One club

So, I bought a golf club the other day.

Not the place where you go to play golf, just the thing you use to hit the ball.

And only one.  A 6-iron.

Why would I do such a thing?  Danged if I know.

It was $5 from Cash Converters.  I picked it up and it felt good in my hands.  What more reason do you need to buy a golf club?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I suck at de-cluttering:  because I am attracted to clutter like a moth to a flame.

Fortunately I'm getting slightly better at throwing it out later.

Actually, I did kind of have a reason for buying the club.

Some time ago I stumbled across an article about one club golf and I liked the sound of that.

Watching golf is about on par* in the "can this be any more boring?" stakes as test cricket.  Yet, having recently become enamored with other "target ball" sports (like petanque and lawn bowls), I realise I'd probably enjoy it if I played it.

I mean, golf links always look like a pleasant place to spend an afternoon, and I'm okay with a little bit of "hitting things with sticks" as a means to pass the time.

It's just... Man that sport has a lot of crap - and most of it is expensive.  I already have a sport that gives me the opportunity to buy expensive crap and carry it around for no good reason.  I decided ages ago that what I'm looking for in any new activities I take up is "less crap than fencing".

Yes, I do love the crap that comes with fencing.  Swords, masks, sword-proof pants... what's not to love?  But that's enough.

So, the idea of lugging around a bag full of these club things just seems unpleasant.  And, it must be said, the idea of looking meaningfully down a stretch of grass and saying "I wonder if I should use a 4 or 5 iron here?" just seems a bit too... well... "introverted".

Yeah, that sounds like a polite way to put it.  "Introverted".

But a single club?  I can deal with that.  Walking around a nice park with a stick, hitting a ball towards a hole...  It sounds like minigolf, only bigger.

So, when I walked into Cash Converters to kill some time, and noticed they had a bunch of second hand clubs for $5 each, I thought "why not?"

Now all I have to do is find a golf course that doesn't have fees that make my eyes water.


*Bad golf pun not originally intended, but left in once noticed.

"Owner says sell!"

I go through a real estate phase every couple of years or so.  I hit a point where I think I must surely try to own a house or something, and start looking at what's on the market.

I start out with something resembling an idea of what I want.  Then I start getting all sorts of "great" ideas.  Then I confuse myself horribly, and end up deciding the easiest thing to do is Nothing At All (otherwise known as "waiting").

The trouble is I don't actually have to buy anything.  I'm not moving to a new town, no one is kicking me out of the place where I live right now and I'm an only child, so the chances that I'll inherit property at some point are pretty high.

Without the incentive to hurry up and buy something, I don't actually need to buy anything... so I can "wait" until I find something I really want to buy.

Of course, I don't know what I want.  I never know what I want.  I want lots of things, and then I don't want them at all.  I'm about as decisive as a Magic 8 Ball stuck on "Maybe".  I dither with the best of them.

Plus, after a few weeks of reading property advertisements, I start getting the distinct impression that all real estate agents are a bunch of dorks.

Have you ever read what real estate agents write in their ads?  Much of it can be evenly divided between the following categories:

• Obfuscation
• Pointless Stupidity
• "Why would you bother saying that?"
• "Did you ever think of proofreading your work before paying to have it published?"

I always want to slap the agent whenever I read the words "Owner says sell!" at the top of an ad.

Well, duh!  I would hope the owner told you to sell their house - otherwise this advertisement is completely inappropriate.  

And since when has the fact that the owner wants to sell their property become a marketable feature of the property?  You don't see "manufacturers say sell!" written on socks and hosiery.

I read an ad for a house the other day that proudly boasted "duel driveways".  Does that mean the driveways are duelling with each other, or do we use the driveways for duels?  

"Pistols at dawn on the southern driveway!"

Why would I want to buy a house from these people?

"Poor Sharon's Skirt"

I own a skirt.

At the moment, it's officially just the one.

I've been going through my stuff lately and slowly identifying things that are just taking up space in my home which should be released into the wild in the hope that someone else actually uses them.

