The Big Golf Gaff Jargon.




Ugleh!

  I used to do a five day shift in the Royal Mail during the mid eighties. It started on Tuesday and finished Saturday afternoon. It was more of a four and a half day week really. Most of my work mates on this shift would play golf on their Monday off.

When we returned to work on every Tuesday, the conversation was always about the previous day's golf as we played cards, at the canteen table. The rest of my work mates were always full of their golf talk baloney, ('Colin did this' or 'Bear did that.') ('Ronnie hit an eagle,' -'Chris got a birdie.') It was always golf chatter and I had no interest in the game at all. I was more into our cards recreation, so the golf banter was more like white noise. I became familiar with terms like, 'par,' 'birdie,' and 'eagle.'

Well on one particular Tuesday morning we were in the canteen, dealing the cards, the golf talk commenced. I was looking at my card hand and heard a work mate called Paul Janes. I heard him say that he he almost hit a squirrel on the Monday golf game.

My ears pricked up. I had heard of an eagle, a birdie and par or under par, but I had never heard of anyone hitting a squirrel. What sort of golf jargon was this? Was it something super sonic and really mega under par?

"What's a squirrel?" I asked innocuously and expecting one to tell me how much over or under par this was. Perhaps it was not quite a birdie, and I quickly found out it was nothing like a birdie when Paul Janes informed me.

"It's a little furry thing that lives in trees and eats nuts you silly C-U-Next-Tuesday!" 

I felt as though I wanted the Earth to open up and swallow me as the rest of the table screamed and roared with laughter. I had to wear that colourful metaphor that Janes labelled me with, all through that card game. I can't stand golf and am sure I would be crap at it. I don't think I'll ever visit a golf course. I'm sure golfers will be pleased to learn of this. But I was always the C-U-Next-Tuesday bloke for a long while after that incident.



Perhaps there is such a thing as an ostrich in golf jargon.