OVERCOME recently by an inexplicable desire to tidy up the old homestead, I found myself in the room which, for reasons long forgotten, has become the glory hole set aside for chucking things into and began attacking the mound of debris which has accumulated there over the years.
Amid the clutter of bits of carpet, lampshades, newspaper cuttings and various other sad objects which should have been given the heave-ho ages ago, I came across a small pile of hand-warmers which I'd been given as Christmas presents by well-meaning
aunties who'd become fed up knitting me ill-fitting woolly jumpers bearing images of golfers making what the knitters fondly imagined were golf swings.
There were four hand-warmers in the pile and there are probably more lurking somewhere in the deeper recesses of the room. Anyway, even four handwarmers represent something of an overkill, given that I've only got two hands. They were all the rage at one time and, to anyone who has suffered on frozen golf courses in the depth of winter, they probably seemed a good idea, yet I never once used one on the course and I can't honestly remember ever running into anyone who did.
Indeed, the only time I found a use for them was in the days when I had a venerable and slightly battered Rover saloon which I kept in a lock-up rented some distance from the family home. The lock-up was a draughty place which in cold weather could have served as a refrigerator. Cars, for the benefit of those of tender years, were somewhat less sophisticated then than they are now and had a tendency to freeze up in cold weather. I'd been told many a story about the horrors which ensued when engines froze and lived in dread whenever the temperature dropped. Something awful happened to the block, I was reliably informed, though to this day I'm not exactly sure what a block is, far less why it should be liable to suffer from cold.
During one chilly spell, when the lock-up was feeling even more Arctic than usual, I suddenly got the bright idea of putting a few hand-warmers to some use. I tied them to various struts and projections set above the engine so that the actual handwarmers hung in the very bowels, so to speak. Looking back at it, this might not have been such a good notion as it seemed at the time.
The handwarmer was operated by lighting a sort of dense wick which smouldered for a few hours, thus keeping the hands – or in this case, the engine – cosy. The wick, after being lit, was fully encased in a metal jacket and should have been safe enough. After all, the warmers were designed to be held in the hand. However, it's by no means certain that the health and safety people would have been all that happy with the thought of something burning unattended in close proximity to a mass of wiring in a confined space with the odd fume from oil and petrol wafting about. Thankfully, the night passed without incident, the block didn't freeze and the lock-up didn't go up in flames.
The rediscovery of the handwarmers was a reminder of what golfers are prepared to go through in their pursuit of their sport. Not that I went through anything with my handwarmers, but someone must have used them and the fact that objects like that were made and bought with golf in mind – which, presumably, they were – suggests that any collection of gadgets collected during a golfing lifetime might call to mind some of the more lurid aspects of the Spanish Inquisition.
Harnesses have been well to the fore, sinister tangles of leather and buckles which, once tightly secured about the golfer, were claimed to ensure that only the swing permitted by the harness could be employed and that swing was, according to the designer of the harness, the swing of dreams.
There is a certain logic about this approach, but even in the advertisements of the day, the trussed-up golfer looks to be on the verge of strangulation and it would seem advisable that extended use of such an aid should be carried out under medical supervision.
There's a danger that a golfer could become dependent on such gadgets. As a boy, I was not allowed to use water-wings when learning to swim as my instructor had a theory that once the wings were removed I would panic, sink and drown. He was probably being a bit melodramatic, but there is no doubt that habits, while readily picked up, can be difficult to stop and a golfer suddenly let loose on the links without his harness could quite easily go to pieces.
Once, at the golf club, I wore a putting aid which consisted of a headpiece after the style of a Davy Lamp and a receiver placed on the ground into which the "lamp" sent a signal. As long as the signal hit its target, all was quiet. If it wavered – i.e., if the golfer's head moved a fraction – a banshee howl resulted which startled wildlife and children for miles around. In the interests of peaceful co-existence, the device was withdrawn.
The full article contains 895 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
