It's early Friday morning here in the Kingdom of Fife, and I have an hour or so to share with you. The Met Office indicates that it should be raining (not that I see it here in the 'weem), but clear on a timely basis for out 10:10 on the Craighead.
Elsie and John have come, seen and conquered..... Well, by Elsie and John I really mean Elsie, who swept both days of competition, though the only actual competitive threat came from Theresa.... More, though not much more, on that in a bit....
First, picking up on where we left off, the Monday evening sky from our aerie bedroom:
Don't think I posted this photo, but this is Eider House from up on the High Street, the house with the blue door:
Those three dormer windows at the top being our bed and bath, the far right being the vantage for all those evening photos I post. We love it up there, but it does create a couple of issues, the first being the long-term affect of all those stairs on our elderly bodies. I know, two flights sounds like it should be insignificant, which it is the first couple of trips up and down...
The second, more pressing issue, is temperature. We travel with a top sheet for such times, because they only provide an insulated comforter for cover. Air conditioning doesn't exist and, despite Eider House's new windows, and the houses are designed to keep heat in. In our aerie it can be uncomfortable to sleep even when the temps are in the 70's, and this year we've added a small fan to our arsenal. The Met Office forecast would indicate that heat shouldn't be too much of an issue going forward.
As we segue into a brief discussion of the golf, a note about the photography used herein. In the past, I've traveled with an actual camera, mostly because the 10 fps burst mode is perfect for golf photos. But, deep into my dotage, I've decided to dispense with the extra piece of equipment, which made it to Scotland but will likely remain in the knapsack. One less thing to jam into my golf bag....
The plan is to use only iPhone photos, specifically the Live Photo feature. I actually took an iPhone photography course last winter and learned several quite useful tricks, the issue being that they require much time devoted to each photo, and that effort is on a phone screen too small for these ancient eyes to make out detail. At some point I'll figure out how to do the editing on the iPad instead, which at least might allow me to actually see that which I'm editing.
Elsie and John rolled in Monday afternoon, with enough food and drink to serve the Yangtze Division, if necessary. Our pattern is that they come towards the end of our stay, but in this case they have a family wedding in Manchester, so the best few days of our stay are now behind us.
Given the paucity of funny bits herein, we overuse anything remotely amusing. In one of our hot spells a couple or more years back, I posted a photo from the Balcomie of players using the umbrella holder on their trolleys as protection from the sun. I amused myself (Yes, an awfully low bar) with a pharmaceutical reference, calling it an "off-label" use. As we arrived Tuesday morning, I caught a familiar member of the golf shop staff in a similar off-label use:
In a perfect world I'd have cropped it but, in case it's hard to make out, she's using a trolley to move cases of bottled water...
Tuesday we tackled the Craighead Links, and things started off well enough, but the regression to the mean started after a mere three holes. Elsie played beautifully, amassing 36 points on the difficult Craighead, and Theresa as well, with 32 points. John and I ended with 24 points, a mere twelve shots off our handicaps, which wouldn't have been quite as depressing if it hadn't been the high-water mark of your humble blogger's two days.
I'll just share some early iPhone action shots, mostly unedited:
Theresa has taken it on herself to be Stableford compliant before our competitive debut at Crail next week, so this was on our many scorecard review sessions. The results as announced seemed to indicate some imprecision in the scorekeeping, though John and I weren't close enough competitively to surmount the margin of fraud.
Everyone looking happy enough before the carnage began.... Elsie again prevailed on the Balcomie, though Theresa finished within a point of her. The men again were rubbish, though I did easily break into double figures in our Stableford. Talk about your low bars.... I'll just add that it's not only the U.S. Armed Forces currently dealing with inadequate ammunition supplies....
Two lovely days of weather, great company and sausage rolls at the turn. Only the golf itself was lacking, so a lovely time indeed.
Wednesday evening featured dinner at the Dory, with a side order of a complete solar eclipse. No photos, as Elsie informed us of a warning that taking photos of the eclipse could damage our phone cameras. It also happened that the restaurant faced the wrong direction, therefore we had to walk out and across the street to see anything, and cloud cover obscured much of it. However, we had a hoot, as we had brought eclipse glasses and loaned them to many of the other restaurant patrons.
A fun evening for sure, just not in exactly the expected way.
I have more bits for you, I'm just without the time to add them. They'll be in the queue for next time. Have a great day and please pray for a reduction in lost balls.
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