Doing my bit....

The Portugese economy seems to be the next one to require an EU bail-out. It would appear that they are unable to produce enough product to be able to service their debt, rather than be suffering any major banking crisis. Consequently twenty of us decided to pop over for a bit of golf and see if that helped them out!!

It was the 20th year of the Algarve Cup, and one member of the party, 'Yorkshire', had attended all of them. I was a mere novice with thirteen years behind me, however, I was unable to attend last year due to family commitments, and have also served a one year ban after receiving a red card, sometime in the past.

So with twenty participants being an apt number to have on tour, we had to think up villa themes and thought the terrible twenties would be as good as any. Consequently I was a member of the Charles Lindberg villa and others included the Flappers, the Louis Armstrongs, the Charlie Chaplins and the Al Capones.

We also had some additional tour guests this year and so we had to provide nicknames for them. Its a tradition in the City where most of the boys work, to have a nickname, as it is in the fire service, in which none of them work!!

Now the footballer mentality of adding ie on the end of a name gave us our first . One of the chaps had a surname of Tait and was called Taitie by his friends when he arrived. We soon changed that to call him Neeps. There was a father and son combination with surname of Simpson so they quickly became Bart and Homer. Bit of a no brainer really.

Mark Hurley became Liz, and John Kendall became Mintie. One of the group was fairly nondescript, and a name was proving difficult until he shot 17 points one day in the stableford. Now as 17 is the Boots own range cosmetics, he became bootsie, and unless he reads this blog he will still be wondering why!

Our final newcomer looked just like Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter so he was tasked with collecting the fines on the final night, using a sock as a collection vehicle. Quite good I thought!