A cunning plan with a golf ball | A sunny riverbank | Nudists
After that proposal in Paris 12 years ago, Life-boss’s engagement ring lost a stone. I wasn’t surprised. It had been with her for 5 marathons, and survived intact on many of our adventures including our our 90 days in South East Asia a few years ago.
Getting the ring fixed was the easy bit. The jewellers in Hatton Garden did a great job in replacing the missing stone; they polished it up with gusto and they even re-shaped the band. The ring was restored to its former razzle dazzle now. In London parlance, it was blingin’.
Now I had a challenge on my hands. I couldn’t just say, “here you go love, it’s fixed. Job’s a good’un”. I needed an occasion to re-present it, and a ruse to make it in to a surprise.
Life-boss had been hinting about playing crazy golf for some time so this provided the perfect occasion to conjure up a plan. I bought a plastic golf ball off e-bay, sliced it nearly in half, and put the ring inside it with a note. The plan was to play crazy golf and swap out the secret golf ball at the last minute and come up with some first class acting.
“Oh look this golf-ball has a crack in it. Oh, there’s a note in it. Oh how did it get in there. Take a look.” Okay I needed to think it through a bit more but it seemed quite straightforward really. At the heart of the plan lay three basic rules:
- DO NOT LOSE THE GOLF BALL
- DO NOT HIT THE GOLF BALL
- DO NOT MIX UP THE GOLF BALL WITH THE OTHER GOLF BALLS
I wasn’t especially impressed with the plan, it could have got messy, although it was an improvement over the previous time that involved a Kinder-egg and a lot of hope. But time was of the essence. I had dilly-dallied for over a year in repairing it and a conversation with a colleague about my Paris proposal prompted memories and action.
This summer in England has been a tease. We are never sure if it’s going to rain or be sunny. It’s a brolly and shades dilemma, or a jumper or T shirt choice, so when the hottest day of the year was predicted last week, we jumped on a chance for a weekend in Cambridge.
Suddenly my plan A had turned in to a better plan B. A crazy golf centre versus a punt on a sunny river? Sold.
Cambridge boasts the hottest temperatures in the UK and that day it was 35 degrees. We packed a small picnic, got out the factor 20 and hired a flat bottomed boat called a punt, which is propelled with a pole by pushing it along the river bed.
Soon we had left Scudamore’s boatyard and were gliding upstream towards Grantchester, through weeds and reeds, under branches, past moorhens and grazing bulls, along a river of chrome in blazing sunshine. This was England on a sunny summer’s day. There’s no place in the world like it.
In the back of my head I had a plan. I had done this route many a time, having spent my student days in Cambridge, and I recalled a grassy meadow, in a meander about a hour’s punt away. Yes that would be the ideal spot. Or so I thought.
We passed a children’s play area. Here local kids lined up along the river’s embankments sunning themselves like iguanas, drying off. One boy shouted out to me, “can we splash you?”
It must have been pushing 35 degrees by mid afternoon and I nodded. After I nodded I looked at Sarah, who shook her head. It was too late.
Kids started dropping in to water, dive-bombing sending up splashes in to the boat. We got soaked, but it was refreshing but not quite worth it mainly due to the water in our phones and e-coli we would both get in the next few days.
It wasn’t an ideal start, and I really should have consulted Life-boss before making such a hasty call.
I checked in my pocket for the golf-ball.
Yep. It was still there. All good. Plan on track.
We dried off in minutes making slow and steady progress up-river and Life-boss, who will for the remainder of this post be called Sarah, because the joke may be getting tiresome and that’s her name, took the pole and I just relaxed under a parasol with a glass of reisling. Ain’t life tough.
This was my opportunity. As she looked away I pretended to scoop up a golf ball out of the water.
“Oh look a golf ball,” I said holding it in front of my eyes, staring intently. My acting sucked. “What’s a golf ball doing here? There are no golf courses here.”
Sarah shrugged. “Well, I don’t know.”
“May be we could play golf?”
“We don’t have any golf clubs.”
“We could use branches?”
Sarah shakes head. (She no longer considers my weirdness to be eye-opening anymore. This is par for the course.)
“Or how about we use this oar as a golf club?”
Sarah didn’t bother to say anything, just smiled slightly, the edges of her mouth curling for 0.25 of a second.
We moored at the meadow and sat in the overgrown bankside, paddling in the cool water. I pulled out a bottle of wine from the hamper and submerged it till it stuck in the silty bed of the river.
Suddenly a voice said, “that’s a very clever way of keeping them cool.”
He was middle-aged, slim and wasn’t wearing any clothes. He was reclined on his side, with his knee up, showing his gangly dangly bits.
“That’s a very clever way of keeping them cool too,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that I’d noticed he was stark naked.
I looked around the meadow; there were people having picnics; the only fabric they had were the picnic blankets they sat on.
Starkers. Stitch-less.
Beside the reclining-gangly-dangly man was a younger lady reading a book in a foldable chair, again in the buff. She explained that meadow was now used for nudists but they didn’t mind us being there. They said they had been nudists for some years and found it liberating; they found an acceptance of self. Something like, free your mind and the clothes will follow. I suppose it was a bit like En Vogue but different.
“Feel free to join us,” said the reclining gangly-dangly man.
“I’ll have a think,” I said (meaning “no thanks”.)
Well, what can a man do in such a situation? Would it be nobler to move on to pastures new, literally, where there were people with clothes on? Or to remain in the nudists’ meadow, chatting and making eye contact. Just eye contact mind you.
We decided to stay. They were pleasant company and he even put a blanket on himself.
I pulled out the golf ball. I feigned noticing the split in the ball and squeezed it towards Sarah. It smiled like a little white pac-man. In its mouth was a note which she unfurled and read and from it fell the ring in to her hand.
So it all worked out in the end. Not quite a perfect day, a memorable day, a day of close shaves like the gangly dangly man on the riverbank.
Now the fixation on a stupid golf ball I had “found” in the river all made sense.
Now my shortcomings of weirdness were replaced by shortcomings of tardiness.
“What took you so long?” she said.
“Getting the Ring Fixed” was first published on http://www.heyloons.com
Hey Loons 
Witty, amusing and well- written. Rob
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