The August and Venerable Golf Club of St Magnus is in trouble. Under an ancient deed, the members discover that their beloved Clubhouse will revert to the daughter of the local fishmonger if, on her eighteenth birthday, she is still a virgin. The birthday is imminent, and the Secretary decides to take matters into his own hands. As the day of reckoning draws near, suitors, snakes, Sanskrit, fish, tsunamis, the Kama Sutra, secret tunnels, Japanese reporters, the halls of Harmonia, and the fated footsteps of true love pop up like sprinklers on a golf course or vowels in the Vedas. This irreverent story twists and winds like an Indian python towards its surprising soft-breathed apocalypse.