It wasn't my idea to learn how to play golf. I admit to some prejudices about golf - the idea that it is dull to watch on TV, for instance, or rife with bad fashion choices like visors. I have had more than my share of golf playing roommates in my time - sinewy, rooster- haired blonds with frosted lipstick. I needed to learn to play for my job though. Nancy said she would be interested in learning how to play too so there you go, someone to go with you to keep you company at the golf lessons.

Could I have ever imagined that golf could interfere with knitting? Today I played Messy House Mini Golf for quite a long time to try out my new (used) Ping putter bought last night with cash set aside for yarn. This is a game where all the magazines and laundry and DVDs on the floor transform into the sand and water and lush green lawn of Pebble Beach.

Now I am behind on the Sockstravaganza - socks for everyone in the whole family of choice. So far I've finished four pair, with three more to go by Mother's Day. I left the big feet for last. I am using some super duper yarn: Lorna's Laces, Twisted Sister, Socketta. I'm making good use of Anne Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, no knitter should be without it.

So I had to start to learn how to play golf for work. And I get quizzed on it regularly. But today I had a test.

My boss called me into his office today, for the golf catechism. He is a priest - a real priest, but sometimes he wears the priest's collar to work, and sometimes a golf shirt and I think they are both expressions of religious beliefs. Usually it's a quiz on the Ben Hogan rules of golf book. I told him about the putter and he smiled a tiny tight smile. He reached under his desk and took out a black zipper case about the size of a notebook. I thought it was one of those portable mass kits and he was going to give me Extreme Unction, but inside was a putter that he screwed together, and half a dozen balls, and a fake hole. He said: Let us Put! The one who gets best out of ten shots gives the other one a dollar.

I let him go first, he's the boss. He got four out of the ten in, and I gave him one because it was close and that's the gentlemanly thing to do.

I took off my very high high heels, hit the balls and bang bang bang! Five out of ten in a row. I offered to put my high heels back on to give him the High Heel Handicap. Shake me up Judy! two more for a total of seven out of ten. And I took the dollar.