MAGIC MOMENTS

MAGIC MOMENTS direct from Tim’s office at Forrester Park.

I sit trying to concentrate on an e-mail, but then I hear, “Oh, no I don’t”, followed by the unmistakable “Oh, yes you do” from a screaming chorus of delighted young voices, all in perfect hilarious unison.

I can no longer resist.  I open the door and look into the clubroom.  There are over a hundred faces fixed on one spot.  Each face wears an eager smile, just waiting for the next piece of information – no-one wants to miss anything.

I creep round so that I can see what they are looking at.  Well, there is a good-looking young man – talking to a monkey!  They are chatting to each other, both delivering jokes.  Some of these jokes crash into the small people who are sitting on the floor, sending them into peals of laughter; but others fly straight over their heads, catching the bigger people standing at the back, making them laugh.

The man who is standing in front of this adoring audience is not a teacher, vicar or politician, although all of them would love to have their audience concentrating so avidly on their words.  It is the famous magician, Michael Fitch, and his magic talking monkey.

During the interval I wander around chatting to old friends.  “Hello Timmy.  I’ve just seen your daughter – she’s so grown up”.

I look at his daughter, just out of school.  To my amazement, two school age children approach her.  “Mummy, the show’s wonderful.  Can we have ice-cream?”

I look at my friend.  “Grandchildren.  Now that is magic!”

Until the next time Tim Forrester-Muir.

Please note that a Michael Fitch Magic Evening is returning to Forrester Park on Saturday 3rd March 2012

RAINFALL over Forrester Park

Met Office report direct from Forrester Park Golf and Country Club, Maldon, Essex. The rain at Forrester Park falls mainly over me or that’s what they say. As the rain comes down and the mist swirls, and it seems to be dark even before one’s lunch has digested
(our chef’s delicious special cassoulet), the burning question of a few weeks ago, “Why is it so dry out there?” seems irrelevant, but I shall press on.

I consult my printouts of the average rainfall for the last 10 years.

“Where did you find those?” asks our youthful golf professional.

“I write them down each day after looking at my rain gauge”.

“What, for ten years?”

“Well, I actually started in 1985,” I reply proudly.

I am not a mind-reader, but you can see that look as he thinks of this chap looking at his rain gauge when he was born, when he went to primary school, then secondary school, when he got his first job – and still, each morning, this chap is looking at his rain
gauge!

“Oh!” he sensibly replies.

So, here they are:

Months	Average	2011
Jan	48	93
Feb	49	48
Mar	37	8
Apr	32	3
May	58	11
Jun	49	74
Jul	43	31
Aug	64	69
Sep	37	20
Oct	69	18
Nov	68
Dec	58

Looking back you can see  that March, April and May were three consecutively dry months, with just 22mm  between them, thus the dry conditions.  And then October was very dry.  Yet looking at the Met Office website, I find  it interesting to note that Northern Ireland had one of its wettest Octobers.

As I wandered out this morning to feed the chickens (just one egg!), I looked at the rain gauge.  2mm. A steady drizzle came down.

The dry spring did not seem irrelevant – no, just a long time ago!

Until the next time from the comfort of the Office at Forrester Park.

Tim Forrester-Muir

Night Golf for Flights of Fancy

NIGHT GOLF FOR FLIGHTS OF FANCY: The night of golf at Forrester Park was a huge success.  Craig, the club pro, rushed round dressed for the ‘Arctic blast’ which had been forecast, but which had been replaced with a warm balmy autumn evening.

Golfers laughed in the dark, wearing fluorescent halos or necklaces; fluorescent balls flew off like fireflies in the night; and some top golfers found their talents lacking as the conditions caused them to hit the dark ground instead of the glowing ball.

The general manager, filled with excitement and forgetting his status and grey hair, came rushing in. Bouncing with enthusiasm he exclaimed, “The fairway looks just like a
runway; do you think a plane will land?”

As we smiled together, I was reminded of a bright sunny summer day when I, instead of sitting at a desk, had a rake on my shoulder and, having just finished raking the 18^th bunker, was walking down the 10^th fairway when a small microlight flew quite low overhead.  As this was a rare sight, I waved enthusiastically and to my delight the gesture was returned.  The microlight continued to circle as if – yes – as if it was going to land!

