If you think weekdays are tedious at Feltham, you should try the weekends. All you have to look forward to – if that is the right term – is meal-times because then at least you’re going somewhere with a purpose.

Yesterday I began by popping along to the cinema complex to see if I could take out the well-worn DVD copy of the undisputed intellectual high watermark of continental film-making (Mr Hulot’s Holiday) only to find that it had already been borrowed. On Tuesday I had gone out in the first round of this week’s tournament so there was no joy to be had in the pool room … well, save perhaps watching the quarter-finals, but to be honest with you I’m the type of individual who rarely gets excited watching others do things that I would have like to have been doing myself – that’s why, after watching the Bond movie Dr No, I’ve always hated Sean Connery.

The only bright spot of the day was when I joined Alf, whose cell is on floor 2 of our block. He’s got one of these game console things and had told me at breakfast that he had the new golf video game Tour Pro 4 on which you can ‘play’ any registered golf course in the world.

I hadn’t played a video game since that rectangular ‘black & white’ tennis game that went ‘bip’ every time you connected with the ball was in vogue in about 1988. As you might expect, things have moved on apace since then and I was truly staggered by both the quality and complexity of modern computer-generated images. Once I’d mastered the basics (which only took me about three hours), in the mid-afternoon – for my first ‘solo’ outing on the console - I naturally chose to play a round at Windlesham against my usual partners. This I found challenging & rewarding, largely because the computer game version was infinitely more realistic & enjoyable than playing the bloody course in real life.

I had chosen ‘dull, overcast’ weather and ‘soggy underfoot’ conditions as part of the game set-up and, blow me down, I won the game comfortably – posting a gross 94 to my opponents’ 103 and 119.

Two points for future reference, however.

Firstly, try as you might, when you’re ‘playing’ as an opponent there’s always a possibility that (subconsciously) you don’t concentrate enough upon choosing the right club, setting the player up correctly and choosing the appropriate strength of swing, compared to when you’re ‘playing’ as yourself.

Secondly, the video game creatives & manufacturers may need to do a little bit more work as regards ‘speeding up’ their games – yesterday’s ‘round’ at Windlesham took me the best part of eleven hours to complete. That’s more than two and a half times what we normally take when playing a real round.