Home from home

I have mentioned elsewhere in my journal that my father loved his golf. He wasn't fanatic about it, he simply enjoyed it thoroughly. While in Trinidad up till 1970 he had been able to play probably almost weekly but back in the UK, I don't remember him playing again, probably largely out of consideration for my mother who wasn't a player.

I suspect it might have been a year after she died in 1979, he met up with an old family friend purely by chance and through her passion for golf, he started again and they eventually married and he moved to her place outside of Darlington and became a member of Dinsdale Spa Golf Club which was virtually at the bottom of the garden.

However, he still had a passion for Norfolk where he had been born and raised and where he lived from 1970 to about 1980.  And there were still several relations there as well as a number of very good friends.

One day he heard that a Country Club & Golf Course had been built at Barnham Broom to the west of Norwich and just two miles from the house and farm where he had spent much of his younger years until his father died in the middle 1930s and the farm was sold 

The Barnham Broom facility offered a Time Share scheme and so it was that in December 1983, he bought a share of one week a year in an apartment there - Saxon 1, it was called. The club had, of course, a restaurant, bar and indoor sports with pool.

He loved his annual week there and was always very busy inviting local friends to come over and have a round with him. On this occasion, the four of us came to stay and I even managed to have a round. He particularly liked that I know and as always his very mild enjoyment of still being able to beat his son. We always laughed about that, in particular with table tennis which he also always beat me at. I think he gave up tennis when he realised I stood a chance.

During the stay, Step Gran Gwen was as always very concerned that the grandchildren were well looked after. She had never had any children of her own and made up for that with fussing over Kate and Jonathan.

I can't remember when he eventually gave up golf, sometime in the mid 90's when he was over 80. It wasn't voluntarily but he joked he had run out of living friends to play with and he claimed a few of them had died on the course of heart attacks, which frightened him. The car travel also became increasingly a problem.

So eventually the Time Share was sold. I never heard him talk about the cost or whether it had worked out but simply for his (senti)mental enjoyment, it was worth every penny. He beamed and glowed with pleasure when he was there.