looking about as cool as it was possible to look while dragging a four-foot-by-two portable refuse unit in your wake. I took a single look behind me – Trevor was giving me the thumbs-up, while Terry and Greg remained submerged in Cosmopolitan – but other than that, I was in a cocoon of concentration that even Jack Nicklaus might have found a little on the intense side. I peered down a mental tunnel at my target. My thoughts were occupied by two things, and two things only: nymph and wheelie bin. Nymph. Wheelie bin. Nymph. Wheelie bin. Two inanimate objects with gaping holes in their essential make-up that only I could simultaneously fill.
Five minutes later, as we performed a lap of honour in the Allegro, I admired my work. The bin had been too cumbersome to fit on the nymph’s outstretched arms, but with it on its head the nymph looked somehow more human and contented. Returning to the scene of the crime hadn’t been part of the original plan, but a slight uncertainty as to whether our adversary had witnessed my brazen vandalism led us back for fear of anticlimax: it was important that Mrs Carry On knew precisely who she was dealing with. You might not think it possible to fit five lanky, wriggling adolescents, a full-size golf bag, and a life-size cardboard tour professional into an Austin Allegro, but you’d be wrong, particularly if two of the adolescents happen to be sticking their legs out of the side windows. By the time we’d screeched up outside Mrs Carry On’s drive, executed a handbrake turn, sounded Nick’s customized Dukes of Hazzard horn and jeered obnoxiously (I don’t remember what we shouted; it’s not normally important in these situations, provided you shout something ), she was probably quivering with terror behind her Laura Ashley curtains, vowing never to mess with us again.
‘We underestimated you, Tom,’ declared Trevor, as we hurtled towards our next assault on the dreary adult society that sought to repress us.
Doing my best to blank out the image I’d seen a couple of seconds earlier through the rear window – of a rather confused elderly Asian gentleman puzzling over why anyone would want to adorn his prize statue with an oversized hat – I concluded that it would hardly be in the spirit of the moment (or, for that matter, of my burgeoning popularity) to bring up the likelihood that we had defaced the wrong driveway.
Once again, the Cripsley Law – commit a tiny misdemeanour and get severely bollocked for it, do something really mischievous and get away with it – prevailed. As Nick had predicted, we never saw Mrs Carry On again, and heard no sign of a repercussion from the direction of the captain and committee. Either the sheer unlikeliness of our behaviour was making us invisible, or the adult membership were making notes and stockpiling our crimes for rainy day retribution. Whatever the case, we decided there could be no harm in continuing to take advantage of the situation. Now we started to feel properly invincible. Two days after Derek Plunkett, a moonfaced ten-handicap electrician, nipped to the pro shop toilet and Nick replaced the dozen brand new Maxfli balatas in his bag with hollow practice balls, Plunkett arrived at the pro shop for his next game as jolly and credulous as ever. When one of Mousey’s ‘HELLO! … twat ’ greetings came dangerously close to becoming a ‘ hello … TWAT!’, greens committee chairman Pete Churchley’s ear canal seemed miraculously to fill with cotton wool. Then there was the day when the ladies’ vice-captain walked blithely through a daily pro shop game of Eight-iron Tennis (objective: to throw your eight-iron hard enough at your opponent to make them die) as if Nick and I were ghosts that her rational golfing brain refused to process.
My paranoia about Mousey’s role in the shop hierarchy, incidentally, turned out to be premature. In the end, the truth was disappointingly straightforward: Mousey spent his school lunchbreak
Five minutes later, as we performed a lap of honour in the Allegro, I admired my work. The bin had been too cumbersome to fit on the nymph’s outstretched arms, but with it on its head the nymph looked somehow more human and contented. Returning to the scene of the crime hadn’t been part of the original plan, but a slight uncertainty as to whether our adversary had witnessed my brazen vandalism led us back for fear of anticlimax: it was important that Mrs Carry On knew precisely who she was dealing with. You might not think it possible to fit five lanky, wriggling adolescents, a full-size golf bag, and a life-size cardboard tour professional into an Austin Allegro, but you’d be wrong, particularly if two of the adolescents happen to be sticking their legs out of the side windows. By the time we’d screeched up outside Mrs Carry On’s drive, executed a handbrake turn, sounded Nick’s customized Dukes of Hazzard horn and jeered obnoxiously (I don’t remember what we shouted; it’s not normally important in these situations, provided you shout something ), she was probably quivering with terror behind her Laura Ashley curtains, vowing never to mess with us again.
‘We underestimated you, Tom,’ declared Trevor, as we hurtled towards our next assault on the dreary adult society that sought to repress us.
Doing my best to blank out the image I’d seen a couple of seconds earlier through the rear window – of a rather confused elderly Asian gentleman puzzling over why anyone would want to adorn his prize statue with an oversized hat – I concluded that it would hardly be in the spirit of the moment (or, for that matter, of my burgeoning popularity) to bring up the likelihood that we had defaced the wrong driveway.
Once again, the Cripsley Law – commit a tiny misdemeanour and get severely bollocked for it, do something really mischievous and get away with it – prevailed. As Nick had predicted, we never saw Mrs Carry On again, and heard no sign of a repercussion from the direction of the captain and committee. Either the sheer unlikeliness of our behaviour was making us invisible, or the adult membership were making notes and stockpiling our crimes for rainy day retribution. Whatever the case, we decided there could be no harm in continuing to take advantage of the situation. Now we started to feel properly invincible. Two days after Derek Plunkett, a moonfaced ten-handicap electrician, nipped to the pro shop toilet and Nick replaced the dozen brand new Maxfli balatas in his bag with hollow practice balls, Plunkett arrived at the pro shop for his next game as jolly and credulous as ever. When one of Mousey’s ‘HELLO! … twat ’ greetings came dangerously close to becoming a ‘ hello … TWAT!’, greens committee chairman Pete Churchley’s ear canal seemed miraculously to fill with cotton wool. Then there was the day when the ladies’ vice-captain walked blithely through a daily pro shop game of Eight-iron Tennis (objective: to throw your eight-iron hard enough at your opponent to make them die) as if Nick and I were ghosts that her rational golfing brain refused to process.
My paranoia about Mousey’s role in the shop hierarchy, incidentally, turned out to be premature. In the end, the truth was disappointingly straightforward: Mousey spent his school lunchbreak
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