Brass Monkeys Trip

The Brass Monkeys' summer trip (which is often in weather similar to winter) was to Craigielaw this year. The day comprises an early coach trip - surprisingly everyone got to their pick up points on time - two rounds of golf, dinner, drinking and a long trip back. This year it was enlivened by the first World Cup matches and (for me) an increasingly desparate but ultimately successful attempt to find final players for the friendly against Foxton the following weekend.

Craigielaw was very tricky - even tricksy - and fairly long as well: the greens were not receptive and tended to run off into deep bunkers, so it was hard both to run the ball up and to land them on the green. At least that was my experience, with an all time low 5 points on the morning back nine. The winner was Mark Dawson, the runner up Hugh Adair, representing different approaches to a good result. As always it was good fun, but finishing with shock news that after years of arranging successful trips Peter Sanderson was retiring after next year and in future the winner would arrange the next year's trip. (I remember Peter telling me some time ago that that was how he had ended up arranging it: he had won the first year).

Another sign of the times, that we are all getting older: the number of pee stops the coach had to make on the way back. They seem to increase as the years go by.