My son, Callum and I have started to play a little bit of golf.
We did a bit last year in the summer, and then I started again this year.
I guess more formally it should be described as ‘golf’.
We're playing at a little municipal golf course just down from the practice.
It's £10 a round for the 9-hole course.
It's potentially one of the worst-kept golf courses you've ever seen in your life, and in fact, the tee boxes are almost entirely sand and weeds, but it's good enough for our standard.
We're having a lot of fun, but it's a far cry from where I used to play golf at places like Turnberry and the exclusive golf course at Loch Lomond in Glasgow.
I was able to play there (I was never really any good), because I was playing regularly and paying attention to it, and I understood it.
It was my main hobby aspect, really, before I had kids, and so I would do a little bit of running and a bit more golfing.
After Grace, my eldest, was born, it slipped away and drifted away because I simply didn't have the time, and I've hardly ever picked up the club since then.
It would be possible for me to play Turnberry again, and my friend John is still a member there, but you have to earn the right for things like this.
Too much now in society, it seems that everybody feels that they should be able to pick something up for the first time and be good at it and be accepted in that group.
That is the opposite of what happens.
The first time you go skiing, if you ever did, you will find that there are lots of people who have skied forever, who have all the equipment and all the style; you will not be the first time that you go.
The same is true for golf.
Sadly, the same for paddle.
Every tribe has people who are invested in the tribe and have invested before you.
For you and for me, we're unlikely to be the best in the world at anything that we do now, but we can earn the right to be accepted into the group and to have experience and insight into what we're doing.
The problem for most people is that the time it takes to earn the right is at odds with how they feel that the instant society should work.
I'd rather take the time and invest in something, and think that I have the right to be good at everything.
Blog Post Number - 4581
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