Throwing away umbrella of guilt
January 30th, 2008, 8:57 am Hobbies News
You may imagine that your sins are unspeakable, but you are wrong.
Speak the unspeakable and you will be surprised what the world will forgive. Have courage.
And lest you think I am all words and no action, I shall haul a truth from the murk of my depravity and hold it up for you to gawp at. Here goes: until recently I owned a golf umbrella.
Go on. Biff the rotten fruit of derision at my golf umbrella. You can biff nothing that I havent already biffed in the tortured privacy of my guilt.
I knew my umbrella was a golf umbrella because it was enormous.
Why golfers need enormous umbrellas I have no idea, but then I also have no idea why golfers need umbrellas at all. Playing golf at any time is a cry for help. Playing golf in the rain is a cry for rubber cutlery and a jacket that buckles at the back.
Yet in the strange inverted world that we have made for ourselves, professional golfers are thought close to God. They have acolytes called caddies. Caddies are anonymous bag-toters, expendable beasts of burden.
Except that is for the caddy to Mr T Woods, the pope of golf. This caddy has become a celebrity. I dont believe I know a sadder fact.
When the heavens have the temerity to rain on a professional golfer — and I fully expect the USPGA to sort out that little anomaly soon — the caddy holds the giant umbrella over his master but not over himself.
The scene resembles Good King Wenceslas in reverse.
In order to play his shot, the master has to step forth into the pitiless drizzle. Does the caddy take momentary shelter under the brolly? He does not. He holds the brolly over the clubs instead. Subservience could go no further.
I dont know how I acquired my golf umbrella. I obviously didnt buy it. It was emblazoned with the name of a bank. I am not in the habit of stealing from banks — the reverse is closer to the truth — so I presume the bank gave it to me.
Perhaps they wanted to thank me for not having my overdraft with them.
But there it stood in my garage on Boxing Day, along with me, my car and my dog, all of whom were heading forth into torrential rain. I looked at the umbrella and I thought why not and I tossed it into the boot.
When all goes well, an umbrella is the roof that walks with you. And there is something sweet in standing in a cylinder of drought amid walls of water. Its like an inverted womb.
Umbrellas are good at rain. But they are bad at wind. Spectacularly anarchically bad.
And on these islands, rain without wind is about as common as a television newsreader without an autobiography.
The wind was at my back. I hoisted the brolly like a shouldered rifle and bounced along the track, my strides lengthened like a moonwalkers strides.
It was agreeable. I like elemental forces and here was an elemental force harnessed.
The track is cut into the hillside.
And it writhes. At the first writhing the wind bounced off the bank and gathered instantly under the umbrellas hood. Suddenly I was wrestling with a mushroom on a stick.
Had I been in reflective mode I would promptly have invented the sailboat, the parachute and the score for Mary Poppins. But I was not in reflective mode. I was in wrestling mode.
I wrestled and whoa, the mushroom detumesced.
Now the wind and rain came at me from the front. I held the brolly before me as a Roman infantryman held his shield. I was pushing against the sky.
I progressed not like a moonwalker but like a walker on some planet with ferocious gravity.
Below the umbrella my jeans went unprotected into the horizontal rain. It felt like walking in wet carpet.
I peeped around my shield to see what I was walking towards and I caught a glimpse of misery. I called my dog and turned.
Instantaneously the wind recaptured the brolly. The cloth tried to restrain the sky. It was momentarily a struggling swelling writhing bicep of air, then the bicep flipped, the cloth tore from the spokes and I was holding a wrecked thing, a was-been, a flapping dead swan.
I threw the golf brolly over the cliff. Let the world eat it. Let the world rot it.
The rain lashed at my unprotected head. And I ran with my dog, ran with the wind, ran in my jeans of carpet, puddle-stamping, sodden and joyful, my sin behind me and gone. It was lovely.
Do the same you young people, do the same. Throw away the golf umbrella of guilt. Run shriven in the rain. And have a happy new year.
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