When it comes to games and sports always know what to say you do and never put yourself in the
position of being seen doing what you say you do. As always, never discuss anything. (see Chat.)
Confine yourself to isolated, unanswerable remarks.
Golf
Your favourite course is the Royal St Mark's at Sandwich [G 7], where your handicap was once
six and the pro could have got you ready for the amateur championship in a couple of years. But with the constraints
of work, nowadays you merely get in a good deal of week-end golf, between assignments, on the courses round London
- Huntercombe, Swinley, Sunningdale, the Berkshire - and your handicap has risen to nine.
Your main faults: Flat swing, always wanting to hit the ball out of sight.
Your pet abomination: People who putt with a mallet [G 8].
Your financial peak: $10,000 on a singles game (You won, of course.)
Skiing
Your training was from the old Hannes Schneider School at St Anton in the Arlberg [OHMSS 12].
You got pretty good and won your golden K, but techniques and equipment have advanced since, and you admit charmingly
that you're no longer a Kanone (star). Your favourite skis: Anything in the Master's category [OHMSS 15], provided
it has the Attenhofer Flex forward release and the Marker lateral release.
Your favourite figure: The sprung-Christina [OHMSS 16], showy, not easy at speed. Old Fuchs
at the Hannes Schneider was very keen on it.
Your excuse for not skiing much now: You were rather put off by an experience with an avalanche
[OHMSS 17]. Add meaningly, "A man-made one." Alternatively, "Skiing's a short-lived sport. The effect
on the frame is shattering." [G 3]
Swimming
With training, you can swim a mile and run back along the beach [LALD 17], swim two miles without
tiring [DN 7].
Underwater, you soon learned not to fight the sea but always to give and take with the currents
and eddies, to use judo tactics in the water [LALD 17].
You've never known fish to attack unless there was blood in the water [LALD 16]. Sharks can
be frightened off by shouting underwater [LALD 18]. You've made barracudas retreat just by swimming towards them
[LALD 17]. You find the spines of the sea-egg far more troublesome [LALD 18].
You rarely kill fish except to eat, apart from big moray eels and all the members of the scorpion-fish
family [FYEO 5]. You admit to once having killed a sting ray, because it looked so extraordinarily evil. You use
a French underwater harpoon gun called 'Champion' [LALD 16].
You're not a bad sea-bed diver [YOLT 14], having brought up ten awabi (Japanese clams) your
first try.
Unarmed Combat
You can regale your companion, if you wish, with the story of the time you killed the Mexican
with a short-arm chin-jab followed by a hand-edge chop to the Adam's apple [G 1], but this might distress her.
Better stick to saying modestly at the right moment, "I only know five ways of killing a man with a single
blow." [G 11]
Keeping Fit
Your full early-morning routine [FRWL 11] consists of:
- 20 slow press-ups, done lingeringly
- As many straight-leg lifts in the supine position as will make your stomach muscles scream.
- Enough arm and chest exercises and deep breathing to make you dizzy.
- 20 toe-touchings
- A very hot shower followed by a five-minute cold one. Sometimes you keep your eyes open under
this [LALD 14]. This will probably make them bloodshot and can be used as an excuse after a more than usually conscientious
fulfillment of your drink programme.
- Then shave, if you can.
Don't, of course, actually do any of this unless you've recently had a check-up, except shave.
Darko Kerim once said that there were certain exercises which those who wish to make love should do [FRWL 15],
but he was killed by a Russian agent before he could pass them on [FRWL 23]. Just as well, perhaps.
