Rock Ape's Return.....

Right! I'm back! :-)

No excuses, no names, no pack drill, just the plain unvarnished truth, I've been too bone idle to post!.

However, just received a lovely story from a friend, and as it's Easter Monday and I'm at my computer I thought I'd share this story with the throngs of eager Blog readers (?) How are you both keeping, by the way?

Myriads of events have gone unreported, and if they are depending on my memory to get reported, then they have no chance!

One does stand out, probably because it happened yesterday

Father Philip started his sermon with his usual funny story...

A priest was visiting an old lady in her home, and asked if she believed in the "Hereafter"

"Oh ! Yes!" came the reply. I often go from dining room to kitchen, to bedroom to garden and back to the living room again, thinking "Now what am here after?!"

A look forward to the weekend when we join other parishioners in a pilgrimage to Lindisfarne ( Holy Island). Situated about 45 miles to the North of us here in "Sunny Blyth", this ancient site has been a place of pilgrimage since the very early days of Christianity in these Islands ... A click on the following URL will bring you a flavour this special place.

http://www.lindisfarne.org.uk/

Bright sunshine greets us this morning but a cool breeze keeps us from flocking to the coast to besport ourselves in our bathing costumes. That kind of thing is best left to the younger element, and anyway on inspecting my bathing costume I find a large hole in the elbow, so that 's out!

There has been much striding purposefully around the golf course, gaining nothing else but muscle tone and losing a few pounds in weight, plus several golf balls. Played into the teeth of a force 'ever so strong' gale last week on the links course at Newbiggin-by-the -Sea.

Scores after the first nine holes were low to non-existent, but at the turn, with a 50 mph gale behind most shots, scores improved to such a degree that most of us high handicappers were in mortal danger of receiving the dreaded "Handicap chop" ! On one hole, aptly named " Prevailing Wind" a 360 yard, par 4, with a green which is hidden by large dunes, the fairway traverses a "col" or valley between two dunes. My tee shot edged left as per usual and disappeared from my sight amongst the low rough high up on the left dune. All four of us went into "Search mode", head down, scan ahead, then to the side, carry on pacing, for the obligatory 5 minutes. I reached the top of the col and looked towards the green. 200 yards away, a solitary ball was lying on the green about 20 yards past the pin. I immediately dismissed this as being mine, it was just too far, and selected a replacement from my bag, and resignedly added a penalty 2 to my score. Just as I was lining up this my fourth shot, a cry from one of my playing partners, "Ya ower heor, hinny!" ** . I looked up and my friend was pointing to the solitary ball, and waving me down. Sure enough it was mine. Wind and ground shape assisted, the ball had travelled more than 370 yards, easily my longest drive to date!

** "Geordie Speak" for "You are over here, young Sir!" :-)