Now, I have never flown a microlight, but I have read my share of Biggles, watched Those
Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and landed endless Gipsy Moths with Francis
Chichester.  What you need is a flat surface – the 1^st fairway would be ideal, the 18^th
fairway not so good.  My new friend chose the 18^th fairway.  Also, the forefathers of this land had pulled ‘stetch lines’ that cause that wonderful rippling effect on the fairways.

It was all too exciting to miss.  He approached via the 18^th tee.  Was he going to hit the ash?  No. Was he going to miss the bunker on the fairway?  His wheels skimmed across it and he touched down – only briefly, as the first roll of the ground tried like a bucking
bronco to toss the rider off.  Back into the air it went again; up and down the microlight bounced along the fairway.  I stood transfixed as my new friend and his machine careered towards the 18^th green.  Now I always feel, in my limited experience as a passenger in those big planes, that the pilot has to make a decision.  Either faster for taking off, or slower for
landing.  However, with all the bouncing up and down, or maybe the sheer joy of thinking about the incredible story he could tell of how he landed on the 18^th fairway at Forrester Park, he seemed to miss this vital operation.

I so wanted to tell my new friend that his choices were becoming limited.  If he carried on he would hit the Christmas tree behind the 18^th green; or I could see the picture in the Sun and Mirror of the microlight rammed into the Forrester Park clubhouse French doors and the two new friends sharing a pint.

However, the fragile microlight at this stage just seemed fed up with the rough treatment.  After rearing up the slope of the 18^th green, it returned to earth exhausted.  Not wishing to hit either my mother’s Christmas trees or the clubhouse, the nose rose and fell for the final
time.  Sticking into the green the microlight somersaulted, landing upside down on the green.

Fantastic!  I rushed over, and there he was.  Biggles.  Leather sheepskin jacket, white scarf,
leather flying helmet and some wonderful glass flying goggles.  He hung upside down, like a bat.

“Where am I?”, he enquired.

“Forrester Park Golf Club”, I replied.

“Well, I saw the Thames over there, realised I was flying into a military restriction zone and decided to land.   I’m doing the Round Britain Race and I started in Ipswich this morning”, he continued.

On the centre of his chest was a large disc of stainless steel on which, in red letters, the lord ‘release’ was written.  This was the reason that my new friend was able to hang upside down, his head some 18 inches above the ground.

He was a man of bravado – he had got lost on the first day of the race.   He had by some stroke of luck managed to return to earth, but his microlight lay broken around him and, I
realised as he struck the ‘release’ button on his chest, he had still not worked out the laws of gravity.

As he fell the final 18 inches onto his head, the old parachutist joke about “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing” came to mind.

I was brought back to my senses as someone laughed.  “Don’t be silly Paul, of course a plane won’t land”.

“Well,” I murmured. “It is just possible”.

Until my next mutterings from Tim Forrester-Muir at his desk in Forrester Park.

THE WEDDING

Forrester Park Golf and Country Club Weddings

THE WEDDING: I looked at her and waited for her reply.  I had just delivered the line that ‘Forrester Park could do as little or as much as she and her future husband required for the perfect wedding day’.

“Well”, she replied, smiling, “I want you to do it all.  We will pay for the whole lot up front,
now” for the wedding.

I hurried off to my office to prepare the wedding quote, returning in record time.  She looked down the columns.

“What about the cars?” she quizzed.

“I shall organise whatever you want…”

“I want Bentleys”, she calmly said.  Her future husband looked up.  “I thought you wanted the Rollers and the Ferrari, doll”.

Without so much as a glance, she continued.  “Flowers (orange and yellow).  Hairdressers to my house with make-up artists and nail painters for 18 of us. Chocolate fountain.  Oh yes, and green sweets for the kids – and better have a bouncy castle.”

“Any dietary needs?” I enquired.  For the first time the smile disappeared.  “If they don’t want what I am having at my wedding, they don’t need to come”.  The smile re-appeared.  She got up to go.

Her man handed me the cheque.  They had only just come for their first visit that day.

As she was leaving, she turned.  “Oh, yes. It’s a themed wedding – Bonnie and Clyde – so lots of people looking like gangsters.”

I watched as the beautiful black Porsche skimmed down the drive.

Some years later I met her in town.  “Great wedding Timmy”, she laughed.  “My husband’s dotcom business was mega”.  And with that she was gone.

