Victorianitas

My supervisor e-mailed me today with a list of things I should do to prepare for my viva. What I wanted to do was run away to sea, but we don't have a sea, and so instead I took my camera and walked down to the river to spend a few hours in the fresh air.



It didn't feel too much like winter (defined in via a two-stage process: a) how far away from your front door you can get before realising you forgot your gloves, and b) whether or not you can be bothered with the effort of walking all the way back up 61 steps to get them once you do), at least until I got out of the shelter of the buildings and down to the river, at which point it was suddenly very cold indeed. But it was a good walk, with just me and a man walking his dog and a few bemittened children stamping on frozen puddles in the whole world.



Here's what puzzled me, though. I haven't walked that way for years, and at one point on the riverbank, there was a new council sign bolted to the railings saying "In the interests of safety, no golf allowed." Hmm. There was a fair-sized stretch of grass and trees, but it was very lumpy grass and quite a lot of trees, and golf doesn't seem like the sort of game you can play just anywhere. Admittedly, my experience with the sport is limited to waitressing in a golf club one summer, but I would've thought you needed a golf course. Or at least some holes in the ground, into which golf balls can be hit.

Also, it's possible that the members of the club where I worked were doing it wrong, but golf never came across to me as the kind of game that needed safety warnings, except a) to spectators ("FORE!") and b) in the event of thunderstorms, because golf apparently addles the part of the brain that warns the rest of us not to stand outside holding a large metal pole in the air when there's lightning. (I am not joking. People needed repeated warning about this.)

Also, even assuming there is some small kind of Extreme Golf that a) can be played in areas that do not resemble a golf course and b) is a danger to public safety, has this really been a common enough problem for the council to put up a warning sign? Well, yes, apparently. Yes, it has.

There weren't any golfers out today, though. All was peaceful.