realised, on a cold winter day whilst innocently stocking shelves at work listening to a child about to scream that the worst part of the scream, that children produce, is not the scream itself. It's the intake of breath between cries in order for the child to prepare for the next mortifying howl. In that moment, time seems to stop as the world prepares for what will be the most soul destroying noise anyone has ever heard, anyone within a 3 foot radius gets sucked into the black hole that is their mouth and I've seen people cover their ears with headphones to drown the sound out. But nothing can prepare you for it. I'm not trying to say that you should drown out the sound by strangling your child, just parents please avoid bringing them into enclosed places with other people inside them. Thanks.

Food

I never used to enjoy food. Before now I've spent a considerable time in the kitchen preparing a meal which then takes me 30 seconds to eat (Literally). I used to think eating food was more of a chore than a luxury but I've learnt to enjoy it. However I now hate wasting food.. to the point where I'm eating other peoples food because it seems a "shame" to throw it away. I had an incident recently which was something that had never happened before. (It's not as bad as it sounds). I was making a very lovely dish of spaghetti bolognese for the first time, nicely seasoned and of which I had a little taste before I served it up. After I had dished it up I was quite proud, so I actually took a picture for the memories. It looked perfect, like the pictures on the cardboard sleeve of a microwave meal (that actually turned out to look like a lump of vomit). It had an essence of "That's not just any spaghetti bolognese... that's my..hand cooked... took me an hour to make... Spaghetti Bolognese."

Needless to say, somehow  during the time it took to get from the kitchen to the dining room, I dropped the plate. The plate smashed. The food landed on the white carpet. My spaghetti dreams were shattered.   I haven't made it since.

What a nightmare.

R.I.P. =>

The Birthday Feeling

It's my birthday today. The big 1.9. I don't know why I get excited but I do. I still have the mind of a child when it comes to birthdays. I'm even sitting here alone, listening to the radio and blogging but I'm still excited. I'd hate my birthday to feel like any other day. My parents were going to give me some money for my birthday because I'm too "old" for presents?! No one is ever too old for presents! It's not about the presents though it's about the birthday feeling.. I think everyone deserves this birthday feeling even if you don't "believe" in birthdays.  I love birthdays, and even if you don't.. who cares? it's an excuse to have a good day!

Facebook

I've got nothing against expression of opinion...obviously. However when it comes to people bringing their love life onto Facebook, we don't need to know. People sharing pictures of them kissing their partner in the mirror are the worst. Or a couple going through a break up with status' such as (reading from my Facebook news feed):

- "Some people are so immature"
- "Can't believe some people"
- "Random quote from a song that people believe has something to do with their love life when actually it's doesn't"

Why do they do it? nothing but attention seeking. It never directly refers to anyone, just "some people" but then other people get involved, which is a huge mistake when they don't know the whole story and have only heard one side. Arguments break out, even fights. Friendships are ruined all from one indirect song quote. Destructive. Keep your relationship to yourself.

Hypocrisy

I am the biggest hypocrite in the world. The things I complain about I realise 10 seconds later that I have literally just done the same. In my complaint about people's spelling and grammar, other than the mistakes I made on purpose, there were some embarrassing actual mistakes. Needless to say I corrected them quickly to keep my composure. Everyone's a hypocrite really so the hypocritical insult is meaningless. I think if you were to call anyone a hypocrite, you yourself then become a hypocrite in this endless cycle. The way to get out of this hypocritical cycle is to stop complaining.....and yet.....

Football Fans

I'm not going to lie, football fans are complete idiots. It's a tricky subject because I myself am quite the enthusiast but I try to go about my football business in a nonchalant, subtle kind of way. Understandably people are passionate about the game but football is unpredictably frustrating and there is no need to be arguing and crying about it. We need to stop fighting with each other about who's the better team or who's the better player because we can't control football.  My team, spurs, lost today, which they shouldn't have but they did and this is how I deal with it. What I don't appreciate is getting a lot of stick from my friends on social networks, about how we were really rubbish today and how we are going to lose our champions league spot. Don't you think I know that? Surely the pain of knowing that is enough to deal with. I don't need you rubbing it in! If I had any control over that game I would have been the first one to try and do something about it but I didn't and there's nothing anyone but the players can do. This abuse that goes back and forth between football fans is a waste of time. No-one should be boasting until the end of the season, it's an unreliable game and it's about time the fans learnt that.

