Saturday, 11th July 2015

Who remembers Derek Redmond?

Look him up on YouTube, and the first thing you find should be footage of what happened to him during the 1992 Olympic 400m final. Three things will happen when you watch this:

1. You will cry beautiful tears of compassion.

2. You'll probably have to listen to Coldplay in the background. Sorry.

3. You will, hopefully, appreciate the tenuous link I am about to make, which has something to do with the power of sport to magnify the love between a parent and their child.

Yesterday morning was my oldest daughter's first school sports day. I was on a late shift at work, so I was able to witness what was a momentous landmark in her burgeoning existence.

I loved a bit of sport when I was young; I still do. So I'm keen for my children to share my instinctive passion for organised competition based on co-ordination, determination and physical prowess. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I remain hopeful.

I was thoroughly impressed by the logistics of the occasion. The pupils were divided into small teams, each of which would complete circuits of a particular activity involving some combination of hoops, beanbags and cones: quintessential P.E. paraphernalia. After three minutes an authoritative whistle would sound, prompting the pupils to halt and sit with an immediacy as impressive as it was terrifying. A second whistle provoked each team to move, as one, to their left, whereupon they would commence a circuit of the next activity. 

And so the sporting entertainment progressed, in an efficient and orderly fashion, like North Korea in airtex tops.

My eldest, for her part, performed nobly. Her hula hoop work was particularly strong, as was her valuable ability to run with a beanbag balanced on a plastic tennis racquet. That beanbag didn't get a sniff of the ground; not on her watch.

But the real pride, on my part, kicked in when I discovered that the more conventional running races which followed were in fact finals, the fields for which had been previously determined by heats, held in prior weeks. There were six in contention for the Panda Class final. My daughter was one of them. And she was there on bloody merit!

And I'm here to tell you that fifth is a very respectable position to finish in, after a race during which one is relentlessly distracted by one's hat attempting to blow away. I struggled to rein in the impassioned cheering my pride demanded.

She didn't twang a hammy in the middle of the race. But I have no doubt that, if she had, I would have been there like a bloody shot, drawing beautiful tears of compassion from all and sundry. I might even have allowed Chris Martin to whine morosely in the background, trying to fix me.

http://youtu.be/ws8vIqkMh44

Monday, 23rd February 2015

I was trundling quite happily along the A2 today, maintaining a consistent, sensible and, above all, legal speed of seventy miles per hour, when the exciting, digital signs above the road proclaimed that there was an OBSTRUCTION ahead, and that all were thus to reduce their trundle to fifty miles per hour.

I fell victim a few months ago to a police officer armed with a speed camera. This left me deeply conflicted between my natural inclination to protest my innocence on a vaguely defined, moral level to anybody within earshot, and my natural inclination to avoid agreeing with Jeremy Clarkson.

I knew, deep down, that doing 61 miles per hour when the speed limit was fifty was more dangerous than doing fifty miles per hour. So I was less reluctant to attend the requisite speed awareness course than I would be, for example, to watch an episode of Top Gear.

On the speed awareness course I learnt three things in particular: 1) driving too fast really is more dangerous than not driving too fast. It's more more dangerous than I thought; 2) the correct definition of a dual carriageway; and 3) when the exciting, digital signs above the A2 tell you to keep to fifty miles per hour, there actually is a good reason for it, rather than - as I had always suspected - someone sitting behind a computer somewhere, laughing maniacally as they feed their thirst for power over the speedometers of Kent by arbitrarily imposing temporary limits upon them. No: it's usually because there's an OBSTRUCTION.

All of which confessional nostalgia is to explain why, upon noticing these signs today, I obediently slowed down to a trundlier trundle. The police car behind me was merely incidental.

As is often the way, a couple of miles with no evidence of an OBSTRUCTION began to make me question its existence. Only my newly unshakeable faith in the authenticity of the exciting, digital signs kept these doubts at bay. Eventually, we passed a lorry, innocuously stationed on the hard shoulder. My confusion about whether this could have been the cause of the revised speed limit was exacerbated by further '50' signs, half a mile later.

I hesitantly kept my speed down, until my doubts were allayed by the police car which had trailed me throughout this dilemma, when it pulled out from behind me and sped up. This was all the invitation I needed to conclude that the OBSTRUCTION was, indeed, in my past. So I, too, sped up into the empty lane ahead of me.

This was how the awkward situation occurred. The driver of the police car, having pulled out to overtake me, had as a consequence prompted me to speed up and negate the requirement for him to overtake me. So he pulled sheepishly back in behind me.

I must stress that this gave me no satisfaction; merely a mildly confused indifference. But this quickly transformed into unbearable frustration at what happened next. A cursory glance in my rear view mirror revealed to me that the driver of the police car was shaking his head at me in disbelief. He was outraged at my actions.

My conclusion was that his conclusion was that I had sped up to prevent him overtaking me, presumably because of either a perceived hatred of The Law on my part or, worse, some ridiculous, Clarksonesque pride. I get very frustrated when I feel I've been misjudged. It's worse when it's on the road and I'm powerless to reason with my false accuser. It's worse still when my false accuser could arrest me if he wanted to.

Impotent rage.

