Notes From The East Neuk

Our final week in Fife is proceeding wonderfully, as Elsie and John arrived just as we needed a little wind in our sails.

Your humble blogger had quite the Monday.  We had tried to get Ross down to Crail last year (Dace, Seb and he live perhaps an hour Northwest of here), but ran out of days.  Ross's availability is obviously limited by the usual issues of work and family, but in this case we were subject to the whims of the.....checking notes, Royal Navy.  Ross is a Senior First Class Pilot, ferrying cruise ships, oil tankers and the like into various ports on the Firth, in this case the HMS Queen Elizabeth, one of two Royal Navy aircraft carriers.  At the last minute the schedule cleared and Ross and I had a delightful day on the Blacomie.

Ross hits a big ball, so we played from the back white tees, all of 5,867 yards, and he basically reached all three Par-5's in two.  Technically he was a few yards short of the green on No. 12, but still....  Although he pulled a driving iron on Nos. 7 and 9, which I'll grant is prudent and takes those big numbers out of play.

But the best part was later.  Ross had told us that Dace and Seb were going to come down and explore the beach and ice cream options, so we of course included them in the evening BBQ plans, and my day was golf followed by walking into a house filled with some of our very favorite people.  Seb was fascinated by our upstairs balcony, but also found time to mug for the camera:

As well as show us his Spiderman impression:

I like this photo mostly for the credit:

Photo: Sebastian Coupland

I come home and Grillmaster John has the BBQ fired up and matters well in hand, and Theresa had the rest of the meal well in hand, quite the accomplishment given the deficiencies in the kitchen.  Ross and I had a dry day on the links, and we were treated to one of those typical early evening calming, so we moved the festivities out of doors:

Just as the meal was winding down, we got a bit of a spritz that moved the pudding indoors...

Elsie outdid herself, arriving with provisions sufficient to feed the Yangtze Division, including two puddings.  Not just you-know-what for you-know-who, but also a sticky toffee pudding for the bride (though John is also quite the fan).  Delightfully, this was Seb's introduction to banofee pie, and I think we can declare it a success:

 

Ross and family headed home, and the old folk turned in to ensure readiness for the battles to come.  The background is that in our post-Covid travels, John has pretty much had his way with us.  He won both Crail rounds last year and at Dornoch this year, and likely at Dornoch last year, although my bloody hand obscured those results.

We play a Stableford when here, and that's a tad unfamiliar to many Americans.  The system is simple enough, one point for a net bogey, two for a net par, etc.  It does protect the player from those uncontrolled disasters, but it's very much stroke play and to this participant lack the drama (and trash talk) of the more primal match play.  That said, it does work better when there's a wide divergence in handicaps, although frequently one doesn't exactly know where one stands.  I can't contemplate a Stableford without remembering this amusing day at Royal Porthcawl in 2017, when the dispute over the provenance of the Stableford was explained.  If nothing else, click through to hear the pronunciation of a Welsh town name that's rather long on consonents.

I had declared it an ABJ day, anybody but John, and fortunately played quite well.  I actually never expect to win, and we've had some longish conversations as to a Stableford favoring the higher handicaps.  the far simpler explanation is that I post numbers sufficiently large to eliminate winning.  The funny part being that I post those high numbers while playing well, a function of links golf generally and the Balcomie specifically.

As an aside, I've done more bragging than is seemly over my play on Nos. 5 and 13 (and on the former I've now followed that rare birdie with two pars), but the follow-up that I never got to blog is that that, while playing the hard holes well, I made double bogeys at Nos. 9 and 10, two very short and easy Par-4's.  John loves the Balcomie as well he should, because it features long, difficult Par-4's and short, easier ones, but little in between.  It works for him because he has more Par-4's that he can readily reach, and he probably wasn't going to reach the mid-length fours in any event.

I'm happy to report that it wasn't John's day.  I played quite well and posted a 74 that could have been lower, and took the gold with 37 Stableford points.  Everyone had their moments, with Theresa the low score at 31 (though she had the lone birdie), John at 34 and Elsie at 35, although apparently there was quite the row as Elsie and John compared cards, while Theresa and I took a nap.  But everyone in the 30's is quite a strong performance, and John noted that he would typically expect his 34 points to win.  

To be fair, scoring s Stableford is data intensive.  This is John's scorecard at the conclusion of play:

OK, he should have used that left column for the marker's score (which I often miss as well), but there's simply not enough room on a card for a four-player Stableford.  I joked about bringing the iPad today...

Good fun but today will be another day for sure.  I've left the one-pound coins in a stack by the mousepad, assuming that they're be returned to their rightful owners at the conclusion of play today.  

A couple of further notes, and then I'll wrap things up.  First, we had a bit of a wet day out there, little squalls forming, though nothing too heavy, thank God.  The rain gloves came out for a couple of holes and I contemplated my rain pants at one juncture, but that was the worst of it and we had a good, dry run for the second nine.  But when we got home we got pounded with reasonably heavy rain for most of the evening, so we got very lucky indeed.

We had been alerted by Ross that the HMS Queen Elizabeth would be heading down the firth, and sure enough....

I know, a long way away and here's where the camera's might have helped.  If it seems smaller than expected, that is because it is:

These carriers don't feature the catapult and tripwire system, but rather aircraft (all American technology) that takeoff and land vertically.  The UK has only those two carriers (that's the HMS Prince of Wales in the foreground above), so we hope they understand that at least one of the two would be in dry dock at all times.

Amusingly, right after the carrier left our field of vision, an humongous cruise ship presented, which looks far larger, though that might be because it's so much closer:

Cheers for now, as we resume normal vacation activities.  Again, unsure of how much further blogging will occur, as tomorrow morning might be a lie in day.  We head home Friday morning, so regular blogging will resume shortly thereafter.