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new friends putting on an act as well? Possibly. I’d learned, through overheard conversations, that Bushy’s dad drove a ten-year-old Ford Cortina, Ross’s mum lived alone with him and his sister and worked as a receptionist at the local brewery, Ashley’s dad was a PE teacher, and Jamie had once almost been enrolled at a local independent, progressive secondary school. Did my mates, like me, come from homes where joss sticks smoked away on the mantelpiece and Bob Dylan croaked away on the turntable? It was difficult to tell. I was, however, pretty sure they didn’t live in houses with posters of existentially naked German women on the walls.
    What I did know for certain about Jamie, Bushy and Ross was that, like me, they’d eyed the posh brats who turned up at Mike Shalcross’s junior lessons with unbridled scorn. Every week, there’d be five or six of them, though never the same five or six: kids who unlocked the rear doors of their parents’ Granada Scorpios to miraculously unveil lustrous high-tech clubs that would probably double up quite nicely as shaving kits, then sleep-hit their way through the lesson in a style that suggested they believed they could tame their personalized golf balls with sheer manners. Together, the four of us would watch them gradually vanish, for ever, back to their three-car garages and private educations, and we’d sneer to one another in the secret, satisfying knowledge that we were the odd ones out – the ones whose parents didn’t play, the ones who turned up every week, the ones who were here for the duration. We might not have known much, but we knew we were impostors at the golf club. We’d known it since the first day we stood side by side and contemplated one another’s swings and clothes and packed lunches. But we were going to take a little while before we could admit it to ourselves.
    It had been an interminable first winter – through my eyes, six very limited golfing months, during which I’d visited Cripsley as often as school and daylight permitted, but emerged with very little to show for it, other than a twenty-four handicap and nine increasingly dark, rusty, ball-shaped indentations in the centre of my irons. With the evenings dark and use of the course restricted for new junior members, the practice ground continued to serve as the amphitheatre for my dreams. Meanwhile, I took a fifty-pence-per-round Saturday job caddying for the junior organizer, Bob Boffinger, which gave me an opportunity to test out just how robust my Golf Tom persona was.
    I still consider Bob a friend today, and, equipped with what I know now, tend to believe that he saw right through my attempts to fit in and made me out for the lefty hippy spawn I really was. At the time, though, I was convinced I’d fooled him with Golf Tom almost as cunningly as I’d fooled myself. Under Bob’s tutelage, Golf Tom learned the importance of a replaced divot, a firm handshake and a carefully read putt. Golf Tom held flagsticks, spoke when spoken to, laughed dutifully at the same jokes – ‘Hey, Boffinger! Your golf bag’s bigger than your caddy!’ – he heard every week, and resisted the temptation to cough-mutter ‘Miss it!’ as hostile, patronizing opponents reached the top of their backswing. When Golf Tom sensed that the Red Sea had relocated to his lower bladder area during a mixed doubles match, Golf Tom made the noble decision to spend the next hour in agony, for fear that urinating in the vicinity of lady members might be perceived as discourteous. Golf Tom said things like ‘Good shot!’, ‘I like your red, purple and yellow Pringle socks!’ and ‘See you again same time next week?’, but not much else. Golf Tom probably gave his parents nightmares involving incubator swapping and small children with the head of Norman Tebbit. Golf Tom quashed everything inquisitive and imaginative in his nature. But what Golf Tom really wanted to do, if he was truly honest with himself, was