BEHIND THE SCENES IN CINEMA-LAND.
IT IS A TERRIBLE MOMENT FOR THE FILM ACTOR WHEN HE REALISES THAT HE IS GETTING TOO FAT TO PLAY HERO, AND NOT FAT ENOUGH TO BE FUNNY.
GOLF NOTES.
(With acknowledgments to Mr. A.C.M. Croome.)
Approaching.
Taylor—or was it James Braid?—begins one of his classic and illuminating chapters with the quotation "Ex pede Herculem," nor can even we of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society venture to differ from so eminent an authority or grudge him so apt a phrase. Verb. sap. and, let me add, sat. To those, few perhaps in actual reckoning (though I, wearing of right the wine-dark vesture—were there half Blues in Homer's time?—cannot compete with John Low et hoc genus omne, Cantabs confessed, in the prestidigitation of numerals and weird signs of values)—to those, then, few, but of many parts appreciative, who followed a certain foursome at Addington last week, my premiss should be intrinsically incontrovertible. Partner, whom I had "made" with a drive well and truly apportioned—ex carne ictum—partner, after much self-searching and mental recursion to the maxims of Tom Morris and La Rouchefoucauld, took his ball on the—O horribile dictu (or shall I say horresco referens?)—well, to be meticulously exact, partner shanked it. And it is just here that those who have also enjoyed a University education will pick up—even as partner failed to do—what I, who write, am driving at.
Remembering how dear old W.G.—in those halcyon days when Gloucester was worthy of the cheese whereof she is now so chary a producer—used to score with that heavy cut between point and cover, I too, greatly daring, cut it and laid it (the ball, not the cheese) dead. De mortuis ... For assuredly it was good.
The one adornment of this episode should have been a quotation from Aristophanes. It is not, however, given to all men always to remember. Non cuivis, in fact.
Of Impact.