Skip to main content

Ryder

Of course I am a huge fan of the Ryder Cup, and have many happy memories of watching the contest unfold over the years. Prior to the advent of constant updates and tracking it online, I have been known in the past to sit in front of the TV with a pencil and paper, particularly on singles day, to try to keep up with all of the games as the coverage flitted between them.

It's also been great to enjoy the tournament with J every couple of years. It's on our sporting calendar, right alongside Augusta.

This year, as a result of not properly co-ordinating my sporting and my professional calendars, here I am in Indonesia trying to keep up with things. That's meant mostly 'watching' day 1 by text update, then day 2 by reasonably decent live coverage of the latter part of the day from where I am staying, despite it being essentially the middle of nowhere. And now we move on to day 3 with Europe only needing 4 points from the 12 available in the singles to reclaim the trophy.

This is the first tournament I have watched in any detail since reading John Niven's 'The Amateurs', which was lots of fun. And a few weeks ago I picked up a signed copy of his new book, which I suspect will be a tougher read, all about his brother, but look forward to getting into that soon as well.

As I type, Europe will be leading off with John Rahm in about an hour. Let's hope he can bring home the first of the four points we need ...



Popular posts from this blog

Hooked

Ian Fleming publications released the first chapter of the forthcoming Felix Leiter book on Tuesday this week. They could have waited for a day and released it on Fleming's (117th) birthday, but never mind. Their post includes both the first chapter and the author, Raymond Benson, reading it. I am reminded of this post from 2023 when I was pleased to report on a successful eBay purchase from Mr Benson. Last year, I was able to repeat the trick by purchasing, directly from the author, another set, this time of the US first edition signed paperbacks of his Bond works. As for The Hook and the Eye, I don't think I'm going to sign up for the digital serialisation, but will look forward to the hard copy later this year.

Wisley

On my previous return from far away, N took me to the Hyde Hall RHS gardens in Essex and, because it was such a warm and sunny day and we enjoyed ourselves so much (and the jetlag cure seemed to be so successful), we signed up for membership on the spot. Determined to extend the benefit, we toddled off to Wisley today, narrowly avoiding a satnav disaster along the way, but making it into an adventure instead. And, once again, it was glorious. I can see why Mum loved it so much, and I only wish I'd had the chance to enjoy it with her. We had a great visit, mostly contemplating what we will be doing with the couple of Norfolk acres we don't have yet. They are going to be superb. They already are in our imaginations! Saturday in the sunshine was topped off with barbecue organised by J whilst we were out. So, no time for book shopping, so I can but reflect on the charity finds from the week just finished, in amongst which we have a first of V2 to help the Harris firsts collection a...

Heritage

After some fun and games with setting up an account (which J managed to figure out whilst I was otherwise occupied with a somewhat important prior engagement), we enjoyed participating in a Bond auction that was taking place in the US. We bid on about a dozen lots and were ultimately successful with four. We are now waiting to see how much is going to be added to our purchase prices for handling and international shipping costs ...! For the time being, here's a little clue as to what was purchased.