SPORTS DAY

‘Tis the season to find yourself in a frenzy of end of term activity.  Particularly if, like me, you have a child just about to leave primary school.  There have been end of year drinks, end of year parties, end of year productions, end of year trips to Chessington Zoo, end of year celebration nights, end of year anything else you can think of to waste everybody’s time and of course there is end of year sports day. 

Sports day brings out the best and the worst of humanity I think.  Children trying their hardest and parents screaming from the sidelines. To be honest, I am incandescently bored of sports days – rather like children’s parties I have had to endure far too many of them (32 and counting) and my photograph albums are full of tiny specs of unidentifiable children running down a field.  But in addition to boredom, there is also the looming fear at the thought of the Mother’s race and of course a little bit of excitement and/or sympathy thrown in for the ups and downs of the races themselves.  The children run their little socks off, some laughing when they lose, some crying.  Such raw determination.  It’s great.  So you can imagine that when I turned up yesterday to find that they have redesigned the whole day to ensure that “everyone is a winner”, I was not terribly impressed.  Ok, the children probably prefer it, but is it right to protect them from the concept of winners and losers?  It’s a tough world out there and I’m not sure we are doing much to help them if we allow ourselves to bring up a generation of winners.  We all have our sports day nightmare – mine was getting stuck in the sack during the sack race, falling flat on my face and having to crawl to the finish line – did that do me any harm?  Well yes, probably. 

One huge bonus of the newly designed sports day was that they have done away with the parents races.  Normally, I am filled with trepidation about how to get out of the Mother’s race without my children losing face.  The reason I don’t want to participate in it is because I won’t win.  Obviously this is not the right message to be sending to my children, so I have had to make up excuses (like I’ve got my period).  I was sorry not to be able to watch the mothers in high heels and wrap around skirts suddenly peel off their clothes to reveal cycling shorts and killer spikes and doing star jumps in preparation.

The Father’s race is even worse.  It should come with a government health warning.  It is one of the most dangerous races the world has ever known.  Emotionally charged, completely determined, focused, highly competitive men who have temporarily lost all sense of sanity (because their children are watching), stampede down the length of the field, divets flying and hamstrings snapping all the way.  If you are unfortunate enough to be standing reasonably close to the finishing line you are now either in a coma or dead. These men can’t stop – they are running so fast that it takes them 200 yards to slow down and stop, that’s if they haven’t hit a standing object first. Last year one of the dad’s fell over during the race, badly injuring his ankle.  He hobbled over to his daughter, who was crying hysterically.  “It’s alright darling, I’ll be OK”, he said to her.  “I don’t care about whether you’ll be OK, you’ve really, really embarrassed me and now everybody will laugh”, was her devastating reply.

“Why is my child the only one wearing a white T-shirt?” I asked my friend.  “Because you’re the only useless mother who doesn’t know that they have to wear a green T-shirt for PE”.  Do you know I have now had three children at that school and have therefore been there for about 10 years and I have failed to notice that they wear green T-shirts, not white for PE.  How crap is that?  About as crap as having to make my children’s sandwiches with mouldy bread this morning I suspect (I did pick the mouldy bits out and they do say that mouldy bread is good for you).

Anyway, the really good news is that the red colour team won on points and my daughter is red colour team captain so she went up to collect the trophy.  The really bad news is that I am such a crap mother I didn’t even have my camera with me and so will have one less proud child photo for my album.

HOW MANY DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS?

Another early morning – will I ever get to wake up naturally, without a disturbance again?  It makes the thought of the children going away with their father for a week in the summer almost quite appealing now.  Perhaps I’ll just stay in a darkened room and sleep for seven days. 

My seven year old woke me up this morning to say “I can’t believe my birthday’s over already, can you?.  How many days until my next birthday?  Ages?  Well how many days exactly, oh that is ages, oh well, it’s nearly Christmas isn’t it, how many days until Christmas?”.

The countdown to Christmas has already begun.  What a hideous thought.

My mother has just called “what does he mean he loves his wee and that his brother and sister have been playing with his wee too? I’m getting seriously worried about your child”.  I attempt to explain the difference between Wii and Wee, but don’t understand why Nintendo chose to give it such a stupid name.

The sun is out!  Miracle.  Wonder if I can attempt to persuade all three of my children to do something together with me?  Hmmm, unlikely.  I might have to put my foot down and insist on some time together or bribe them.  When I was a child it was simply not an option to do something else at the weekend, the weekends were sacrosanct family time, which actually meant, my father time, but that was OK.  Because we lived in Hong Kong we spent a lot of time on boats.  Which worked well for everybody except me.  My parents smoked and drank alcohol all day, my two brothers leapt from great heights into clear blue water and water-skied whilst I sat on the top deck feeling sick all day long, unable to even read a book.