Another wedding superbly organised by Forrester Park!

Until we meet again,

Tim Forrester-Muir

Forrester Park Golf and Country Club

Trees

As you walk to the first tee at Forrester Park, on your right are the willow trees – lovely weeping willows planted by my mother to shield the sun parlour against the North wind.  She just pushed
in some sticks she had been given.

Passing these, we then see the cherry trees next to the first tee.  Many years ago these cherries, which have the most beautiful flowers in the spring, were the end of our
garden.  From here you were into the woods.  A huge field maple stood where the path meets the first tee; I had a rope in the tree and practised my Tarzan, swinging for hours.

Once into the wood, the endless site of pitched battles with Red Indians and massive pirate attacks, small boys, and sometimes specially-selected girls, would smoke pipes of peace and eat burnt sausages around camp fires.  Building dams in the stream was an endless source of fun – fun my mother did not share, as friends and I would return, soaking wet, covered in mud and red from nettle stings.

As you leave the first tee you are crossing my mother’s Christmas tree plantation.  In those days customers would come and select their Christmas trees and help dig them up before paying for them.

Some remaining pear trees remind me of a much earlier venture of my randmother’s….but that’s another story.

Many of the trees that stand proud in my memory were flattened on that October night in 1987 – which kept us in firewood for a year.

Go hug a tree today!!

Until the next time a thoughtful Tim Forrester-Muir from the heart of Forrester Park Golf and Country Club, Maldon, Essex

The Art of Growing OLD!

THE ART OF GROWING OLD and the philosophical thoughts from
Forrester Park Golf Club and Tim Forrester-Muir, he sat there, looking at me sternly, the sharpness in his eyes gave no hint to the near ninety years.  “I do not think you know how much this club means to me.  When I was ill I had twenty phone calls and visitors nearly every day”.

She looked at me and held out her hands.  “Agony”, she exclaimed in a
theatrical voice.  “I can hardly grip the steering wheel, let alone a club – and in the winter the doctor says I must not venture out…..  It’s me lungs!”  She delivers the line with all the timing of a top 1970s comedian.

She now turns, fluttering gently.  “So, how much will you charge me?”

“How about a bundle of greenfees?  You can use them for just 9
holes and they will last for three years. Oh, yes, and you can use them to bring friends.”

“I do not have any friends!”

This line is delivered with a wonderful mixture of bravado and sadness that would shame a Shakespearean actress.

I sense my change and I appeal to the watching audience.  “This is provided that you come regularly to lunch and entertain all your friends and make them laugh”.

“I’ll spend even more money!”, she screeches.

“So what are you doing this weekend Tim?”, asked one of the ladies.

“Well, I am going to a ninetieth birthday party and she has got her school friends coming.  It is one of Mrs FM’s second cousins”.

This ninetieth birthday had been the source of great excitement; it was, as the girls considered, the first time they had ever met any distant family relations.  There was the usual line of questions.

“What are our cousins like?” the girls eagerly enquire.

“Don’t know, never met them”.

“Where do they go to school?”

“Don’t know, never met them”.

“Do they know we exist?”

“Don’t know, never…. Oh, I am sure they are really nice and dying to meet you”.

“How do you know, if you’ve never met them?”

Finally, we arrive at the road that the house is situated on.  It is in a pretty town on the North Norfolk coast, and instead of finding a house,
we find 32b attached to a wrought iron gate. We enter the gate to find an overgrown drive.  As we walk down the path we spot some balloons tied to a bush.

“It’s here!” the daughters squeal.

Gradually the plot opens up to reveal a house bathed in sunlight, surrounded by a mass of flowers.  It is overgrown, the drive has been reclaimed by the grass, as has the patio, but the hardy flowers seem to form a protective ring around the house which has a huge sunshade attached to its south side.  The house is definitely resting in the
sunshine.

Inside the house is a mass of clutter; pictures of smiling children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, crowds of nick-nacks from all around the world covering every available surface.

I talk to the baby who cried at my wedding – a rather beautiful young woman who was about to do a job curating at a Paris art museum.  Her two naughty brothers who wore tartan shorts and hid under the table at my wedding talked earnestly to me; one a rather serious young man who worked for the MoD and the other a geologist working for a foundation for seabed wind turbines.

