Sports Day and Kansas bloggers

I’m in a right old pickle at the moment. Stuck between two computers for starters. My new one keeps losing its Internet connection which was driving me potty enough (plus it’s got the dreaded Vista on it – aaaghh). But now, to add insult to injury, the crappy keyboard they generously gave with it won’t work – the space bar sticks intolerably. So I am back on the laptop in the breakfast room and have to say it’s a joy to be on XP again. Though, shamefully, the dreaded Spider Solitaire is still on here…..I shall resist!

Once again I’m sleep-deprived too. The night before last we had a girls’ night at Linda’s. Great fun but my heart sank at the thought of a late Sunday night. I used to think nothing of staying up to the wee small hours and then getting up and going to work. In fact, when I worked on the Evening Standard, it was par for the course to go to a party, get home at 4am, write your copy and phone it over to the copytakers before falling into bed for a few hours before getting up and going back into work. How in the name of heaven did I have the stamina? It sounds like a glamorous job but was pretty grim really – I still wince at the memory of trotting after Bob Geldof (he walks VERY fast) asking for a brief quote with him snarling ‘F**k off’ in dulcet tones.

Anyhow, back in the present, I got two hours sleep and felt like hell yesterday. We pitched up at Sports Day with me feeling slightly out of it. I thought it would never end. Forty odd races and variations on things being thrown and bodies jumping high and long. The weather lunged from sizzling sunburn heat to shivering wind and cold – hence the sight of some of the yummy mummies wearing slivers of dresses and slingbacks with not so fetching vast padded fleeces over the top. I loathe Sports Day. It brings back far too many memories of ritual humiliation via 100 metres. I have weak knees (comes of being a Capricorn) and for some inexplicable reason my knees would give out at precisely 50 metres at which point I would fall flat on my face and have to haul myself to my feet and limp the remaining distance while all the rest of the girls had long returned to their seats. So I found a tear in my eye watching the little tubby girl stumbling along at the back of the fleet, sleek, pony-tailed pack.

James, thank God, has not inherited any of my genes that I can detect. He loves sport. I still don’t really believe it and so sat with a slack jaw as I watched my little boy, way ahead of the field for two laps of the 800 metres. He had peaked too early though and fell back towards the end but managed to come fourth (which I thought was damn fine given he was the only one of his year competing against older boys). He came third in the 200 metres too and I thought I would burst a blood vessel as he charged towards the finish, with me bellowing at him like a fish-wife (apologies to fish-wives). So much for me sitting quietly as instructed. In the house relay, the baton was dropped and they came last – James was disgusted.

As far as these things go, it was well-organised. While many of the races were finals of heats run earlier in school, a few others were (reading between the lines) subtly designed to allow the non-sporty a chance to have a go without humiliation. For instance a never-ending relay race with 25 team members and some ‘free’ races. It wasn’t ‘prizes for all’ (halleluyah) but somehow managed to combine sporting competitiveness with a ‘have a bash’ mentality that was pleasing.

There is also something rather pleasing about Blogger. I love all the comments from old friends – guaranteed to bring a wide smile. And I also love that, every so often, I find a comment by someone outside the purplecoo community….I trot off and find another fabulous or thought-provoking or laugh out loud blog and then have to ration myself or I’d be off, following links, wandering freefall all over the land of Blog. Today I found iota – a UK woman in that strangest of strange lands, the mid-West of America. There, it transpires, Sports Day is Field Day. Her children are learning to speak with American accents and I learned that ‘camp’ (that great US institution) is not a few weeks away in the forest, but can be a one-day course. Fabulous to get that insight into another world – and all at the click of a mouse. Now, of course, I am wondering about her life – how did she get there? And how come she knows the Poltimore Arms on Exmoor, one of the most ‘off the map’ pubs it’s possible to encounter?


PS - the odd picture is part of a mural in the Eden Project - though at a push it could be some ancient relay race!