The term ‘social club’ has always conjured negative images for me: port and lemon, whist drive and elderly men in ill-fitting toupees crooning into microphones before the raffle draw.
It appears, however, that I’m behind the times, for this is a million miles away from the very successful social club established by the lively gang at Holiday Options.
This month they held a crazy golf tournament in Brighton. It should have culminated in a fish and chip supper on the pier but, in fact, due to the adverse weather conditions, they ended up in Fat Leo’s, a nearby Italian restaurant (can’t help feeling that Leo might be high on fat, but low on self-esteem, but who am I to judge?).
Paul in agency sales took it upon himself to represent his gender, being the only man playing against 10 women. He played to win, and it seems he was in a good position to ensure he did so, as he also took on the role of scorerwily, these fellows.
While Paul had declared himself Victor Ludorum, the girls insisted that the real winner was Edwina, agency sales manager, whose drive (and I speak not only of her golfing skills here) and determination to win, saw her refuse to drink anything until she’d played her last hole!
Since the prize was a bottle of cava, there didn’t seem to be any ill feeling about who popped the cork, and the club settled happily into Fat Leo’s to share their views on the game.
Edwina sampled calamari for the first time, but it was not to her liking, so she spat it out, declaring that it was like chewing knicker elastic. Happily, the rest of the meal was a roaring success and everybody agreed that it was well worth the fiver a month cost of membership to the club.
The committee, by which I mean Paul, has arranged for next month’s club event to take place at a reservoir, where members will enjoy raft making.
I don’t know why – perhaps it’s something to do with those old social club stereotypes of which I’m so fond – but I thought he’d said ‘raffia making’ and asked why they needed to go to a reservoir to do that?
Paul corrected me by saying that raffia making was what folk on day release get up to, and that they had enough basket cases as it was without making more. Raft building, on the other hand, is apparently a great bonding exercise.
He’ll be sorry if he ends up with anyone on his team with as much aptitude for that sort of thing as me. Instructions for putting flat-pack furniture together sees me break out in a rash, so my chances of binding twigs and balloons together to make a life-saving, seaworthy vessel I’d say are pretty limited.
But, if they needed anyone to sit on the sidelines occasionally looking up from a magazine to say something encouraging, why then, I’m your woman!
A swine of a school trip
You’ve got to feel sorry for the children and teachers quarantined for having swine flu in China; sure, those children will have a memorable trip, but for all the wrong reasons.
The trip was designed as a cultural journey, it’s just that the only culture anyone’s interested in is growing in a Petri dish in a Chinese laboratory, while the British youths await its testing.
Still, how bad can it be, holed up in a four-star hotel with your classmates? It’s said that the children have access to TV and pizza – what more could they want? I bet they’re all phoning home and taking photos of themselves swapping clothes, and doing impressions of the late Michael Jackson with their surgical masks.
It’s the teachers I feel sorry for. They’ve probably waited all their careers for the local authorities to fund an overseas trip for them.
Now, instead of taking photos for the school magazine, they’re taking temperatures.
Mind you, it’s not as though we didn’t know the Chinese were enforcing stringent measures to combat H1N1. An acquaintance of mine who imports Chinese furniture told me that her friend in Guangdong was having to visit the police station in her area every morning to give a temperature reading of her little boy. Imagine adding that in to your daily routine – it puts the school run into perspective!
I think fever testing at airports might well become as much a part of procedure as security checks and the 100ml rule; my only concern is where they stick that thermometer!
Maureen Hill works at Travel Angels in Gillingham, Dorset