The Club

At the darkest edges of the Underbelly, a supremely fertile country club lays sprawled out like a reclining Venus eager to take on new lovers from any landed ships. There was a time when she was fussier. It's thirty-six velvet-lipped holes and their busty suggestive contours pull in the Japanese and Americans like the vulgar whores that attract the bumbles and the wasps around the sculpted tees. A fantastically long oak lined drive guides the visitors to the club's heart and wraps them in its precious folds. I used to play golf as a boy and my father, convinced of my ability, suggested I take a year to see, with a lot of practice, how good I could become. Regrettably, I declined his offer stating that "Golf is not cool Dad, never was, never will be." This morning, I'm standing on the wide flat practice ground of the Club smashing balls into the wind seeing if I can clear the motorway that runs alongside and I decide that golf can be cool.

Times have changed, as they are prone to. The clubhouse used to be boarded with wood panelling and the high shelves lined with cheap trophies. Sports professionals and TV presenters would turn up and abuse virtually everyone they came in contact with because of who they were. Caddies went unpaid, barmen were punched, waitresses sexually assaulted and the housekeeping staff would tell you that their life experience had certainly widened since starting work at the Club.

The Club is a closed economic loop. Visitors rarely visit the Underbelly itself and there is little evidence that they are aware of its existence at all. Workers are bused in either from the Underbelly or the Giant Snakehead itself in the early hours so as to never catch the gaze of the guests. The club has an invisible service policy. This essentially requires cleaners, porters, housekeepers, and even green keepers to remain out of sight during waking hours. Only duty managers, fitness coaches, receptionists, barmen and waitresses can be seen in daylight and this is discouraged.

The only other individual that can be seen around the place is the resident golf professional, Ewan Bamber and his minions. The suggestion is that he was raised playing on some windy links course in Ayrshire or other and he utilises and expounds the belief that by being Scottish, he was born to be a professional golfer. In the five years that he was instilled as the resident pro', no one has seen Ewan strike a golf ball. His shop sells the overpriced glossy golfing fare and garish jumpers whilst his band of junior pro's give lessons to golf widows from the Underbelly. The four of them are well renown as chronic gamblers amongst the members and it is all they can do to hide their activities from Ewan's wife Julie who is blissfully ignorant of her husband's antics on the practise ground.

I smash a two iron low and downwind, probably the best contacts I've ever made. The ball seems to actually gain speed as it takes off. Blimey. The ball's majestic flight is stopped dead by a coach travelling down the motorway across it's path. The sound of smashing glass causes Ewan to come out from behind a nearby bush hastily doing his trousers up. I can see two pensioners screaming out of the side as if a huge hole has been torn out of an aeroplane and they were about to be sucked out.
"You wanna go careful." Ewan says.
"Touché." I reply and point my club at the buggy bouncing across the practice ground towards us with the optimistically chirpy Julie at the helm. Ewan is horrified. "Normally the gig is that I pay people like you for lessons..."