Epic Mini Golf (Blog 134)

Yesterday I went into Guildford with a friend! Is it a town or city, or doesn’t that matter? That’s something I’ll keep in mind as I type. If all goes well, when I’m near the end of this blog the answer will come to me and I’m hoping it will be very insightful. But it might not be. Anyway, what were we doing there? Well, first of all we had to go CD shopping. That’s maybe not so interesting as I always write about that activity, so I’ll be brief and move on. Righty-ho: Shop keepers - you’d think they were unskilled workers, wouldn’t you? Well I certainly did up till now. As I browsed the albums in Ben’s Collectors Records, I found three second hand ones I was interested in. I paid for them and I thought that was that.

However, whilst I was caught off guard and my defences were down, the owner pointed to another batch of releases. He knew I’d have to take a look, and I did. I pulled myself together and resisted temptation. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t buy everything. Again, I thought that was that, so I relaxed and thoughts of being controlled left me. Then he pointed to another load. With perfect timing and understanding of my psyche, he nearly got me too. I never saw him mime it mockingly, but I knew he thought he could play me like a fiddle. But he didn’t play me. Yes. My amigo eventually left with me, without purchasing anything. Possibly because he too was onto the worker’s tricks.

Alright after that, the two of us went mini golfing. Once we paid for our tickets, we were both handed a club and a ball. Mine were perfectly fine, but my friend’s latter object was cracked. Again, would that matter? Read on… Anyway, right from the start it appeared I was the weaker ‘athlete’. According to the score card my chum kept (because he is more responsible) and which I have in front of me now, my friend (who I will call ‘the Jazz Javelin’, because of his love of the genre) only needed two hits to pot the ball, whereas I (the Metal Magician) needed five. (No, we didn’t give ourselves nicknames at the time, but we really should have done in hindsight. Both for confidence and narcissistic reasons). The second mini course, as straightforward as it was, wasn’t looking good either. I scored five points more than the JJ. (Yes golf is a weird sport where the lowest score wins - the TV show ‘Pointless’ is kind of a vague rip off).

The third course was hard for the Javelin, but it was impossible for me with its strange trickshot layout, so I gave up on it. It would later be decided that the penalty for quitting a round would be a hefty 35 points. Ouch. Not only did I win the next one, I only needed three hits on the one following that. Yep three was a magic number for me, because the Javelin also forfeited. It seems I had a chance to take the lead. After another two matches, the Jazz didn’t grow his supremacy (is that a phrase?) any further and the eighth route couldn’t be defeated by either of us. To cut a long story short, (how many times do you need to read about hitting a ball?) we got the occasional cheeky holes in one afterwards and the game could have gone either way. Eventually, everything was over. The wait as the JJ counted the points was unbearable. He had 143, whereas I….. had 140!! Victory! I’m the new Tiger Woods! OMG. Amazing.

To celebrate my win, I decided to get some chocolates! ‘But you said you’d only get the stuff every week (in the form of milkshakes) from GBK, whenever you go into Staines, on Easter, birthdays, Christmases, whenever you eat at restaurants, and whenever you go into London!’ Yeah, well Guildford is like London in that it’s a city, right? Well it isn’t a city, but it has applied for city status apparently, so I’m fine. Excellent, the question I perhaps pointlessly asked myself earlier has been answered, and answered brilliantly. Oh and did the damaged ball cause the JJ to lose? God no, I just had mad skills. The Metal Magician, remember the name. (Of me the golfer, I mean - it turns out MM is also the name of a car dent removal service in Georgia, USA. Now THAT’S random). And on that strange note……. BYE!