So what shall I do today?  I already have the mental image of three grumpy children slouching behind me, mumbling swear words under their breath and giving me looks that could kill a wild mob, whilst I run up and down trying to get a kite elavated and two seconds later, untangled, or attempt to hit a ball and run to 4th base with absolutely no other players.  Not good.  Rollerblading?  Possibly – I like that one because I’m better than them, which obviously means they hate it…but one mistake and I’ll break a bone.  Large lunch? Too expensive.  Beach?  Too far.  Walk?  You must be joking.  Bowling?  Too busy.  Picnic?  I hate picnics.

Will give it some thought, but need to be quick.  The element of surprise and absolutely no option to refuse is all that I’ll have left and there is only a small window of opportunity – I have to catch them when they emerge from their rooms and clomp stiffly down the stairs, bleary eyed.  “Guess what?  we’re going out today, hooray!”.  Then I need to get them dressed and out before they have much of a chance to complain and no chance to put on that really annoying united front they save for moments like these.

SEVEN

Today is the luckiest day of the century apparently.  Elavated to such a status by the number “seven’s” international reputation as a lucky number.  It is significant in the Bible (the world was created in seven days), prominent with the Hindu and Muslim faiths, in the Torah and in the Japanese Shinto religion.  Not to mention the Seven Deadly Sins, Seven sacrements and Virtues or it’s gambling connotations with Lucky 7’s slot machines.  Then there’s Seventh Heaven, the Seven Dwarfs, the Seven Wonders of the World, the seven ages of man, the seventh son of the seventh son (I know someone who is and that is considered hugely lucky, especially in Ireland) and the seven year itch (lucky for some).

Two years ago was not a lucky day by any means for London with the bombings, but today that memory seems to be dim and distant as a record number of people got married both in London and around the rest of the world.

My son is blissfully unaware of the commotion – he doesn’t care that his 7th birthday happens to fall on such an auspicious day – it is always the best day for him on the calender and today was no exception.  He loved his presents, enjoyed his party, ate crap and went out for a family meal where again, he had no idea how difficult it was for both his parents to put on a united front and pretend to be a family.  “So what was your the best thing about today?” I asked him as he was drifting off to sleep,  “everything”, he said.  “Well everything except getting hit round the head with the Nintendo Wii by my sister”.  He’s got a huge bruise and was really upset.  Inevitable though.  It’s only a matter of time before a console gets thrown through the television.  Various fights between the kids occurred owing to his new status as proud owner of latest cool gadget in the house.  My daughter wanted to try out the boxing game, but he wanted to play tennis.  It really is the most ludicrous invention. I had a go.  I was crap.  But then I really don’t get it.  Best quote of the day was by my daughter who said “it’s not fair, I really want to try out the boxing, what’s wrong with him, he’s so selfish, he really thinks today is all about him and it’s so not”.  Well, if you don’t get to be selfish on your birthday, you haven’t got a hope.

I myself am planning to do something big on 08/08/08 – much more lucky if you live in China.

07/07/07

5.30am

I’m up.  After numerous desperate attempts to get my newfound seven year old to go back to sleep, I’ve given up. From about 4.30am I have had to deal with a barrage of questions: “how many more minutes is it till I can open my presents?” “How many presents have I got?” “Can you believe that I’m actually SEVEN?” “You have to be nice to me all day – do you think you can manage?” “How many minutes now?”  “Are you exited?” and so on and so on and so on. 

Consequently I am feeling absolutely dreadful.  I have a hangover from having to drink copious amounts of cheap white wine in a sports hall in order to get through what would otherwise have been a very tedious evening.  End of year class drinks for my daughters class – Year Six.  The final year of primary school.  That’s it then, that particular group of people will never have to meet in the same room and drink crap wine together ever again.

My teenage son was serving drinks and helping to organise the disco.  I tried to dance with him but he ran away.  The disco was hopeless.  Why is it that DJ’s assume we want to dance to Wham and Abba?  I kept requesting The Fray and Mika and the Arctic Monkeys, which to their credit they did play, but it meant there were only three people on the dance floor.  When they put on “Jitterbug” I left as a protest, fighting my way through the rest of the party desperate to get on down and shake their funky stuff on the dance floor.

BIRTHDAY

“Mum, we need to have a serious chat” said my six year old the minute he woke up this morning.  He dragged me down to the kitchen and made me sit on a chair.  He sat opposite me.  “WHERE ARE MY PRESENTS?” was the sum of the serious chat.  “I have looked everywhere and I can’t find them, which means you haven’t bought me anything and in case you have forgotton, MY BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW”.  How could I forget?  We have been counting down the days since about day 325, so you can imagine that his tangible excitement is now virtually uncontainable.

