IT SOMEHOW SEEMED right, one golf day, that we ended up banging on about the Brisbane Rugby League competition of the 1970s, because the round of golf that my old friend PB, my son and I were engaged in was a form of time travel anyway. We named the style of game we play after that particular decade because our scores are so inflationary, just like the inflation rates of the 1970s oil crisis. When we’re really on song, particular holes are called ‘Malcolm Frasers’ because PB and I achieve double-digit scores, just like old Mal’s 1982 effort of presiding over double-digit unemployment and inflation.

I was certainly channelling Mal that day, among others. I put it down to the fact that my left knee had given up the ghost and I was walking with an awkward gait around the legendary seventh hole of the local golf course. I say ‘legendary’ because someone who looked and behaved a lot like me had a very animated conversation with a four-wood and then an even more animated interaction between the four-wood and a tree. My son laughed and said out loud as I engaged in some further fairway therapy that this round was like playing golf with Basil Fawlty.