Mrs FM had the hilarious meeting with one lady who introduced herself three times during the party.  Having completely forgotten the previous introductions, the elderly lady found it incredible on their final meeting how much this young woman seemed to know – what an incredible coincidence.

The moment that gave me great joy was the arrival of the birthday cake – a great box of glistening sugar-white icing with lemon-yellow writing, a huge single candle pushed into the middle.  As it entered the room a rather self-conscious ‘Happy Birthday’ broke out, which quickly gained a confident crescendo at “Dear Barbara/Granny, Mother, Aunty” as each sang her name.  The singing finished, a large beam came from the seated birthday girl’s face

-     who then sprang lightly to her feet and smiled at us all.

“That was lovely,” she said with sincerity.  “But you will have to do
it all again as I want it on video!”

She then strode across the room, picked a case from the floor, pulled out her video camera, switched it on, thrust it into the waiting hands of her son (a man in his late sixties).  She then returned to her
chair, the cake dutifully went back out of the room ready to make its surprise entry again, and the singers started, with greater confidence than before.

As the party drew to a close a young child, bound by none of those awkward rules of ‘social etiquette’, said, “Granny, how does it feel to be ninety?”

The smile gave way to serious contemplation.

“I find it really rather hard to believe I am ninety”, came the honest reply.

“Will you have a 100^th  birthday?” the child enquired.

“Not sure, but I am already planning my 95^th – its been such fun”.

So until the next time from Tim Forrester-Muir at his desk at Forrester Park Golf and Country Club, Maldon, Essex. Head down and back to golfing and wedding venue matters.

www.forresterparkltd.com

GOLF, BIKES AND THE FUTURE.

Back in the swing of things at Forrester Park, Friday morning, 11am sharp.  The 1^st tee at Forrester Park Golf Club.  If you want to play with a young lady of 16 who has a very, very busy social life, a precise invitation is necessary.  I can vouch for the fact that there are great merits to playing golf with a young person.

Before I continue, I have just seen two heads bob by the office window, one a chef, the other one of our senior ladies.  There is great purpose in their movement; they are obviously going to do something very important.  They return some minutes later.  “It’s absolutely beautiful”, the senior lady enthuses; the chef’s face breaks into a broad grin.

“Oh, can I see it?!” I hear Mrs FM plead out of the window.  “Of course”, comes the delighted and courteous reply, followed by another proud grin.  Mrs FM hurries out of the office.

She returns some time later.  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she sighs.

What was so beautiful?  Yes, you’ve guessed it – his new Red Motor Cycle.

There is something so attractive about a young man’s proud grin.  Matt’s first bike was black and white; he had saved and saved for it and all the things a modern biker needs – helmet, boots, leathers and gloves.  But alas! This Chinese bike was not what she pretended to be.  She was pretty, but first her exhaust fell off, then her indicator…. day by day her appearance changed until one day, no more than six months after the relationship had begun, her engine mounting broke and her engine fell out.  Matt was devastated; this was mainly due to the fact that he was still paying for her.  Engineers made incredibly rude
remarks about our Chinese friends, and the fact that their motorbikes were not very good.  Nearly as rude as an old member had been in the days of British Leyland about his brand new Rover.  Nothing fell off, but there again, it did not move.

Anyway, Matt had sorted everything out, got rid of the Chinese interloper and now had new wheels.  And he has also signed up to a Confectionery and Patisserie course.  The future looks bright for our wedding venue.

Another young man who is showing all the modest pride of a true professional stands in the bar. “Well done”, I say, shaking his hand enthusiastically, before I set about grilling him for all the details.

Dale Whitnell, winner of the Jamegatour Tournament held at the Bristol Golf Club with 9-under (two rounds of 64 and 67) smiles modestly. This is his first professional win; might it be the first of many. As Gary Pike said, “there are many pros who just never manage to win.” The future looks bright.

So, where was I?  Ah yes, the Big Game with the young lady, and its merits.  Well, it was great fun, provided fathers keep off subjects such as tidiness and watching too much TV,
and concentrate on the game.

“That was a truly majestic shot!”

“Oh, Daddy, stop bragging”.

“Well, you’ve played some lovely shots, and you’ve got the results in your GCSEs that you needed”.

She smiles with more than a little pride – the future’s looking bright.

Perhaps we can learn something from the young.

Until my next ramblings Tim,

Forrester Park Golf and Country Club “more than just a golf club and wedding venue“