Hello again

I finished off my last blog with Jeremy Clarkson’s quote about golf club captains being halfwits, hated by their family at a molecular level and so on.  I did modify his quote a bit: he actually talked about chairmen not captains. I’ll leave it to others to judge whether he’s right. I am of course grateful to be Bamburgh Castle Golf Club’s chairman; to be precise, chairman of the committee, but when people have congratulated me on the appointment I’ve downplayed it because it seems to me that there will be many hassles to offset the undoubted benefit of the parking space. I respect John Southern even more now for staying sane while people dumped their problems on him: I’ve only done the job for a couple of weeks and already I think the best solution is not to visit the club when anyone else is there.

Not everyone will know that each year, after the AGM, the elected committee disappears into the small lobby by Mike’s office. Under the chairmanship of that year’s captain it decides who should chair the committee for the following year and who should do what jobs. This year, no-one else wanted the job, hence me. The good news is that at the same time we managed to solve one of the biggest problems for any treasurer (of anything): how do you get anyone to take over? Ian Brown agreed to take over and to chair the finance committee. This role will be critical over the next couple of years as we finalise the clubhouse development: equally critical is the clubhouse development committee itself, which will now be a formal sub-committee: Malcolm Cresswell who, with Ali Gilhome, embodies experience of this type of project will be the chairman. At the same time we have to keep the usual business of the club going; the Green, Competitions/Handicap and House committees will benefit from the continuity of John Cairns, Keith Whitfield and Tony Cawthorn continuing as the respective chairmen.

The key to the office bequeathed to me by John Southern

Anyway, I’ve decided to restart a blog as a less formal means of communicating what’s going on at the club. We already have the occasional newsletters and the annual report; we post odd things like quarterly accounts on the web and we are going to publish committee minutes (occasionally edited for personal or very commercial issues) but I think there’s also scope for a more personal interpretation. As you can see from the earlier paragraphs it won’t always be that interesting and unlike my previous blog it’ll be more focused on the club in general rather than the golf. But my belief is that golf is meant to be fun and we are extraordinarily lucky to be members of a club like Bamburgh so I hope it will always be positive.