#6 Buy a banana case? Are you off your trolley?

Buy a banana case?
Are you off your trolley?

Seen these banana carriers? Only seven quid to excommunicate the worry of bruised fruit from your precious life. Bargain.

In reality, it’s an oversized (IMHO) plastic sarcophagus for something already in biodegradable packaging. As Modern Toss says: Buy more shit or we're all fucked. Can’t argue with that, but I can have a rant about plastic solutions to problems that you didn’t know you had. You great big banana basher.

Hmm...is for hypocrite. I can hardly talk. Golf tech is my thing. Until last weekend that is. That was when the golfing gods decreed that I'd been digitally directed long enough.

First, my distance scope vanished somewhere between the 8th and 10th. It wasn’t handed in by anyone which usually happens TBF. (Karma is coming for you).

Then, on Sunday, my electric trolley with built-in GPS staged a dramatic attempt at self-destruction. Rolling off down the steep 14th hole, I could only gaze on aghast at the runaway. Don't hit a tree, please don’t hit a tree. Oh god, not that tree! That tree!

It was a proper “Fenton! Oh Jesus Christ, Fenton!” moment. Then it hit a tree.

Kapow!

A spectacular, tragic-at-the-time but hilarious-in-hindsight, crash of clubs, wheels, water bottles, battery flying off, broken plastic... a right mess. A separation of parts that left me vaguely reassembling pieces and lashing the front wheel to the chassis just to limp back to the clubhouse.

Fast forward to today. There I am again on the first tee (still didn’t warm up properly – it was 7am), scopeless, GPS-less, and facing the prospect of actually carrying my bag.

How primitive. And how liberating.

The round felt so different. No constant checking of yardage, I was forced to do something radical: think. And look at the shot ahead of me.

I went old skool. Pacing out distances from the 150-yard marker, focusing on course management – picking targets, club selection, wind direction and planning for "good misses”. And most shocking of all, trusting my instincts.

Writing is no different

When AI isn't there to generate content, predict your next phrase, or people-please you into thinking what it’s just spat out is any good, you're forced to think for yourself.

Creating distance between yourself and an algorithm so you can do the thinking bit is always a good idea. It’s what @kerry harrison calls the AI sandwich. As mentioned before, I’m not against the use of AI. But at least engage your brain first and do the messy, frustrating, doubting bits before you hit any buttons.

My AI writing tool, like my rangefinder, is convenient and a bit crass. It’s also inhumanly accurate and polished too. But it will never give me that almost physical sensation and satisfaction of writing something half decent at the seventeenth edit (which includes 1x coffee, 2x teas, 4x fig rolls – yes, they’re biscuits – and a lot of pacing and pottering).

Paths of least resistance rarely lead you to the most rewarding places.

Happy ending alert!

Today, the new trolley part arrived and it’s fixed. Credit to the infinite corners of eBay, so obscure that only golf parts stockists lurk there. Also, to the clever engineering bods at @Powakaddy – the replaceable part that broke was clearly designed to the take the brunt of an impact. Passed with flying colours.

As for the rangefinder? I’m gonna just forget to replace it. Buy less shit, as it were.

Because a handful of technologies genuinely make our lives better. While most just make us forget how capable we already are and a tiny bit lazier in the process.