NOT TO BE

 A fledgling plan to reenact the great New Zealand golf trip of 1978 was kiboshed last night.

The old guys had a ZOOM call last night, once again organised by Mike and once again cocked up by a couple of the technology-challenged old buggers.

To be fair though, and contrary to what you might be thinking, Richard was on-line, on-time and on-point even though he was a bit dim. This was nothing to do with his mental acuity but more the fact that the settings or the location of his computer made him a bit hazy and hard to see.

I managed to cock-up the access to ZOOM, leaving it to the last minute to sign in. I started off with the Mac computer in the study, the one that I used on our last ZOOM call a year ago. It refused to allow me access and I tried several different passwords before giving up.

I went to the lounge and fired up the Mac laptop but as I hadn't used this for ZOOM before I had to set up a new account which took ages and then didn't work.

Bugger!

My phone was beeping from text messages from Mike and I knew that the old guys were ready and waiting.

I grabbed my iPad and clicked on the link in Mike's email message about the ZOOM call. This took me to the Apple Apps site and I had to download ZOOM. The process was a lot quicker and easier than trying to do this on the computers though and soon I had entered the site and on the screen were Mike, Richard (fuzzy) and a little fat diagram that was supposedly me. No Tony.

I hailed Mike and Tony and apologised for the delay (15 minutes) which I knew had been making Richard anxious. He kept looking at a timer and announcing how many minutes were left in the call - very annoying. I couldn't get the video to work so stayed on the call as a voice and an avatar. Still no Tony.

We had a bit of a disjointed chat with Mike disappearing at one point. He had been cut off but a frozen image of him stayed sort of like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

Once Mike was back the Old Girl came in and entered the conversation in the best 'parallel universing' tradition making the story I was telling much more interesting. Still no Tony.

Richard alerted us that there were only ten more minutes to go.

I resumed my story about a golf trip in 1978 that Mike, Roger, me and an annoying stranger (brother of Lindsay who worked at Murray Robert's) went on. We spent a week playing golf in Hunterville, Rotorua, Wairakei, and, I think Napier - staying each night at a different motel. It was fun but, being February we all got badly sunburnt. In those days we weren't as sun conscious as now and went out without hats or sunscreen.

I proposed a similar trip that the four of us could do as a kind of reenactment. This idea was accompanied by a thunderous lack of interest. We all discussed how frail Tony might be after his illness. Richard was concerned at where the golf might be played.  I said that anywhere would do an we could meet halfway down the North Island.

Richard alerted us that there were only four more minutes to go. Still no Tony.

We then remembered that Richard isn't really into golf and wasn't part of the 'Great Golf Trip of 1978. He tried to interest us in playing at Wainouiomata golf course which set Mike off on reminiscing of playing there in the 1970s and then he went off on a tangent about jazz concerts we may or may not have attended in Wellington. Meanwhile I thought about Richard and golf.

 

An aside.

It was January 1975 and Roger was reading the 'Wrightson's News' in the office at Murray Robert's (then named Wrightson's Wines and Spirits). He saw that there was a company-wide golf tournament the following weekend and organised for us to attend. I think that it was Tony, Roger, Richard, Noel and me who went. We had to drive to Marton on a Sunday morning to arrive just as the tournament was starting.

Marton golf course

Roger played OK golf, Noel was appalling, Tony was, well - at least he turned up, I played crap and Richard .....

..... Richard looked at the ball lying in the long grass at the edge of the 18th fairway. He'd already had 4 shots and knew that  the running total was 145. He knew that it would take him (if anyone was watching) another 6 shots to complete the hole but wanted to come in below 150. He looked about and then discretely kicked the ball back on to the fairway.

"Found it" he called out. "I'm here for two".

He completed the hole with an '8' and added up his score to be 149. He was most pleased with himself.

At the prize-giving and after all of the leaders prizes were handed out the course official announced the award of a special prize for 'Most Golf'. The prize was a rather valuable power-tool. Richard perked up.

"The Most Golf prize , with a score of 150 goes to ...." announced the official. 

"Bugger" said Richard.

I finished musing and rejoined the conversation saying that on second thoughts a golf trip wasn't such a good idea and that maybe Mike and I could just meet and .....

Richard alerted us that there were only 30 seconds to go. Still no Tony.

"I think ..." started Mike  ..........