Bottom of the Ninth

I didn't have anything scheduled for today, so we invented some stuff. The night was confusing because Storm Katie came through and for hours the house was going woo and rattle and thump, but in the morning it was all still there. Some people lost slates and tiles (An Inconvenient Roof).

Today Bud got his first mobile phone, forward into the 17th century! Then we all cycled south against the gales to the Tenth Hole Golfarium and Tea Rooms. For years we've been eating there but I've never been allowed on the golf course because I wasn't 10 years old, up until this year.

So we got some golf bats and the little cup-on-a-stick called a tee and a ball each. Well, I'm not going to make world champion any time soon. With intense tuition from the experts around me (0) I got it to the point where I could line up my feet towards the impossibly distant flags (some are 100 yards away), practise my swings successfully, and then right at the last down-swinging minute, I take 1 step to the side, bend my legs, drop my shoulders and hammer the golf racket vertically downwards into the ground.

Sometimes the ball goes sideways and hits me on the ankle, sometimes not. It does not matter how many times I practise the keeping-everything-straight business, as soon as there's a ball to hit I try to chop it executioner-style. On the way round we picked up extra balls and tees and pencils and other detritus abandoned by previous players and the whole time, we battled against the typhoons coming in off the sea, making the wire fences sing and our noses run as we tried to work out which golf stick was which.

But I had a really good time and we laughed and Jof got stuck in the chasms and the canyons and I went sideways a lot but who cares. I came last but that means I got to hit the ball more often, who's the winner now, eh? Next to the golf pitch is a cricket ground au naturel, ie 6 inches deep in monsoon water. We will be going there next week to destroy it. This meant we'd earned lunch and bonus chocolate cake of impressive girth. We were due to see the model village (now with refurbishments!) but the biting wind had more than a hint of rain in it so we did the Butterfly Museum instead where I looked at the skulls and bees and dead bats and bought 2 plastic marine mammals to squirt at each other in the bath. There were no butterflies.

Spent another 20 minutes arguing about what film I didn't want to watch. It's so unfair making me watch back to the future, who cares about what I want, life sucks.

Watched back to the future with supper. It was brill! I couldn't stop jumping up and down and cackling about it, stuff going to bed.