Men who read the FT tend to have a certain appeal. I suppose it suggests that they might be interested in the same things as I am, and should we ever have to spend any time together, we would have something to talk about. Mr M, unsurprisingly, is not a regular FT reader. His preferred newspaper-reading modus operandi is to start from the back rather than the front, and as doing this with the FT brings you face to face with Lex (one of my earliest loves about the paper and still, for my money, a must-read every day) rather than a detailed critique of the test match, he is unlikely to convert.
But there are parts of the weekend paper that he enjoys (Tim Yeo’s golf column, for a start, and Jancis Robinson, unsurprisingly), and I was most encouraged when he took up reading How to Spend It and then announced that he had found the perfect place for us to go for a romantic weekend sans enfants.
We had found ourselves bereft of children for a weekend in August because by some miracle we had managed to outsource all three of them simultaneously. Cost centre #3 was on holiday for three weeks with his nanny and her parents in Barbados, keeping an eye on Tony Blair. CC#2 was on holiday in Spain with the family of a schoolfriend, and CC#1 had managed to persuade someone who works with me to let him house-sit her flat in London. I was not wildly enthusiastic about this arrangement and in an attempt to get her to think carefully showed her the letter we had received from the landlord of the apartment he had recently rented with friends in Portugal, which explained why the deposit would not be returned. Without reproducing it in full, I will divulge that it mentioned, among other things, ice-cream marks on the ceiling, beer stains on the walls and ash on the towels, as well as some banana on the rug. Notwithstanding all this she still gave him the keys.
Hence I found myself off to spend a weekend on Islay, a large island off the west coast of Scotland, which according to the FT had a magical links golf course. You can fly to Islay in 30 minutes from Glasgow, but no, this didn’t appeal (would the airline lose the clubs?), and so we drove. It is a 110-mile drive from Glasgow and then a two-hour ferry ride. Within minutes of checking in, Mr M was out there wielding a club and I was unpacking in the room.
What I had not gathered from the FT piece was that the magical golf course is attached to a perfectly adequate but less than magical hotel. I am all for functional hotels and even stay in Formule 1 on trips across France, but for a supposedly romantic weekend away I would have preferred a place without anti-theft coathangers (I find it infuriatingly difficult to slot them into their rings), hairdryers that you have to keep the button pressed down to use (what does this do - save electricity? I have never seen the point of them) and finally, worst of all, polycotton bed linen. I am 44 now, for goodness sake, and I don’t expect to drive the length of England and Scotland and then be confronted with anything that has less than an 800-thread count.
The golf course, however, proved wonderful. So much so that Mr M was back out there again first thing on Saturday, and I even walked round for a few holes to reintroduce myself to him. When I eventually dragged him off to explore Islay, he had played more than 18 holes and it was the middle of the afternoon. Finally, after dinner in Port Ellen, we went back to the hotel, and I went to bed with a book under the polycotton duvet cover while he joined everyone in the bar watching the US PGA Championship.
By the time we were back out on the course at 7.30 on the Sunday morning (yes, you read that right, 7.30am), Mr M was so in love with the place he wanted to know who owned it (Graham Lacey, who owns the Castletown course in the Isle of Man) and whether he would ever sell it. (I have no idea. Mr Lacey, if you are reading the FT this weekend, would you ever sell?) I think this is an unlikely Moneypenny career move, but I can tell you that if I ever become the chatelaine, there will be new coathangers, hairdryers and bed linen before Mr M can get to the first tee.
On the way up we stayed the night with my Scottish Girlfriend and her husband. Regular readers know that ScotG has been trying to educate me about classical music, so far with little success. Her latest attempt, though, may bear fruit. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is staging some one-hour concerts at 6pm this season to fit nicely in between work and dinner out, or even I suppose, work and dinner in. An hour sounds manageable, and the three pieces on offer (Beethoven’s first symphony, Brahms’ first and Nielsen’s fourth, all available in either Glasgow on a Thursday, or Edinburgh on a Friday), sound bearable for beginners.
ScotG is married to a former boyfriend of mine from university days, a classics scholar with a career in the arts. Waking in their house on a Friday morning was an education. ScotG remained in bed with a cup of tea, while the husband made the children’s packed lunches and gave them breakfast - toast and his (yes, his) own homemade strawberry jam. Plus he doesn’t listen to Radio Five Live (who cares whether Theo Walcott managed to save Arsenal’s blushes during their first game in the new stadium?) and he does read the FT. As I said, men who read the FT have a certain appeal.
