Whilst checking out my hill climbing ability on two wheels the other day, I circumnavigated Royal Eastbourne Golf Club and was amazed to see the fairways full of people walking, some with dogs in tow. Amazed because golf clubs are closed during lockdown, with the wielding of clubs and smiting of little white balls strictly verboten. What ludicrous rules, when the mental and physical benefits of playing golf are so great and can be so safely achieved. What’s the difference between friends walking together and friends walking together whilst playing golf? Hopefully, the eventual inquiry into how the Government did, might highlight what a bad decision it was to shut down all sport.
I wrote about sporting statistics recently and we had a classic example in the second ODI against India on Friday, of the difference between 99 and 100. Batting second, England were racing to victory thanks to an exhilarating opening partnership between Jason Roy and Johnny Bairstow and then some unbelievably destructive hitting from Ben Stokes. Having reached 50 in quick time, Stokes went to 99 in another eleven balls, with six 6’s. (10 overall). On the twelfth ball he gloved an attempted pull to the wicketkeeper, when one more run would have seen him record the third fastest 100 by an Englishman in fifty over international cricket. He walked off, head bowed, furious and disappointed, despite having just played an innings of power, brilliant inventiveness, sustained aggression, with extraordinary hand/eye coordination and more than a glimpse of sheer genius. It had got England so far ahead of the required run rate that it would have been almost impossible for them to lose. It was a fantastic contribution to the team’s win but will probably only be remembered by those that saw it; the record books will not reflect it. Just one more run needed…..
Stokes’s feeling of disappointment is akin to the golfer who has just shot 61, having three putted the 18th to miss out on the magical 59 and, despite leading the tournament by four shots, feels he has missed out on what might be his only chance to enter the record books as one of the handful of golfers who have broken 60. In both cases, the disappointment tends to be fairly short-lived when they realise what they have actually achieved.
There have been a number of accusations of stupidity and greed flashing around Westminster recently, but surely there’s nothing to compare with Major General Nick Welch, who gained £48,000 fraudulently by fiddling his expenses to pay for his children to go to boarding school. His deceit was uncovered thanks to a neighbour, a colonel, reporting him. The subsequent Court Martial sentenced him to two years in prison, with a retrospective dishonourable discharge from the Army. Unsurprisingly, he was instantly dismissed from his civilian job as well. One of the very first pieces of formal advice that I was given when I first joined the RAF was DON’T EVER fiddle your expenses. When claiming things like mileage allowance it would be so easy to add on a few pounds here and there but if ever you are caught it will be an instant Court Martial and dishonourable discharge. I would like to think that I am honest enough that I wouldn’t have done it anyway, but I took the warning so seriously that I reckon I left after thirteen years, being owed hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. I suppose the unfortunate message is that if you’re going to cheat, cheat big! Jeopardising your career for anything less than a few million simply isn’t worth it. Which makes Mr Welch’s transgression seem very stupid indeed. No doubt he is overwhelmed with regret.
A couple of instances in my subsequent career served to highlight the value of that advice. On one occasion I was paid twice for the same work and I suspect the error would probably have gone unnoticed had I not highlighted it and returned the £4,500 that would have been very welcome at that stage. (Well at any stage come to that). I was never thanked for my honesty, despite it probably saving the accounts clerk considerable embarrassment. More recently, when we were in Hong Kong, I used to organise all my own flights and travel with a “one man band” travel agent in HK. He would then submit invoices to London, who generally were irritatingly slow to pay, despite being a large, international company. One invoice was for $HK 40,000, about £4,000. Someone in accounts very generously paid him £40,000! You would think that such a large sum might have rung a few bells when paying for only a couple of flights. To his eternal credit (and that was a big enough sum to have made quite a difference to him) he immediately told me and the London office and returned the money. I never told anyone in London and I imagine the clerk responsible (and I know who it was) was eternally grateful that her significant error was never exposed, but again we heard not a beep of gratitude. Interestingly, near the end of my twenty seven years with the company, a production manager tried to reclaim £200 from me that they felt they had overpaid. When I pointed out that in fact there were at least five other occasions where I had been underpaid by £200 and they probably actually owed me about £1,000, I never heard another word!
ADayInTheStrifeOf 