The Banker

Boab Bryant was an inventor of games. “It’s four runs if you hit the dust-bin, son” or “the square’s in the carpet are the bunkers, but this yella one’s the green”. A lonely boy himself, he appreciated his children as little late-found chums to play these games with. When they played cricket with his home- made bat, Boab Bryant gave his sons nick-names. Wee Alan was Bishop Muzorewa and Bryant was Nabadinge Sitole. This honouring of African political leaders was a theme he enjoyed and appealed to the ‘Goonish’ sense of humour in them all.

What he couldn’t do, though, was re-invent the rules of golf.

Every time my Da had a tidy win on the horse’s (which wasn’t that often “once backed a horse that drowned at Catterick, son”) he’d buy himself an Arnold Palmer shirt. He had a fondness for the man and the shirts. He’d have liked to have played like the great man too. Unfortunately, as a golfer, he was more Lilli than Arnold Palmer. Having purchased clubs that had all the whip of re-inforced concrete he clattered and grunted his away around the course with all the precision of a busted clock. 

A mis-hit ball could induce spasms in the land itself never mind his tension-racked joints and limbs. He was the best I ever heard at producing ‘paaaaaaang’ noises. Man and machine in perfect disharmony, he made an enemy of those golf clubs and they were enemy enough to begin with.

The course took some beating too. A Glasgow Corporation Course on the edge of Rouken Glen park. It was tufted and scuzzy, worn-out and pale, not here the lush verdancy of your private courses which were always several cuts above, this was a course for manual workers and those that didn’t work at all. “They don’t use tees here son, ye hit yer ba’ aff a Tennant’s lager can”

He’d wake me around six in the morning when he was off work at the Glasgow Fair, we’d have tea and toast then wander the three miles up through The Puggy and past his work at Rawlplug, eventually arriving at the first hole of Deaconsbank golf course before the green-keepers arrived (this meant we didn’t have to pay, we’d be away out on the course by the time they clocked on). We’d ‘paaaang’ our way around the course, clumping around thick rough for errant balls that were sliced, hooked, topped, shanked off the straight and narrow. All this ineptitude made the odd sweetly struck ball seem like a miracle from heaven, an awed silence followed this rare occurrence when time stood still, the birds stopped chirping in respect and ‘nice shot, Da’ was uttered in wonderment. One time, I swear I witnessed a tear in his eye and a catch in his throat as he answered “thanks, son. Aye, no’ bad”.

In a matter of minutes, he’s clugging and hacking away at the hard sand in a bunker shouting “fucking game. How ye meant to….?” this followed by sand-wedge hurtling and spinning out toward the fairway achieving greater distance than his ball was ever likely to.

We’d finally reach the long, rolling last hole, battered and beaten, score well into treble figures. But, of course, we can never play the eighteenth because it leads back to the clubhouse. It is now that my father plays his banker, and to this day I often wonder how much of his tongue was in his cheek. Given that we’d just given one of the worst approximations of the ancient game that could ever be witnessed his utterance “just mark us doon for a five at the last, son” is as remarkable to me now as it was then. I more than half expected maybe a look or a laugh at the astonishing ironic bravado of this statement, but unwilling to offend the sensibilities of this loveliest of men I dutifully pencilled it in “5”.

It looked so out of place…