Regular readers of this blog will recall that this time last year eight of us golfers from Kirton Holme booked an autumnal break at Ashbury Manor. Some of our activities were recorded on these pages under the title Eight men in a Boat. This year we are the Power of nine, a power I intend to exploit to the full.
Firstly, I invite you to meet the nine participants. We are arranged in groups representing the square root of nine and within each group our total is, of course also the square root of nine.
Group one;
Meet Nigel Rouse, Andy Bakewell and John Davey. We tried, without success to persuade Andy to hit the ball with the fat end the club.
Group 2;
Here we have Bill Exton, Chris Pickett and Keith Sheppard. Keith, you can see is dressed up to the nines.
Group 3;
Finally Graham Morris, Mike Pickett and Nigel Duce. Although not visible in this photo, Mick is wearing a number 9 on the back of his sweater as he is our best striker of a ball.
We travelled down in three cars. One with 4 passengers, one with 3 and one with 2. This somewhat mathematically clumsy arrangement at least meant that the sum of the digits came to nine. Any whole number multiplied by 9 results in another number whoes digits will eventually total the number 9. Let me show you; 2x9=18 (1+8=9), 50×9=450(4+5+0=9), 578329×9=5204961(5+2+0+4+9+6+1=27 and 2+7=9). This applies to any number no matter how big, if you go on long enough. I think I've gone on long enough.
The journey down as far as the Gloucester Services was excellent. Despite different starting places and times we all met, one behind the other in the breakfast queue. Almost as baffling as the qualities of the number nine. Thereon in however we hit traffic on the bridge over the Avon and lost over an hour to the disruption caused by roadworks or more precisely the road narrowing for the absent roadworkers.
Reception at Ashbury was well organised. All the covid regulations were explained efficiently and without fuss moreover everybody had their temperature taken. Lunch next followed by a round of the Oakwood course. This was a Stapleford competition appropriately won by Chris Pickett with 36 points (3+6=9 therefore must be a multiple of 9). I was on cloud nine to gain second place equal with Graham. After golf we had to find our rooms, incidently Nigel and I were in room 18 1+8=.....), unpack, shower and get down to the dining room in time for our 8 o'clock dinner. All in all a pretty tiring day. Just time to listen to a little music before going to bed. Did you know that Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Mahler, Vaughan Williams and Arnold all died during or after writing their ninth symphonies. Me, I'm stopping after three and stopping now for bed.