It's kind of connected to the yurt thing I was talking about on my other blog - I have too much crap I don't need and I don't use, so I'm trying to think about what I would actually take with me if I had to downscale to a yurt, and then asking myself very seriously whether anything I wouldn't take with me is worth keeping at all.

Recently, two of my skirts bit the dust.  I've been keeping them because I feel I should own skirts.  I haven't been wearing them because they don't meet my skirtage needs.

I wear pants, most of the time.  Actually, jeans.  I'm a denim girl.

What I require from an item of clothing is a very specific (and apparently highly unfashionable) list:

• Hard wearing
• Fit to move around and do stuff
• Reasonably modest (as in, I don't like showing too much skin on legs, shoulders or torso)
• Likely to avoid falling down/riding up/exposing underwear
• With pockets

I don't necessarily need pockets for shirts and blouses, but pants and skirts need pockets.

So, what I want from a skirt is something sturdy, below the knee, likely to keep my underwear safely under my outerwear at all times, and equipped with storage options.

I currently have one skirt that matches that criteria, so I currently have one skirt.  The other skirts failed on the "hard wearing" or "has pockets" front, so I never wore them.  After several years of never wearing them, I have decided to set them free.

I would like to replace them with skirts I actually would wear, but I can't find any in the shops.  They're all either too flimsy for my liking or too short.  I just want a good, serviceable denim or cotton skirt (with pockets) that goes past my knees.  Apparently I'm asking for too much.

As for the remaining skirt, I've decided I really should try to wear it occasionally - if for no other reason that I'm sick of hearing surprised cries of "you're wearing a skirt!" every time I do wear it.

Part of the reason I rarely wear skirts is the fact that I rarely find a skirt I actually want to wear.  The biggest part of the reason is the fact that I hate having my clothing pointed out to me as if I'm doing something unspeakably radical just because I'm dressed "like a girl" for a change.

Yes, I'm wearing a skirt.  I'm allowed to do that.  I understand women fought for several decades in the middle of the last century to give us the freedom to wear whatever the hell we want.  I sincerely hope that one day men will be able to earn the same right.

I wore my skirt to work last week and managed to be in the building for all of five minutes before someone decided to point it out to me.  This prompted a friend of mine to lament "poor Sharon's skirt!"

Poor Sharon's skirt, indeed.

Human Powered Pentathlon...

I'm of two minds about the Modern Pentathlon.

On the one hand, it is surely one of the coolest sports on the planet.

I mean, cross-country running, swimming, fencing, horse-riding and pistol shooting?  What's not to love?

On the other hand:  Horse-riding and pistol shooting?  What is this, the Roaring Twenties?  Who can afford that kind of crap in this day and age?

And do you have any idea how difficult it is to take up gun-sports in Australia?  We aren't America, you know.  After our last major mass shooting incident we put in laws restricting gun ownership and use.

I caught some of the Youth Olympics this year and noticed they use laser guns instead of actual pistols for some of the Modern Pentathlon events.  That is somehow both very cool and slightly disappointing.  I mean, what's the point of a target sport that doesn't leave a mark on the target?

What I want to know is why there isn't a completely human powered alternative.

I know the idea of the Modern Pentathlon was to create a sport that encapsulated the skills necessary for a soldier at the turn of the 20th century, but can't we play with the format a little?

I'm not saying we should get rid of, alter or replace the MP, just that we should create a new variation to cater for those of us who aren't quite so Light Horse Brigade.  There can be the Modern Penthathlon and there can be the Human Powered Penthathlon.

The Human Powered Penthathlon could keep the cross-country running, swimming and fencing, but replace the pistol shooting with archery and the horse riding with cyclo-cross.  So, basically a really muddy triathlon with archery and fencing added for good measure.

If we move the swimming event into a "lake", we can do the whole thing in one open-air location.

Okay, technically cyclo-cross is a winter game and the rest of the MP belongs in the summer roster, but I think that a) it can cope with the move, and b) it's not like cyclo-cross is currently in the Winter Olympic Games or anything anyway.

It should be though.

Pyeongchang, are you listening to me?  Stick cyclo-cross in the roster for the Winter Olympic Games.

Do it.