I hadn’t forgotten, obviously, but I had rather left it to the last minute.   I had allocated this afternoon to get the bulk of his presents.  This proved to be a little bit stressful.  I had to teach this morning and then went in to Central London to meet a client for lunch, but just as we had ordered our food I noticed a policewoman wrapping the entire restaurant in “Stay Away” tape.  Ten minutes later we were all evacuated, owing to a suspected gas leak – although I did hear several people talking about a controlled explosion and possible bomb scare.  We had to hang around outside for ages and by the time we had finally eaten I had about 3 minutes to buy everything, rush home, picking up teenage son en route, panic wrap all the presents, pick up other two kids, get home with 6 kids, feed them, wash hair, rush out to buy cake and prizes, come home, realise I was supposed to be taking a plate of food out to the Year six drinks party, raid empty fridge for ideas (hopeless), contemplate whether I could get away with turning up with an empty platter covered in tin foil and put down somewhere and hope nobody would notice (probably not) and therefore had to send son out to get a pizza that I then cut up (also hopeless, but never mind).

BIRTHDAY

My gorgeous, funny, challenging six year old is going to be 7 on Saturday.  He has the coolest birthday ever, especially this year.  He is going to be 7 on the 7th of the 7th 2007 – how cool is that?  We have been planning his birthday for months, obviously.  I suggested a Rugby 7’s party and he cried because it meant he would only get 7 presents – trying to explain that there would be two teams involved did not console him – he wanted BIG – Olympic games big, everybody in the class big, millions of presents big. 

Anyway, he’s been typing out lists, planning games, cross referencing lists, ticking things – names?  Can’t tell, it’s all completely illegible.  I try and stay out of it these days. To be honest I’m completely bored of childrens birthday parties (I’m up to 31 now).  Luckily for me my 11 year old daughter is hugely into the whole thing and has taken control.  She makes the cake, plans the games, blows the whistle, gets completely stressed – I love it…I just drink champagne and smoke (although have now given up so will perhaps borrow fake cigarette in hope that it helps, which it won’t).  My 14 year old is also going to help organise the games, as is their father – so I really won’t have to do very much apart from make 25 million sandwiches which they won’t eat, provide drinks, crisps, sweets, light candles, start off singing, sort out tears, sort out party bags, wrap loads of presents, put up a Gazebo as it will rain, shout at everybody in charge because they are not in control, stop my son from playing Fifty Cent and Tenacious somebody during pass-the- parcel (which he did last year) and talk to all the weirdo grown-ups who decide to hover around and watch a children’s birthday party instead of buggering off to the pub, or the golf course or the shops in a moment of freedom.  Can’t wait.

MY LIFE AS A FOX

Hey, howyadoin?  Wassup?  I’m just like hanging out with my mates and bro’s and stuff.  We live near Richmond Park.  It’s rele cool round here, you get to eat like loads of rele cool, expensive stuff.  Makes a bit of a mess all over the road and they go mad, but what d’ya expect?  We’re living behind a like rele poncy Wendy House at the bottom of like a huge garden at the moment and you wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff they leave out for us to eat like every night.  Last night, right, we were just like cruising around the edges when whatdyaknow, for the second night in a row, I spot a pair of shiny black school shoes, just lying there, under the trampoline.  They’re great those shoes, I love chewing them – not the whole thing, but the like furry bits – velcro or sommat, that bit is rele cool to chew – cleans your teeth real sharp.  The mum goes rele mad in the morning, waking us up and all -  that’s when we’re trying to catch some zeds and I say to her “chillax man”….stay sharp and don’t let your kids leave their shoes outside.

Which one is your daughter?

Spent most of Saturday morning watching my daughter in a horse riding competition.  I don’t get horse riding at all.   Horses terrify me and smell horrible.  I stood in the rain, with a few other bedraggled looking parents, unable to open our umbrellas because they frightened the horses.  She was asked to dress as a Royal.  All the other girls looked elegant, dressed as The Queen, or Zara Phillips.  My daughter decided to dress up as Henry VIII (why?), but we slightly failed to produce the full regalia.  We couldn’t find a red beard.  Instead she found a small ginger moustache and a tiara that she perched on top of her riding hat.   From a distance, she looked completely normal.  But when the woman doing the video came up to me and said “which one is your daughter?” I found myself having to reply “the one with the moustache”.  

Have just given my six year old a bath and put him off to bed.  Another tooth fell out this weekend, but he doesn’t want to give this one to the Tooth Fairy he wants to keep it.  As he lay in the bath he said, “do you know, I think I’ve lost weight.  Do you know how I can tell that?  Because my willy looks bigger.  Fat people have very small willies” . 

LIFE

All at once there’s light,

Before was only grey mist,

I can see again.

YELLOW

Yucky, yolky yellow.  It’s my least favourite colour.  I intensely dislike yellow clothes and yellow ferrari’s.  The flavour of lemon’s is another matter, cool, tangy citrus, but even then, given the choice I’d rather have lime.

 So, what can I say about yellow?  Try reading a book called “Half Of A Yellow Sun” by Chimanmanda Ngozi Adichie all about the civil war in Nigeria during the 1960’s.  Biafra declared itself independent on May 30th 1967, but lacked the resources to survive.  Millions died during that three year period, either killed during the fighting or because of starvation before they surrendered.  Her novel charts the struggle through the eyes of three very different characters.  It is moving, fascinating, informed and beautifully written.  She has recently won the Orange prize for literature.  Highly recommended.