Monday 25th

Hello all. I took the weekend off blogging to focus my time and attention on doing nothing but complain about the heat. It finally cooled today - down to bearable 23 degrees - however extreme heat was replaced by heavy rainfall again restricting my ability to roam free about the streets of Manhattan.

I did make it to the golf driving range at Chelsea Piers - I also went yesterday - and in true Bethel style I limited myself to 200 balls in 45 minutes! That is what is known as excessive and if I was hoping the law of large numbers would come to my aid and get my shots looking good, then I was as sorely disappointed as I was sore when I woke up this morning. Never one to be deterred I went back this evening and hit 200 more! I am typing this very blog through extreme fatigue and with pins & needles in both my hands...

Funny thing happened to me at the golf - the way it works there is that you buy a voucher for say $100 and you put that voucher into the machine when you get to your stall (for want of a better word... pretty apt in my case) and that $100 translates into a certain number of golf balls dependent upon whether it is peak hours or off-peak. I go off-peak - my argument being value for money, the reality is that I want fewer witnesses - and that voucher is worth like 675 balls. There are no buckets of balls here - instead a robotic tee rises up from the floor with a ball perched on top - as soon as you hit the ball, the tee drops down into the floor and pops back up with a new ball. This explains my ability to hit 200 balls in 45 minutes. To stop for the day you press a button that returns your voucher with whatever remaining balance there is left. Tonight I was absolutely exhausted after my 200th hit and could barely lift up my arms any more so I decided that I would call it a night - but because I hadn't yet pressed the button to return my voucher another ball popped out of the ground, mocking me and baiting me for one final hit. Cheeky little swine, I thought, and toweled myself down, put my glove back on and took hold of the big, bad driver (I rented three clubs - a driver, a 5 iron and a pitching wedge). I was going to teach this impertinent final ball a lesson. I stepped up, steadied myself, heaved the beastly club up behind my head and swung down with the wrath of a Greek god. It was at the very point of contact that my senses first picked up on some slippage from the club, it was a millisecond later that my senses realized that this sensation of slippage was being accompanied with a visual sensation of watching my rented golf club propel itself outwards and downwards about 100 yards down the driving range... My third sensation was audio as I heard approximately 100 people laughing at me as I crumpled into a heap on my golf mat. At this point what else can one do but put one hand in the air and take a bow? I quickly changed shoes, packed my bag and walked quickly out of there thanking a variety of Gods that the guy who I had rented the three clubs from had finished his shift and I passed the new guy my remaining two clubs with as much nonchalance as I could manage and wished him a grand evening as I ran out the door.

On some level I am almost subconsciously happy about my public humiliation as it has enlivened what threatened to be a rather dry blog today - heat, rain, golf, blah blah blah - but now I have heat, rain, golf and Bethel style humiliation - who doesn't prefer that?!

Tonight I was supposed to be going for drinks with my contacts at Lehman Brothers to try and smooth talk them into paying my company lots of money to consult on one thing or the other, but they cancelled on me this morning citing that they were ready to do a deal so a more formal meeting on Thursday would make sense. Jimmy suggested that maybe the thought of a night drinking with me at the moment was too much for them... He's probably right. However, this was my only work appointment scheduled for today (poor me I hear you all say...) and instead I focused my attention to my lunch appointment with Deutsche Bank tomorrow - again my only appointment - until I was informed that my Deutsche Bank contact had fallen sick and lunch was extremely unlikely to happen... I'm going to get a complex if this keeps up! So now all I have to look forward to is my Tuesday night soccer game - aka American window-lickers chasing a ball around for an hour whilst saying O instead of offense (or attack as I like to call it) and D instead of defense. Idiots.

Love you all lots, xxxx