Done. 43 hours of work crammed into three days. This is, what the celebratory weekend of our club anniversary took me. Not counting the many hours of preparations in previous weeks. But all went well, despite the heat wave. On Saturday, three people had to finish their round of golf early due to high temperatures and one lady collapsed and had to be treated by the medics for heat exhaustion. But she was well and resting at home a couple of hours later.

I was really impressed by the stamina of our president (who just turned 65), CEO and vice president and their spouses, playing golf on Friday and Saturday, hosting the evening functions on both days and being present at the public golf day yesterday, too. With the temperature never dropping below 32°C and peaking yesterday to a cosy 38°C.

But even more impressive is, what our kitchen staff and chefs had to endure, standing at the stove and grill in that heat. The saying: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen really is true. Same goes for the service staff, hauling countless cases of bottles, rushing back and forth with their trays full of drinks and plates of food. And for them it was as hot as for the rest of us.

Although the public turnout yesterday was not as big as expected – who wants to try out golf, when it is too hot to move from the shade or ideally a poolside or the banks of a cooling lake – many members turned up with family and friends. If I had to give an estimate, I’d say, we had about 140 – 160 visitors spread over the day. Each only able to spend one or two hours out in the sun, retreating to the shady tend soon, enjoying cool drinks. I am the only one to tell, as I stood outside all day, greeting everyone.

Despite consuming vast quantities of water and mineralised wellness drinks during the day, I have to admit, that I almost collapsed in the heat come afternoon At noon, the sun had turned round to where my counter was located in front of the entrance and one hour later, the glass and stone front of the clubhouse had heated up, seemingly doubling the sun’s radiation with no shade available. As we had run out of umbrellas, with all the rented out company stalls on the site asking for one. Around three o’clock I started to struggle and half an hour later I noticed, that the light started to flicker in my eyes. So I had to go and take a break and a cool shower, my sweetheart kindly driving home to bring me a change of clothes. I am sad to say, that my counter staff, sitting just 10 meters away inside in the relatively cool clubhouse, never saw fit to come out and offer to stand in for a couple of minutes to give me a break. I asked my sweetheart and Marcel, Germany’s reigning gent’s golf champion, who just happened to be around, to stand in for the time, my shower and change took. As I was already too furious and disappointed, to go and ask one of the two for help. And too proud, too. Considering, that I had let them off the hook on Saturday, letting them go home after their regular hours, offering to take on the extra five hours in the evening with the price giving and handling of the take away gifts for our guests. Toting the 70 odd bags of special anniversary beer brew for males and helping the same amount of women to their right size of Guido Maria Kretschmer designed club shirt all by myself.

Overall, though, it was all a success and now I am off, to do today’s early shift.