5th November, 2010

I do have a tendency to hide my light under a bushel as you might have gathered, but there is one highlight of my sporting career that I am actually quite proud of and will probably surprise you in the telling. In 1987 I made an appearance on the bench as reserve fullback for London Scottish 1st XV in an away match against another 1st division side, Nottingham. I suspect my selection was partially due to a lack of regular team members prepared to make the trip to Nottingham that weekend and it was quite a relief not to get on the field of play since amongst the opposition team I would have found myself confronted by the likes of Brian Moore and Chris Oti, a well built winger of prodigious pace ( thank you Wikipedia ) who went on to represent England on 13 occasions. But anyway, with such a ripe history of sporting success behind me, when on Wednesday afternoon I used up 2% of my annual holiday entitlement to head off to Cambridge to watch my son and his other as yet winless team mates take on another local prep school, I suppose I could be accused of not quite being in the right frame of mind. I arrived early enough to give them some encouraging words and a bit of advice and then stood on the touchline watching their warm up routine which seemed mainly to involve taking practice kicks at and dispersing piles of leaves that had been neatly swept together by the school groundsman. Suffice to say Kings suffered yet another trouncing and Bob wandered aimlessly about the pitch with his mind clearly occupied by thoughts of squirrels and such like to be pursued at the weekend. The only diversion from the torpor into which I had sunk on that dreary, damp touchline, was a buzz on my phone signalling that a text message had arrived from Hen:
“I think I might enjoy being Amish can you arrange that for me ? X”
I digress. Talking of sport I was heartened to find Bob in front of the television last weekend. It is actually quite a rare occurance and I was even more surprised when he shouted through to me that was watching a programme called Extreme Sports. My interest pricked I wandered into the room to discover the particular event he was engrossed in involved a relay team of sprinting midgets in a 400 metre challenge against a camel.
Must tell you my life has been transformed by the fact that I no longer have to drive 70 miles back and forward from home to the office. This week I have been transfixed on the way home watching The Inbetweeners on my iPad. The most astonishing programme I have seen for long time. Well since Skins. My 15 year old daughter recommended it to me and at least I now know I don’t have to teach her anything about what preoccupies the male mind...at that age.
Bonfire night. Normally I would go on a rant about how much I hate the wastefulness and the oooohing and aaaahing, but actually a firework party last weekend was one of the highlights of the year. Our generous host, Mr PDV, a very senior Asian stockbroker in a previous life, provided huge entertainment by taking on the task of lighting the fireworks himself and began the proceedings with the most enormous rocket which the muppet stuck directly into the ground rather than placing it carefully into a launching pipe. Needless to say the firework blew to bits pretty much exactly where he had lit it. Happily he emerged a little mud on the face but other wise unscathed, a very lucky boy!