The Three or(4) FAAT Boys on Tour
Work, Life, and the Golf Between on the Fylde Coast
Overture: Wind off the Estuary
The wind off the Ribble estuary has a voice. It is old and salt-rough, and when it speaks across the dunes it says: be honest. It says: don’t pretend this shot is easier than it is. It moves your ball half a club without apology, pushes weather under your sleeves, and leaves a thin crust of salt on lips that forget to smile.
We came to the Fylde Coast because we live here and, in the strangest way, we wanted to see it. I mean really see it—like visitors who pay attention. The four of us: Andy with his impossible calendar and salesman’s grin; Tommy, who can hold three problems in one hand and make them all feel lighter; Alex, who sells toilet seats to half the nation and carries himself with the slow, deliberate courtesy of a man who’s learned the value of small hinges; and me—Franklyn—keeper of notes, curator of the WhatsApp, the one who writes things down so they don’t get lost in laughter.
We called it the FAAT Boys Tour—Fifty And Trying—because the joke made us braver. We made a week of it: St Annes Old Links, Fairhaven, Fleetwood, and Royal Lytham & St Annes when fortune and tee-sheets allowed. We promised ourselves to work when we must, live while we could, and play until the light drew a line under it.
Everything important came true in the wind.
Andy — The Salesman’s Swing
There is no silence like the seconds before a first tee shot. The body is an orchestra pit: strings of memory, brass of pride, the quiet tick of wrists setting, hips waiting for the conductor. Andy addressed the ball on the 1st at St Annes Old Links with a practiced calm that fooled no one. He travels so much his suitcase smells like airports; he sells promises to people who think they want things yesterday. He’d printed an itinerary for the week—colour coded blocks of time with tee-times, pub-times, contingency plans for biblical rain—and I could see the corner of it peeking from his waterproof pocket like a hymnbook.
The wind came in off the right, the sky a pale pewter that made everyone honest. He took the club back, smooth and full, and sent a low, obedient drive scudding into the middle stripe. A salesman knows the value of a first impression. He stepped away grinning, a man briefly free of meetings.
His phone rang in his pocket before Tommy had even teed a ball.
“Answer?” Tommy asked, casual as a man with a new wedge.
Andy looked at the screen like it was a small, sharp animal. He shook his head. He let the call go. The second ring arrived when we were walking down the fairway.
“Take it,” I said. “We’re not sprinting.”
He did, falling behind two paces, wind pushing his voice into little shreds of apology and laughter. When he caught us, his eyes were bright and wet with cold, the long-distance relief of a solved problem. He had that look he gets after a good call: the world aligned for a minute, the deal not quite done but dancing in the light.
The round became a negotiation between weather and memory. The fairways were winter-lean, the humps of linksland rising like old, friendly shoulders. Andy’s 7-iron at the 8th drew against the breeze with the authority of a man who has once or twice made the impossible sound easy. He walked after it with his head up, the outline of the itinerary blurring in his pocket.
Later, at Fairhaven, we learned that good intentions have edges. On the 4th, his phone rang again, then again—client, colleague, flights, delays. I saw his shoulders narrow, a salesman’s body remembering it was built to carry. He took a deep breath, handed the phone to me, and said, “If it’s not on fire, tell them I’ll ring at lunch.”
I held it a long moment while the wind argued with my fingers. The call ended. The next one never came.
On the 9th, he made a par that felt like a quiet vow, a little putt that fell in with a tap you could hear from ten paces. He didn’t fist-pump. He nodded at the hole as if to say thank you for being reasonable. On the 14th he made a five from a place you only find if you’ve angered gods—out, sideways, a punch piledriver under the breeze, a wedge that clipped the back fringe like a whisper, a putt from twelve feet that never thought of missing. I watched him breathe out. Sometimes a man’s exhale is a prayer and a promise.
Evenings, on the promenade, he carried his phone in his left hand and his pint in his right like two truths he could finally hold together. The itinerary lived in his pocket, softening at the corners, its inked certainties made kinder by weather and laughter. If work called, he called back. If it didn’t, he didn’t summon it.
On our last day at Royal Lytham & St Annes, he stood on a tee that has frightened better men and hit the ball as if he were writing a line he’d rehearsed for years—firm, fearless, threaded low into the wind’s teeth. He looked at the flight, the way it held its nerve, and he laughed as if the world had just proved something he’d long suspected: choose the moment, keep your head still, swing when you mean it.
In the clubhouse he unfolded the itinerary one last time and pencilled three notes on the back:
- Silence the phone on the back nine.
- Carry two gloves; trust one.
- Plan like a saint, play like a sinner, forgive like the sea.