Did you see that??

Have you ever made an incredible shot that everyone else has missed?Moments like these pop up annoyingly unexpected.  I do it a lot. I once made a court length basketball shot without looking. Standing there watching the net swish should have been satisfying enough but it wasn't. Luckily my friend Grace saw me do it but even then, who's society going to trust? two insignificant people with an unlikely claim? She wasn't going to brag, I wasn't going to brag, so that was that. I should have been comfortable in the fact I know I did it and shouldn't have to convince people otherwise. But I wasn't. I kept thinking, I should have made a bet! or youtube'd it so it goes viral and the whole world knows I did it. I would then be spotted for my amazing talent and signed for some throwing sport that'll earn me millions. Unfortunately the chances of it happening again are less than none, so just try to enjoy the moment.

Religion

I don't define myself through any beliefs but why do other people feel the need to tell you about theirs? as if converting me is going to bring them some sort of satisfaction? Jehovah's witnesses for example. Coming to tell us about your religion is all very well and good but what happens if I were to just say yeah OK, I'm sold, sign me up! What happens then? ..the short answer they'd just explode on your doorstep. I attended an Islamophobia conference recently and watched 8 religious people sit and argue about something that i wasn't really bothered about. My point is, if everyone kept their religious views in their head rather than feeling the need to shout it about, the world would be a nicer place. We probably wouldn't be having the wars in different countries. We wouldn't have had to live through the tragedies of 9/11 and the 7/7 train bombings. People wouldn't have these tiny little insignificant squabbles with each other about whether there is or isn't a god? or what this god has told them to do? Or how he's trying to make the world a better place. I mean if it wasn't for beliefs a lot of famous religious leaders would have lived long happy lives.. and probably wouldn't have been famous for that matter. Martin Luther King? Saddam Hussain? Jesus? all just dwelling in their own homes, comfortable that they know what they believe and not caring what others think. It seems to me people needing to express their beliefs is actually making this world a worse place. I hope it's not just me but can't people be happy within themselves about their beliefs and not have to destroy the world in an attempt to prove that they might or might not be right because we are never going to know.

Everyone's got that "genious" friend

"Omg I'm a genious, I figured out how the periodic table works"  were the words that my friend wrote on her chemistry folder when she thought she'd out smarted the world. If you haven't noticed an issue with that sentence (even with a hint from the title) you should probably go to school more often. Everyone makes these mistakes, but some more than others. It's not a massive issue spellig and gramar. However it can be the difference between getting a job on a local newspaper or...working at the range for the rest of my life..as a random example. It's not only quite funny it's also extremely frustrating watching someone ruining their page with these tiny little details which is why I'm never becoming a teacher. Ps. I'm not really this stuck up in person.

Wheezing

Laughing is a vital part of life. It makes you feel good and without laughing it would be a very sad world. But some people don't laugh anymore. Like me, they wheeze. It's like laughing hysterically but under your breath. Without trying to sound like a sad case, my friends took the mickey out of me at school for it and it has scarred me ever since. Sometimes i physically try to laugh to avoid wheezing but it can't be avoided and it's becoming common. Now I notice quite a few people doing "the wheeze" as it's better known and it makes me wonder if people just can't help it or more likely, I started a trend, because of my celebrity status.

