Nice Jumper Read Online Free PDF Page B

there are only two things funnier in life than running on a golf course. One is running on a golf course in tandem with several people you don’t know very well. The other is listening to a running commentary on it as it is happening. I did both.
    ‘We’re almost at the bunker now. And we’re still running!’ shouted Ross.
    I was the first to fall over, but the others soon followed: boys in pleated slacks, polo shirts and tight-fitting Slazenger jumpers, sprawled out panting like dogs rescued from a hot car.
    It should, of course, have ended there. We could have picked up our golf bags, calmly executed our second shots, written the whole thing off as a freak occurrence, and resumed the rest of our lives as law-abiding golfers. But, in all probability, it was too late. You could feel it. The world was spinning, in that way it does just before something bad happens. I found myself running off a mental checklist as I lay gathering my breath in the semi-rough, a bit like the inventory you go through when you’ve left the house in a rush and have a chafing micro-suspicion that you’ve forgotten to put on your socks. I knew something was missing; I merely had to work out what.
    Ashley, Bushy and Jamie: lying to my right, giggling asthmatically.
    Gardens lining the fairway: deserted.
    Adjacent ninth fairway: no sign of life.
    Gut-pink imitation-leather golf bag: a few feet to my left.
    Clubs: still in the bag, all intact.
    I’d accounted for everything, apart from Ross. I’d just about had time to work this out when behind me I heard the ‘ thacckkkrunch ’ of his three-wood making contact with his ball. I swung round, in time to follow the ball’s majestic flight from my friend’s clubhead, up over the boundary hedge, directly towards a glass conservatory belonging to one of the Georgian mansions to my right.
    ‘Get up, ball!’ commanded Ross, maniacally.
    ‘Sit down, ball!’ screamed the rest of us.
    ‘Get up, ball!’ commanded Ross.
    ‘Sit down, ball!’ screamed the rest of us, helplessly, wincing for the inevitable smash.
    Nothing happened.
    Defying the laws of physics and the building trade, the ball seemed to have located an invisible satin pillow in the midst of several thousand pounds’ worth of glass-work. Either that, or an unusually agile pigeon had stolen it in midflight. Time seemed to freeze, as we looked where the ball had failed to land. We continued to wait, statue-like, sensing that the slightest twitch might cause the conservatory to be blasted to smithereens. I scanned the adjacent fairways for an outraged Immediate Past Captain or Greens Committee Official, but all of them remained deserted. We looked. We waited. We waited and looked again. Nothing continued to happen.
    Over the following few days, we padded around the course and clubhouse warily, half expecting some kind of repercussion – a passing greenkeeper, at least, who had witnessed the whole thing and reported it to Bob Boffinger – but none arrived. Slowly, we began to relax and believe our luck.
    By running, we’d passed through an invisible door into a new era. Before we ran, we’d been five spotty, sporty adolescents doing our best to get to know one another and convince ourselves we didn’t feel adrift in a world we weren’t cut out for – a world of reserved parking places, pedantry and stiff upper lips. After we ran, we felt like five intimately correlated mavericks let loose in a freshly mown promised land, where every act of rebellion would be automatically amplified. Here was a place with a unique, winning combination: a low sense of risk combined with a high sense of danger, something that was missing in the outside world inhabited by our peers. If you could hammer a penetrating, two-hundred-yard shot at a glass conservatory and come away unscathed, what else could you get away with?
    Even the most dedicated future British Open Champion could be forgiven for laying his putter aside for a moment and marvelling at