This week saw some remarkably good scoring at Timaru, amongst those I played with, which unfortunately leads to a dearth of amusing anecdotes from our own little golfing world - I suppose I could mention that Dexter got another lucky bounce, but that's hardly news is it? In the wider world of golf, one item I did read that made me chuckle, was about the Green Zone Golf Course. Not, as the name suggests, in some war-torn hell-hole, but actually located on the Finnish/Swedish border, with eleven holes in one country and seven in the other. On the sixth, and this is the peculiar bit, golf shots have a hang time of just over an hour, due to the differing time-zones - how this affects slow play wasn't mentioned. In other news, there was, I am afraid another terrible tragedy in Timaru, and again I am saddened to note that our thoughts go out to the family involved. One can only guess that it was a form of mental breakdown that led to the horrifying events, and I would anyone to get professional help if they feeling that life is getting on top of them - talk to your doctor, call a helpline, they will be able to find help for you. One thought that did occur to me earlier this week, however, and which this sad tale confirmed on Friday, was the scary power of the rumour mill. I suspect it was ever so, news carried around small settlements and across land masses would be greedily gulped down, digested and reconstituted as fact. Nowadays, however, that process is able to take place a hell of a lot quicker and without all the hassle of the 'due' bit of any 'due process' to confirm that what is being said bears any relation to reality. Certainly, our office on Friday was all of a buzz with the news, and said mill was more like a whirling dervish, the ball bearings humming as various different titbits of data was collected and distributed, seemingly by the minute from various friends of friends of friends neighbour's dog's best friends. The reason this topic caught my eye in the first place was the story of the Trinidadian Rapper, Nicki Minaj, who sent out an anti-vax tweet, claiming that the Covid Vaccine had made the neighbour of her brother impotent. It took the Trinidadian authorities longer than 24 hours to repudiate this nonsense, and the reason was 'due process', as they actually took the time to investigate the claim thoroughly before dismissing it for the tosh it was. I would just like to say, as an aside, that I would have suspected the veracity of this claim immediately, for the simple reason that it seems very unlikely that any bloke would tell his neighbour of his erectile issues unless his neighbour happened to be his doctor. It got me to thinking, however, about the poor buggers who would have had to go out and actually do the groundwork necessary to get to the bottom of this claim. In reality, that would have meant that government officials would have had to send someone round, door-to-door, to ask all of the neighbours whether it was in fact them, who were having troubles in the trouser department. It sounds like the worst job in the world, I mean think about it, how would you even start? "Excuse me, sir, we are investigating a possible local case of failure to perform in the bedroom. Would you happen to know anything about that, sir?" I can only assume that every single respondent would have vehemently denied this charge against their manhood and left the investigators utterly perplexed - were they all telling the truth? Was there a liar in the list of names? Had they noticed any of them walking oddly? Which of the ones that had tried to wallop them was actually just reacting out of sheer embarrassment? No wonder it took over 24 hours, it would have been one of the hardest jobs in the world (or not, I suppose - sorry, couldn't resist). The point of all this twaddle is that facts have a way of changing subtly when passed along the line - we each hear what we think we want to hear, and pass along what we think others want to hear (I am deeply aware of the irony of me typing this right now). It's why journalists have to get multiple sources to confirm a story, and why we should always be on our guard when we see "information" online. Now if you'll excuse me, there seems to be some sort of official looking chap at the front door Stay safe, play well, and I look forward to seeing you all out there soon Steve |