Home Alone

Being home alone is nothing like the movie says it is. When I first came home to an empty house, I thought yes! no annoying parents, no sister to cry her way into the run of the television!. However it was only after I'd grown out of babysitting, I realised...I haven't grown out of babysitting?!. For the hour I was alone after I got home from school that day, I was absolutely bricking it. Every noise was another flinch and for that whole hour i didn't move out of that spot on the sofa. I was scared, without any hassle, never mind with some lunatic trying to break in. Now the movie says that if you're getting burgled, as long as you've got a 12 year old child in the house with unlimited tools, your house is safe. I don't know about you but the first place I was going if the house was burgled that day, or any other day for that matter, is out the nearest exit (if the exits are blocked I'm going for my baseball bat). As opposed to Macaulay Culkin who would ready himself with the nearest blowtorch (obviously). Call me a coward but I'd rather live.

Showering

Remember the days when you were a child and you used to have a weekly bath on a sunday night (if you don't then that's awkward). But now I'm all grown up, I realise that you have to wash more often than the statutory once a week and you now have to do it standing up because working class people have busy lives and baths take too long. However, have you ever been in the shower on a crisp monday morning, it's lovely and warm and you've been in for a good teen minutes so you decide to close your eyes so that when you wash your hair the shampoo doesn't permanently blind you. Well it's this moment that I realise I've made a mistake and start to think, what if, when I open my eyes someone is there in the shower with me?!. I'm not joking I stood in the shower with my eyes closed for a good 5 minutes after I'd washed my hair thinking when the best time to open my eyes was. If there was a person/monster there with me I'd probably have a heart attack when I opened my eyes to their face, so i've now resided to having to turn to face a wall so i'm sure no one is there when I open my eyes....I hate Showers

Justin Bieber

Why do some people hate him? He has a pretty good voice and a lot of money. I suppose I can't really judge on his personality because I've never met him, and neither have quite a big proportion of the rest of the world. I used to be a Bieber hater until I asked myself why? and I couldn't find a reason and I'm pretty sure most of you probably couldn't either. I'm not saying Bieber is a saint but until you've met him and seen if he actually is annoying the only reason you could hate him is out of jealousy.

Video Games

I consider myself an immature geek, but only when people aren't around obviously. On the topic my favourite kind of geeks are the ones that think no one can see them when really there's about 12 people watching them pick their nose. Fortunately I make sure no one is around when I do that... But my geeky collection of weird traits include:

-Dancing around like a retarded monkey
-making weird faces and noises
-picking at my face/beard (which I call a beard but is really blonde stubble)
-asking random questions in lectures so I can answer them myself
-eating ridiculously fast and thinking it's cool

and so on and so on. But i think my worst geeky trait is video games. I get so annoyed by Fifa to a point where I'm actually punching the chair I'm sitting on. I don't do a great deal to hide this to my family as they hear me getting annoyed from downstairs, usually asking in a concerned voice  "what was that?" and getting a disgruntled "nothing" in reply.

However I do my best to hide it from my friends. What really happens when they kill me or beat me, it's eating me alive inside. I think it has something to do with being a really bad loser. Whenever I used to play real games of football, if the other team scored I would fake an injury so I had a reason to explain losing other than that we were just really bad. (We lost practically every game that season). I have got better at channeling this since I got older but I would like to think that all video gamers are the same as me. This would be out of hope more than expectation but besides video gaming I think everyone needs to admit they have a geeky side or you will just look like you're actually weird when it comes round to the nose picking.

Overrated Alcohol

I wouldn't say I'm morally against alcohol, I can see why people drink but I think the reasons why they do, say something about society today. You've just turned 18, drinking is great, you're out all night having a good time and I've got no disrespect for the people that do that. I love a good night out, I drink for fun,  but I don't drink if I have problems in my life because I find the problem gets worse. Alcohol in the past has affected me but I try not to let it change my personality so I'm the same person either way. Some people drink if they are sad? or angry? or worried? The worst case is if people drink because they are with others that are socially "awkward". You've got no idea how much i hate the word awkward. A situation is only awkward if you say it is. What does that say about us if the only way we can have a decent conversation is if we are drunk? I live a long way from anywhere so quite often I drive on a night out and as long as I'm with a person I know and love then I'll have a great time. The reason I bring this up is because some of my friends are not themselves when they are drunk and it's not nice to see them that way. People under the influence aren't being realistic. Alcohol isn't real life. It turns people into something they are not, which may seem good at the time and yes we use it to get over life's troubles but it is temporary protection against something that will inevitably come round again in the future.