Tommy — The Project Manager’s Weather
Tommy manages construction the way good men manage families—by making space for other people to be messy and still get where they’re going. He wears worry lightly. His hands are square and capable; his eyes are kind; his laugh arrives early when it should, late when it has to, and never falsely. He is also, as became clear on the first morning, a man capable of packing everything except the one thing that keeps rain off thighs.
No trousers.
He said it quietly in the car park at Old Links, as if the wind could use the information against him. He held up navy chinos like a surrender flag. We teased him—of course we did—and then he wore them, and the sky, briefly merciful, held its water until the 5th.
The rain came like a story you’ve heard before: politely at first, then with zeal, then from the side. By the 7th green he was a dark, dripping statue. At the turn he gave in and bought a pair of waterproofs from the pro shop that cost more than his first car. He put them on in a corner with the dignity of a man changing armour. He emerged transformed and made par at the 10th with a grin that could light a boiler room.
Work followed him like weather. He had three sites in different stages of becoming. Concrete will not cure faster because a man is on a tee. Inspectors do not prefer Wednesdays because golf does. His phone buzzed with small fires and damp timber; he tapped replies with thumbs that knew the names of foremen, suppliers, problems that have learned to disguise themselves as favours. But he also did something I had never seen him do: he put the phone away in the middle of the 12th fairway and left it there until the 18th.
That nine holes wanted his attention and he gave it. The wind accepted, and for two hours they shared custody of his head. He drove the ball with a rhythm you could build things to, fat and straight, a good sound. He made a mess of the 15th and laughed because the ball had done exactly what he told it to do and it turned out he’d asked wrong. He rescued a four from a place where fours go to die and didn’t celebrate because decency doesn’t crow.
That evening, we walked Lytham Green and stood by the windmill while the sky did its long summer bruise. He mentioned—carefully—the tiredness that sits behind a man’s eyes after too many months of being the person who answers. He didn’t call it burnout. He called it “the feeling of always being stolen from.” The wind carried the words away and gave them back softer. We stood there long enough for honesty to feel less dangerous.
At Fleetwood the next day, he discovered a new truth: a perfect 3-wood into a gale is better medicine than whatever you stand at the chemist’s counter asking for. He hit it off tight turf with a swing that trusted the ground and sent the ball forward as if it were a hot coal he could not hold. It ran to the heart of the green and stopped with a thriftiness that matched his smile. He bent to pick up his tee and his phone stayed in his pocket. The wind approved, as wind will when men set their own terms.
By week’s end, the new waterproofs had earned their keep and a permanent place in his wardrobe. He had not solved work. He had, however, gifted it a shape. He learned that deadlines cannot be kept by blood, only by order; that rest is part of duty; that trousers, like plans, are best tested early and often.
On our last night, over curry, he raised his glass and said, “Next time, I’ll pack the trousers first.” Then, quieter, “And leave the phone alone until the turn.” It wasn’t a declaration of independence. It was a schedule written in weather and kept in joy.
Alex — The Quiet (not) King of Toilet Seats
Alex’s industry has no glamour unless you’ve lived without it. He sells toilet seats. Not a few; not occasionally; a business of them, national accounts and independent merchants, warehouses and white vans, a dozen varieties of hinge and fixings in bags that rustle like rain. He talks about them the way a violin maker talks about wood: with respect for the thing’s quiet purpose and the people who trust it.
“Everyone sits,” he once said, and shrugged like that was joke enough. “Comfort is a kindness. Stability is dignity. We help more than we know.”
He carries himself like his products: understated, reliable, built to last. When he swings a club, he looks like a man putting a shelf up properly. He does not rush. He sets his feet like a promise. He uses a hybrid he calls Mildred, and the name softens a club that, in lesser hands, would misbehave. In his hands, it is a kind instrument that finds the safe part of the fairway more often than not.
At Fairhaven, under a sky the colour of honest steel, Alex conducted a small clinic in sufficiency. On the par fours that asked questions, he laid back to a number and answered from there. When the pin was mean, he took his par like bread and water. When we got chatty about shapes and carries, he smiled and put Mildred back in the bag as if to say: another time.
Work called him twice, both times about a pallet of soft-close fittings that had taken the long way around the M6. He listened without irritability, asked two precise questions, and gave a solution that involved a borrowed van, a detour past a friendly stockist, and a promise he would keep tomorrow. Then he turned the phone face down on a bench and stood on the 7th tee.
You could see the wind as it crossed the fairway, a visible hurry in the grass. He set the hybrid behind the ball with a kindness that bordered on affection and made a swing that would not scare a bird. The ball left like a well-raised child and ran forever, checking up at the place he had imagined. He exhaled like a man who had just put an invoice in the right tray.