Of course, it could be that I glanced in my mirror just as he expressed his incredulity at a story his passenger was telling him about something unrelated. I hope I haven't misjudged him.

Monday, 2nd February 2015

When I was young, I kind of enjoyed hurting myself. Not on purpose. But I appreciated the accidents I had. I didn't like the actual pain but, within reason, I considered it a worthwhile price to pay for the prestige it could bring. My friends and I would compete for the best quality and quantity of A&E anecdotes. Bruises, wounds, bandages or - best of all - plaster casts were badges of honour. At primary school, if someone turned up on crutches they commanded awe and respect. When Mark Filby threw a stone in my eye at lunchtime one day, I genuinely felt that the attention my temporary eyepatch generated was enough to justify the 48 hours of literally eye-watering agony.

Then, as I reached my grumpy adolescence and developed a powerful aversion to any kind of commitment or social interaction, I would relish the potential benefits of injury; sudden disability, to my irrational teenage mind, represented the perfect excuse to avoid any awkward situation. Frequently, when driving to my part-time supermarket checkout job, I would fantasise about crashing my car, such was my resentment at being paid to sit down for a few hours in Tesco. Only a lack of courage prevented me from acting upon this misguided judgement, meaning that - instead of learning the hard way - I had to grow up before I would appreciate the ungrateful, insensitive arrogance of this attitude.

I certainly value my health now, and I have developed a sensible fear of pain. Yet I still have a residual sense of the benefits of injury. I think it's more of an emotional coping mechanism really: while I avoid the prospect of hurting myself, I still think the associated drama and attention would be of some consolation.

Throughout all of these phases, I have never really appreciated the impact upon those who care for me of my being in physical peril. But this morning I was provided with a stark new sense of perspective when I dropped my older daughter off at school.

A combination of my insistence the night before upon attempting to stay up to watch the Superbowl (I just about made it to half time before giving up when Katy Perry started prancing about), my snot-addled reluctance to get up in the morning, and the car being all icy, contributed to this morning's school run being rather more hurried than usual. I drove safely, of course - the big, slow lorry which insisted on being in front of me for most of the journey left me little choice - but I only parked the car on the road outside the school in the nick of time.

As I desperately grappled with my daughter's two unreasonably heavy school bags, the car door and the keys to lock it, I had to find from somewhere an extra hand to grab my daughter's as she spotted a couple of her friends, whose parents were only marginally more punctual than hers, and attempted to run across the road after them.

Somehow I managed to restrain her from doing so, before escorting her calmly and sensibly across the road, into the school grounds and up to the gate, where only the headmistress and an incidental secretary by now remained; all the other pupils were already in, with the exception of my daughter's two friends, about to disappear out of sight. She sauntered off in pursuit.

"WAIT!" I cried in sudden alarm, causing her to halt. I was still holding her bags (she normally only has one, but we had been asked to provide additional, dispensable clothing in service of muddy, outdoor fun). I've got form for sending my daughter in without her stuff. I had to go to the office and arrange for it to be delivered to her classroom. It was embarrassing. I wasn't about to go through that humiliation again this morning, so I beckoned my daughter back to me and weighed her down with her pair of bags. Finally, I watched her dash through the gate. She could still probably catch up with her friends before they got to the door. My work was complete for another morning.

And then she fell over.

Usually when you trip, putting out your arms to break your fall is an instinctive reflex. Unless you're a four year-old with a heavy bag in each hand. If you're a four year-old with a heavy bag in each hand, you land on your face.

If I was in any doubt about the integrity of my parental concern for my children, it was dispelled in this moment. I think I actually pushed the headmistress out of the way a little bit as I ran to my daughter's aid. I was now on the wrong side of the gate through which parents may not pass, and I didn't even care. I picked her up, subconsciously established the absence of blood, and just hugged her and hugged her until she stopped crying. But she wouldn't. Her chin had borne the brunt of the impact and she was in pain, and none of us were under any illusions about it being a good thing.

Mum, Dad: I'm sorry for all the times I saw hurting myself as a positive. I understand now that you probably didn't, did you? It probably quite upset you, didn't it? Sorry.

Of course, like any parent, I've seen my children hurt themselves many times. It's never pleasant - this is hardly a revelation - but somehow this occasion was so much more harrowing than all the others. Perhaps it was the dramatic nature of the events conspiring to cause the accident. Perhaps it was the setting: I had just successfully given her over to the care of trained, responsible adults in a safe location and was lulled into a false sense of security. Or maybe it was the fact that the incidental secretary turned out to be a crucial player in our story as she gently but assertively led my still-wailing child away from me and into the school, luring her with promises of an ice pack for her grazed and swollen chin. I could offer no more than a feeble goodbye as the doors closed on the secretary, my daughter and her distraught tears. I was no longer welcome in the effort to appease her.

As I drove home I was helplessness personified. I even phoned the school in search of reassurance as to her wellbeing. But I could not be fully consoled until the time came to collect her some six and a half hours later. She emerged through the same, fateful gate with a ridiculous, Looney Tunes bruise disfiguring her chin, but she was smiling. She was fine.

And, to tell the truth, I think she's quite proud of that bruise. So am I, to be honest.