Night

People change at night. Some strange mind set makes us think, Oh the day is over so nothing I say or do will affect anyone tomorrow? Maybe it's the atmosphere? Romantic? Being drunk doesn't help either. But even when I'm not drunk, the night time entices me to say very strange things that when I wake up, leaves me confused and embarrassed. Sometimes this involves me revealing all my secrets, when you have those long in-depth conversations with people you probably shouldn't and don't know well enough but do it anyway because you want to get some feelings out. It's silly really. I don't know about you but I've never woken up in the morning and thought, I fancy a riveting in-depth talk with someone I barely know. And yet when the clock strikes 7 on a Sunday evening you know it's time to chat away. I wont bore you with examples because you don't know me and probably couldn't care less about my secrets but if you ever fancy a late night chat I'm only a Facebook away.

Driving temptations

Having driven for nearly a whole year I find myself on long boring drives thinking of ways to make it more interesting. Having nearly crashed a few times whilst playing games on my phone I began to become tempted to crash on purpose. I'm not sure if it's the adrenaline junkie in me waiting to burst out but as a driver you actually have a surprising amount of power over people in other cars. Forgetting you're own well-being if you were a complete psycho, you could, taking your fancy, just career into other cars and cause chaos on the roads. Fortunately I do not USUALLY follow up my thoughts with actions... And I'm not a psycho.. I swear

Fear of the unknown?!

Not knowing something is my phobia and my pet hate and has lead to my downfall regularly in the past. I think fear of the unknown is the flaw in most people but they just don't know it or refuse to except it. It doesn't have to be complex; like me, you can be afraid of scary films which you have to watch anyway out of curiosity. Possibly what your partner gets up to when you're not around and what they say about you to your friends. But it's this fear that can stop us living our lives. Having lived in a small village for 6 years you have to understand that at night, it's scary. The slightest noise makes my heart race and things pop up in the corner of my eye that scare the crap out of me. This phobia has been known to sway me against going out in the evenings and in terms of people, it has caused me to close up as a person, not really telling people anything and not really displaying my feelings because I'm afraid of what people will tell other people or how they will react...which is where blogger comes in.... but in all seriousness don't be silly! the woman in black isn't real and if people talk about you behind your back then they aren't your friends. Fear of the unknown is ridiculous and it only gets worse the more your talk about it... sooooooo.....

Sweet 16

My "sweet 16"(shit 18), unlike the real ones you see on television where Ashley, the blonde Texan girl guilts her parents into buying a Mercedes, consisted of sitting in A&E for 4 hours at 3 in the morning with an ice pack strapped to my head. Apparently in a state of drunken delusion I had skipped into the door frame an hour into my party and passed out. Being the natural host that I am, I continued as normal when I came back around, supplying drinks and food despite the small canyon that had formed on my forehead. However, when the party had finished and people were settling down, I was practically dragged to hospital by my parents to have my head glued back together, which I reluctantly agreed to because the alcohol numbing was wearing off.
2 years on and I still don't regret doing that yard of beer! You only get one life, don't waste it!

Routine

Never get stuck in a routine, it's boring. Back in the old days (1 year ago) when i had school. waking up every day to do the same annoying alarm, same annoying family and same annoying school at 7am every day was worse than the annoying lessons that I had.. every day. I chose these lessons for a career I no longer opted for. This made the routine I had, even worse. Being stuck in a routine you are not only bored of but physically hate, can have it's effect on certain decisions to not pick up certain documents and cause serious consequences which could lead you not getting the certain letters which decide your future for you. Fortunately some people get lucky and when I say lucky I mean...went into journalism and when I say people...I mean me. I'm not sure what enticed me into it but the news is forever changing, never does a newspaper over milk a story to a point where it's tedious, or a magazine continuously follow a D list celebrity around until they find an interesting angle to suggest they are gaining weight. Nope! can't wait for my journalistic life where I follow no rules but my own....and the law? oh no wait does the law apply to journalists? I think I'm going crazy

Something has to happen!