We played Fleetwood in rain that spoke several languages at once. I watched Alex grow braver as the weather grew worse, as if the storm gave permission to be the kind of man he is when no one is looking. On a long par three that most men were under-clubbing, he took a club more and made a swing that would have suited a milder day. The ball flew heavy and correct, hit the front collar, hopped once, and released to fifteen feet. He didn’t make the putt. He smiled anyway, the particular smile of a craftsman who knows the job was done right even if the customer never notices.
At night, walking between pubs, he told us—careful as a man explaining wiring—that he likes his work because it makes bad days easier for strangers. He told us about an order for a care home that needed fifty seats by Friday because a flood had taken the old ones, and how he drove them himself because whimsy should sometimes be routed around. He told us he likes that you can fix things, actually fix them, with a hinge and a screwdriver and patience. He did not say “in a world that feels unfixable.” He didn’t need to.
We teased him, because the world needs both levity and hinges. He took it all and laughed with us and then, the next morning, quietly parred three holes in a row into the wind while we were still talking about sauce on chips.
On the final day, at Royal Lytham, he played the way a good business runs: no flourish for flourish’s sake, a steady hand when nerves would be understandable, the courage to lay up when arithmetic says ego is expensive. He finished with a five that felt like a signature: firm, legible, and entirely his own.
“Everyone sits,” he said again, when I asked him why he loves what he does. “If you can make that simple part of the day comfortable, you’ve done your bit.” He patted Mildred as if to thank her for understanding.
He gave us a new definition of success that week—one that wears no shine until you look closely. He reminded us that the quiet, ordinary things are the load-bearing ones. The seat that doesn’t wobble. The friend who doesn’t either.
Franklyn — The Ledger of Days
I kept the scores because someone has to keep something. But when I look back at the card from that week, I don’t see numbers. I see pictures. Andy’s itinerary folded to the size of a confession. Tommy standing in a pro shop doorway, half-in, half-out of his new trousers like a saint trying on armour. Alex on a tee with Mildred behind the ball as if he were being introduced, not in command.
We talk a lot about balance in our fifties, as if life were a tray we carry at shoulder height across a crowded room. But as the wind signed its name across the dunes each day, I suspected balance is less a pose and more a ledger. We don’t make our lives level. We book the entries carefully and forgive the rounding errors.
There were entries I wrote down without ink:
- The 7-iron Andy threaded through a crosswind at Fairhaven as if selling a cloud on the idea of being gentle.
- The way Tommy’s shoulders dropped, not in defeat, but in release, when he put his phone on Do Not Disturb and let the back nine belong to itself.
- The soft click of Alex’s hybrid at impact—work done right, once, and then again, and then again.
We took the promenade slowly each evening, as if miles could be counted in conversation. The air had that marine cool that makes a pint taste cleaner. The lights along the front blinked their patient code. We talked, as men do when time grows interesting: about sons and daughters, about backs that complain and refuse to give notice, about work that asks for more than it needs and about the moment you realise you can refuse without the world ending. We did not make speeches. We made sentences and let the wind edit them.
On our last afternoon, Royal Lytham’s bunkers yawned like hard lessons. I stood in one up to my knees and remembered a hundred small occasions on which I’d said yes when maybe no was the truer word. Sand has a way of asking for humility and returning it as progress. I got out first time, not well, not pretty, but out. The bogey I made felt like a line paid down on an old debt.
We finished as we should, with chips that burned our tongues and pints that cooled them. The clubhouse chatter around us was the kind that has always soothed me: weather, scores that might have been, a man at the next table telling a story that had gained a stroke every winter since it happened. We let the week settle around us like the good fatigue that follows honest play.
I looked at my friends and saw the work that would resume on Monday: Andy with his clients and calendars, Tommy with his sites stubborn or splendid, Alex with his pallets of soft-close kindness and his vans routed like arteries. The wind had taught us to keep what we could. It had taught us to choose the hole on which to be unreachable. It had taught us that trousers matter and itineraries help and that some swings are promises to ourselves.
When we stood to go, the light pressed low and gold against the windows. I folded the scorecard and placed it in my wallet behind a picture of my family. I don’t keep cards, usually. They’re honest, and honesty can be heavy. But this one felt like a ledger that would help me remember which entries count.
We walked out into the brisk, bright afternoon, the air tightening our cheeks, the sea making that low sound it makes when it is pleased with itself. Andy checked his pocket and let the itinerary be. Tommy patted his new trousers with theatrical affection. Alex rested a hand on his golf bag where Mildred slept. I reached for my phone and did not take it out.
The wind off the estuary spoke again and, this time, I could make out the words: play first, for once; work will wait if you make it; life is not a tray but a walk. We turned our faces into it and went on together, steady as men who finally understand the weather.
beyondparlife.com
