You sort of know you're in trouble when there's a branch of Jack Wills in a town, and sure as golfers have very small white balls, if it wasn't enough for St Andrews to be the bad fashion capital of Britain where style goes after it's dead (and heaven is one great, big fairway), there - on a side street populated by heavy men with florid faces wearing loud diamond sweaters and pastel polo shirts with necks wider than the Tay Estuary - is a whole store devoted to the teenage wannabe. Ugh. Furthermore, the floppy haired and belted youth with the collars of their shirts artfully asymmetrical who haven't yet gone back to mummy and daddy in Weybridge or left for France, are still yah-ing away in select hostelries. Prince the-one-who-looks-like-his-mother (as opposed to Prince the-one-who-looks-nothing-like-his-father) did Scotland a great disservice by choosing to go to university there, though - to be fair - it was probably already a lost cause because of the whole golf thing.
It's good to have a hobby. Especially one that gets you outdoors in, albeit neatly manicured, artificially manufactured and often detrimental to the local ecosystem, nature, walking for miles in the fresh air, swinging a club around like a Neanderthal in spiky shoes. It's also good to belong to a club, not just a golf club, but a group of like-minded people who all share your obsession with swatting tiny objects off into tiny holes at a distance you can't see without your varifocals. Furthermore, as with any form of collective madness ranging from the boy scouts to Hitler youth, you gotta have a uniform that reassures you that you are safe, and amongst friends. So baggy trousers, long shorts, sleeveless v neck in colours seen in Angel Delight desserts, lots and lots of logos of which the normal person lives happily in ignorance, and big sticks handily gathered in a large bag that can be slung over one shoulder as you strut through the streets fancying yourself as an athlete. This works even better out on the course if you can persuade someone else to caddy for you and carry the bags, so that you underline your own supremacy at the same time.
You can see I'm not a fan. I blame my father for this. He tried to teach me when I was eight.
Not a success.
So I do try to give people in Pringle a wide berth since there is always the risk that they will trigger an episode of post-traumatic stress disorder as I relive those golf lessons where, just like Charlie Brown and Lucy, someone always seems to move the damn ball just as I tried to hit it.
Sadly, therefore, St Andrews is the equivalent of Vietnam for victims like me. In the hotel room opposite us there's 'George Cunningham from Dayton, Ohio' and his outstretched sunburnt hand as he introduces me to his wife Mitzi, in their his 'n hers knitwear and matching, aptly named, slacks. Another group of four Swiss men are encountered in the dining room. In the restaurant that evening there are all-male bonding 'boys' weekenders', none of them a day under 55, with purple faces and day-glo Aertex shirts as colourful as a row of seaside houses in Crail, and about the same size, each wearing tassles on their shoes. There are two pairs of women who seem to have had sex appeal beaten out of them in a bunker at the same time as the weather was beaten into their faces, in long shorts and stout ankle socks, and a miserable Dutch couple with expensive watches and sour expressions who watch their national football team kick the turf out of the Spanish but leave before the winning goal.
A very drunk South African at the next table who has had three bottles of Cider and has now started on a bottle of wine, is shouting tactics at the television, and is, predictably given his possible genetic heritage, supporting Holland. He's with a boy who I hope isn't is son, though the alternative would be more worrying, who is on coke and embarrassment.
South African dad is wearing a waterproof jacket and a thick fleece zipped up to his neck, trainers and no socks. His eyes are bloodshot. He stands up in front of the only television in which there is a clear picture and then turns to provide a commentary to the table behind him - a mother and father quartet with their daughter and her boyfriend. It's easy to see who the non-family member is - three are blonde and pasty, two look surprised, and one is Chinese. And drinking pints of water.
Luke sniffs distainfully. He's no fonder of the golfers than I am, though if they were all wearing Chelsea football shirts he'd be in his element. He's just in a different club - not one hugely popular north of about Hammersmith.
Meanwhile, I've discovered that I'm in the least select club of all - one to which I'd forgotten I even belonged and yet have rejoined with alacrity.
I'm 'disnae'ing and 'wisnae'ing and saying 'naw' instead of 'no'. I've reclaimed that state of permanent indignation at which Scottish women seem to excel and have my arms metaphorically crossed, eyebrows raised, shoulders squared and lips pursed ready to be offended by almost anybody. It occurs to me what those bags of sticks and nail gun shoes are really for. Probably self-defence.
Poor, totally clubless Luke is sitting eating his vegetarian pasta in blissful ignorance of the monster I am slowly turning into.
Scotswummin.
See me bristle.
I open mouth as our waiter reels of the ice cream choices (vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, cranachan, irn bru, vinegar, stovies...) and just as I begin to speak, Luke interrupts to suggest that maybe we go back to the hotel for the final half hour of the match...
Bad move. Very, very bad move.