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not some religious "nut" trying to persuade you into the next craze but I am open minded and although I don't have a religion, everyone has beliefs. My one belief is that when you die something has to happen! Not only do I refuse to believe that when you die you just rot in the ground; I am an active person, when it's my time (hopefully in a century or two), there's no chance I'm just lying there, wallowing in my own self pity. I'm going to party! Dead style, set up camp down there and wait it out until something happens like the St Pauls protesters would. Ideally being reborn with better fortunes and a brain the size of a bus would be nice because id assume after 118 years I'd be a little bored of my current self. If death doesn't portray the film the matrix I'll be shocked and devastated!

"Bad Movies"

Is there really such thing as a bad movie? As much as I'd like my life to reflect that of a protagonist in a well thought out happy ending, the harsh realities of reality never fail to hit me (right in the testicles) when luck isn't going my way. However it's these moments that i like to reflect on when watching a bad movie. These moments coincide with hideous acting (twilight), unoriginal plot lines (Spiderman) and a cheesy script (Transformers).  Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are quite simply the awkward couple that you live next door to. who you never talk to but occasionally see climbing trees and fighting werewolves? Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst are the perfect mirror for when you are "seeing" a girl you like, but neither party knows where the relationship is at and you start messing each other about because you're too busy crime fighting and stopping a goblin (who's your best friend's dad) killing everyone. Finally transformers are frankly when you think you've won an argument with a sworn enemy but they reply with words that are so soul destroying, and so heart shuddering you wouldn't dare reply so you shove a cube into your chest and explode. In effect terrible movies convey real life, so if we call them terrible? are we not insulting ourselves? Nothing goes perfect like a movie, but who wants perfection? if it doesn't display real life.

Don't Over-think!

Thinking is a dangerous concept. You can get caught up in your thoughts and they can get the better of you. For example I know that I'm a strange person, (just to re-assure you I'm not one of those strange people that cross dresses or that has a pipe bomb in his boxers) i mean "funny" strange but lately i get the hint that I'm becoming one of those "pipe bomb" strange people because i over-think tiny details in every day life. I don't mean the classic "oh is she cheating on me because she has a text from a guy (that's probably her dad)?" over thinking; I mean deep meaningful important over thinking that gives you a different aspect of life. Last week I walked up to a vending machine and found myself daydreaming whilst gazing blankly into my own mind. This monstrosity of a decision will change my life forever! The amount of time i spend choosing this sweet or savoury snack and how long it takes to reach my hand is crucial. In that time the world is changing around me, people changing paths, mindsets altering and this butterfly effect has caused me to change how i see things, dramatically. If I spend too little or too long on this tiny decision I could, say, take the wrong path and stumble into someone. Now you might think that this is perfectly normal, I'm just thinking ahead?... I then worry if I've affected this guys day? For all I know he could be having a tragic day and that brush of shoulders may have lead him to conveniently trip on a part of the floor that he wouldn't have been walking on had I fumbled the chocolate bar as I picked it up. His day then goes down hill and he ends up moaning to his girlfriend/wife/partner? and they've had just about enough of his moaning and break it off with him. This separation however heartbreaking will be hard for him, leaving him in emotional pain and doubt of himself and now his mind is like mine; he over-thinks tiny things. I think you get the gist of this story of woe for the poor man and his tragic life, but it's not to say that it couldn't happen, maybe when a double twix gets stuck (which is a sad day for everyone) or a 20p that won't register in the coin slot so comes out the most annoying little compartment that returns your money if it thinks it is fake... the point is I think over-thinking used in a safe and an acceptable manor can work to your favour if you want it to. That spontaneous decision although it may not register as a thought could have an affect on the rest of the world. Psychology to the max.