Feck

Another short break, this time to Newcastle in Northern Ireland, to play at the mighty Royal County Down golf club, so long regarded as the best golf club in the World. A club of such standing is clearly going to be a magnificent and tough track to navigate around, so on day 1 we thought we should employ local caddies to help us through our journey.

What we, nor they, could count on, however, was the storm of a biblical proportion which dumped on us during Thursday afternoon. By the 8th tee we were all absolutely saturated having been battered by 30mph winds and driving rain. We retired to the bar much to the relief of said caddies who confessed they had never seen anything like it before.

Day 2 arrived with thankfully no rain, but still with 30mph winds, and that was still a bit too much for me so I retired to the bar after 9 holes and left my three chums to battle the elements for another two hours. With hindsight what I should have done was move to the forward tee's on the holes which played into the teeth of the gale, but my brian was a bit mashed by then and the plan never got executed. It is a learning experience for next time it is 'only a friendly'.

The two days were great, and if an opportunity does present itself to go again, I will certainly be up for it, but might start on the 10th hole next time!!

Gary Player was in the group ahead of us, he managed 18 holes and is in his 86th year, so there is hope for me yet!!

When the Boat comes in.......

The second first was for me to have a run ashore in Newcastle, something I managed last weekend while we went up to see our oldest daughter Rebecca. She actually lives in Hinton near Jesmond, but its all Newcastle really, so we stayed in the 'Stag and Hen' Quality Inn in the centre of town.

To be honest i was a bit disappointed at first, there were no lads with their shirts off, and very few lasses were of head turning standard, well not for their looks anyway!! Fair enough though I thought I would give it a few hours and see how things developed. So where better to get a right eye full of Newcastle evening entertainment than in the famous Bigg Market, which was handily placed right by our billet.

I expected something a lot bigger, with no pun intended, like a market place befitting one of the biggest cities in England, but actually the Bigg market is quite a small area from which lanes and alleyways lead off. Sure there are plenty of bars to be found and I was quite surprised that an old caching inn and a few other 'heritage' style pubs had still survived in the area. Chains dominate, of course, which means, gassy beer, lager and bottles but nonetheless, we found Timothy Taylors, Bass, and Youngs Ordinary on tap.

The Friday night was strange though, it was like you had stepped through four time zones compared to Liverpool for example. at 6pm the whole place was full of people out on the lash, maybe its a straight from work thing, as the hen and stag groups did not start appearing until later, and by midnight everything seemed to go quiet.......really handy for sleep, like, but not what I envisaged.

Saturday we did the tourist bit, Angel of the North, Gateshead riverside, the bridges, Jesmond, Whitley Bay and Tynemouth before heading back for a quick change and out again.

Saturday night was the posh bit of town near the quayside, and the four hour time warp seemed to have been regressed, as the town woke up much later. I don't know what got me onto Brandy Alexanders, but hey ho, I survived. The Toon Army were fairly subdued given The Arse had spanked thiers in the early evening, and mention must got to the stag party in Hawaiian shirts who we spotted throughout the day and evening, definitely the best dressed stag of the weekend.

We popped into Ainwick Castle on the way back to Edinburgh to brush up on our Quidditch skills, view the dungeons and watch he bird of prey demonstration, Hedwig sadly did not show up, and that was the weekend over. It makes a weekend in London a bit dull, but the mighty Bees won yesterday so all was not too bad.

Dessert anyone?

Two things inspired the subject of this particular entry, namely a chance to watch The Great Escape again, and the re-introduction of Kevin Keagan, to Newcastle United. Well what really caught my eye was 'King Kev returns to the Magpies' and I suddenly got all enthusiastic for nicknames.

Football nicknames, particularly for players, seem to be fairly mundane on the whole, King Kev is not very imaginative is it, and Quitter Man returns probably doesn't give the right image. Most players have 'ie' added to their name and become Kingie, Smithie and so on. In days gone by the nicknames seemed more imaginative, Ron Atkinson was called Mr Bojangles. He would probably of been called Bling these days though, and the great Alan Ball could easily have been Ballie, but was referred to as Bouncy!. The German captain Franz Beckebauer was fittingly referred to as the Kaiser.

Football club nicknames are more imaginative and traditional, hence the Magpies nickname reflecting the fact Newcastle play in black and white. Interestingly though, a magpie is a very deep purple, they just look black!

The Great Escape indicated how POWs all tended to have nicknames, the film featured The Tunneller, The Scrounger, and for Steve McQueen, the Cooler King, give the number of hours he stayed in there. Institutional nicknames come to the fore in many popular TV programmes. In Porridge, the nicknames were usually the persons surname, Fletch, Godper and so on, although the King of the Jungle, Christopher Biggins, was referred to as Lukewarm.

Londons Burning introduced us to the nickname culture which prevails in the fire service. Bayleaf, Sicknote, Zorba and Vaseline being some of the more regular characters.

Other walks of life have their own legendary nicknames. In politics, for example, David Lloyd George as the Welsh Wizard, and Margaret Thatcher as the Iron Lady tend to stick. Two famous golfers have turned their nicknames into world wide sporting brands as Greg Norman launched The Great White Shark, and Jack Nicklaus, the Golden Bear range of products.

I never had a clever nickname at school, where children can be particularly cruel with some of their choices. Apart from the obvious ones like carrot, for the red heads, our year seemed to specialise in Lord of the Rings nicknames, so we had a Bilbo, Barkis and Frodo in the late '60s well before the films gave them cult status.

One of the magical nicknames I have come across though is for my friend Martin Wooden. Martin was 1st XV captain at Twickenham and a seriously good prop, and he had the nickname 'Pud'. Now I always thought this related to his waist measurement, but no, you need to read The Good Ship Venus for the answer.

The trainee cook was Wooden
by Christ he was a good 'en
he t***d off twice in a bag of rice
and called it sago puddin'