THE HALFWAY HOUSE,
HOBBIT CARS AND HEART HEALTH.
Some years ago I met with a tennis-playing friend for a drink, when he commented,
in a rather superior manner I felt, on my beer drinking.
At the time I had not yet gone on the wagon and was still
using alcohol, while his attention was engaged with a
designer-label mineral water of what appeared to be a rather
dubious and very local origin. His remark prompted a heated
debate about the athletic merits of our respective sports.
I was holding my own in the face of his list of in-play golfing
sins – including smoking and drinking, and driving around
the course in ‘little hobbit-sized cars’ – but I confess that I was
initially undone by his jibes about the halfway house.
‘What is it with you golfers anyway with this halfway house
business?’ he demanded.
‘I mean, we don’t stop after a set of tennis for steak, egg and
chips with a side order of salad! And you won’t see soccer or
rugby players tucking into a chicken mayonnaise sandwich
with curly fries – they’re lucky to get a couple of orange
segments to sustain them through the second half.’
At this point I must request that if anyone knows any golf
club that serves really good curly fries with anything, it is
their immediate public duty to pass this information on to the
editorial staff at Estate Living. STAT!
‘Anyway,’ he sneered, ‘isn’t halfway house some sort of a
prison thing – like a rehab facility for criminals to prepare
them for the real world?’
He had a point … in that even if, rather like airline food, the
fare at most halfway houses has improved immeasurably, we
are not yet far enough removed from the days of the almost
criminal soggy pie and lumpy gravy with flaccid chips that
was sadly the staple at too many golf clubs.
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