Listening to the national news either on the radio in the car or on TV, it seems that we are at the height of summer and everyone is still on holiday.
Of course this pretty much is the case for a large proportion of the UK population, but here in Perthshire I can reveal that it is Autumn or very close to it. The kids have all been back to school for 2 weeks and the farmers are planting their over wintering crops. There has been heavy dew on the grass in the mornings, at least when it hasn’t been raining!…and this morning a heavy mist hung low over the fields.
This serves as a stark reminder that it is time to arrange the work for the Autumn renovation program on the bowling green, regardless of how summery you are feeling.
As an aside I was watching a program about Buddhism last night and was reminded that the Buddhist strives to reach a state known as “Nirvana” in his or her life. However, the presenter recognised that there were many different views among the Buddhist community about what “Nirvana” was.
This set me thinking about what Nirvana would look like for the average UK bowling club; and unlike last nights presenter I was able to put my finger right on it:
Nirvana = a consistently high performance bowling green and a thriving, financially secure club.
Now for the hard bit; how do we achieve Nirvana in our bowling clubs?
Well in a short post like this I can’t even start to cover all of the how’s, where’s, what’s and why’s of trying to reach this state, and anyway this has been set out in great detail in Performance Bowling Greens and Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround, but I can give very concise advice on how to get started on both parts of this ultimate goal this autumn:
Cancel the Top Dressing Order.
How will this help your club on its way to Nirvana?
- It will leave £1000 or more in the club coffers that would otherwise have gone towards perpetuating the folly that many many clubs have bought into over the last two decades.
- It will start you off on the road to creating a healthy, living, high performance green. If you are new to the site, type “top dressing” into the search box at the top of the page to get further comprehensive advice on this subject.
Over the next week we will be adding a heap of new free resources to the Members area to help with Autumn and Winter projects on the green and in the club.