The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Beckett, a Banana, and a Couple of Soggy Chocolate Bourbons at the Sixth Hole

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James Joyce and Samuel Beckett never played pitch’n’putt as they do in this video. However, it’s well known that Beckett was more than proficient at hacking his way around 18 holes, and it’s alleged that he had a 7 handicap, and it wasn’t uncommon to find him at Carrickmines gold club near Dublin. Indeed, it’s rumoured that when he was losing his sight in old age he would play the first holes mentally in his mind. His much quoted ‘fail better’ maxim from Worstward, Ho could also be well taken as inspiration for many amateur or aspirant golfers, like myself. However, I’ve played enough golf now to really doubt this. In fact, I think I’d go as far as to say that the more often I play golf the worse I get. If anything, my experience with golf has strengthened the case for believing in beginners’ luck. It seems to me that the longer I go from game to game, the better I get. The first time I played in what must have been about 10 years was last August, when I played 18 holes. A player with no handicap, and not even my own set of clubs (I borrowed some from a very trusting neighbour, considering I hardly trusted myself not to somehow mangle one of them by playing a spectacular duff shot) I managed to hit 4 pars, which for me was quite good, and I also wasn’t the worst player, however I happened to be playing with an adult and two teenagers, so maybe I shouldn’t get carried away in that respect. So, feeling buoyed up by this performance, and having been to the driving range a handful of times in the intervening months I played again last weekend, only to find that – guess what? – my beginners’ luck had all but, not so much dissipated but fallen away like the leaves of the winter trees I found myself flanked by at every hole. 

Hitting the ball too hard, not hitting it hard enough, shanking here and there, hooking, pushing, you name it, it was all going on. There were only a few compensations: I managed to find more balls than I lost; my mate was good company; and I’d brought a bag of snacks. If failing better means failing more spectacularly than last time, then I was all over Beckett’s mantra, because my progress in golf over many years since I started playing in my teens at Crossgar Golf Club has not been linear, to say the least. 

But the one silver lining when out for a round of golf, or so I discovered recently, no matter how bad the round is, is the snack that you decide to bring with you. No matter how badly you are playing, having a bite to eat of something helps you to not take things too seriously and remember there is a world beyond the bare trees and burns and hazards and waterlogged sandpits. I managed to hold off on mine until the sixth hole last weekend. 

Trying to cut out UPFs from my diet, I decided on taking a pear, an orange and a banana, and two chocolate bourbons – yes, only two, I know, very restrained! Some of you might think that is excessive for 11 holes, but I dread to think of what my score would have been like without them. 

At the sixth hole, waiting for my pal to tee off, I dived into the bag and had a banana. I know someone that refers to bananas as the devil’s fruit, but I think they’re great, particularly for sport - they are sweet, not too big, and give you a bit of slow burning energy. And it’s also among the most comical of fruits: suggestive, slapstick or otherwise. I’d love to say my shots improved after this little moment of eating, but it didn’t. The rain came down even harder, I had to don my waterproof trousers without falling over – very difficult when wearing golf shoes with spikes – and also play with about four layers of clothing on my upper body, which leaves you swinging the club like Tuttankhamun, the mummified version, not the living one. 

Anyway, if there was any pleasure to have that day at Drayton Park, my local golf course, it was the eating of a banana and two chocolate bourbons. As for the chocolate bourbons, I know they’re not good for me, I know they’re going to give me a sugar high and a sugar low and that could spell disaster for an already emotional golfer like myself, but at the sixth hole, I thought: to hell with it. 

And to be honest, I've never enjoyed  those little brown sandwich biscuits more than at that moment, en plain air at the sixth hole. 

Bourbons have always been my standard cupboard biscuit. When I’ve run out of everything else, the chunky cookies, the doughnuts, the jam mallows, the chocolates, there has always been a bourbon biscuit. As a writer, at times I’ve been guilty of eating packets mindlessly with tea as I sit and hack away – note how the word hack relates to writing and golfing. 

And now that I know more about sugar and the risks of diabetes and UPFs and how many teaspoons of sugar are in each one I should stop, but there is something so addictive to them: the snap, the scent of something masquerading as chocolate cream. Even if the ones I took out of the bag on Sunday were slightly soggy, but then again isn’t there something nostalgic about soggy biscuits? In any case, if I were to rewrite Beckett’s maxim it would be: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Have a banana and a couple of soggy chocolate bourbons.”