Another angle on football

As I believe has probably been discussed on these pages, I live in a household of football obsessives. Myself included. And, due to LittleBear's devotion to his sport, I have found myself volunteering to "help out" at his team. "Helping out" has migrated to becoming an assistant coach, and being DBS checked and trained in First Aid and Safeguarding. Oh, and holding the purse strings for the team. And registering the team for tournaments. And buying new kit. And communicating with the parents. Bit by bit it's sort of crept up on me.

As of tonight however, I have started my training to become an FA Level 1 qualified football coach. I completed my first online module, ready for starting the practical training on Saturday. The fact that I've never played football is beginning to prey on my mind somewhat. Just a bit. The thought of making a complete and utter idiot of myself is becoming a more and more terrifying, and realistic, prospect.

BigBear and LittleBear are being very understanding of the fact that I will be spending 9am-5pm on Saturday and Sunday learning to coach football. LittleBear is being reminded rather frequently that it's all for his benefit, and he has no excuse for complaining. BigBear is simply being very understanding.

Back to the preparation for the course however.

Step one was the need to own astroturf boots. I decided to check out what was available online, which led to this disheartening discovery on the Sports Direct website:

Really?

(There are such things as football boots for women, but frankly, I don't see the need for such a thing. I've bought plain black men's boots. Feet are feet, and my weird feet are weird no matter what gender they are)

The next step was to complete the Introduction to Coaching module online. Most of this was relatively passive and involved reading and watching videos. There were some interactive sections however, with the answers apparently being used for discussion at the sessions at the weekend. I confess that I have been feeling a little low lately. Not quite at the top of my game. Somewhat over-tired and over-emotional. Being confronted with this question was a bit more than I could handle:

Why can't I pick "none of the above"?

Honestly, asking someone who's self esteem is crashingly low what their positive traits are is not going to go well. I was prepared to admit to "Reliable" without feeling like a fraud, and then spent five minutes clicking on things, then unclicking again.

I've only just finished this module and I already can't remember which three qualities I grudgingly admitted to. Which is going to be another way to make an idiot of myself on Saturday when we discuss our answers.

This is beginning to feel like a very, very foolish idea indeed.

All done... probably...

I have been waiting and waiting to write this post. I wanted to write it only when the building work was absolutely, completely finished and we'd put all the furniture back into the room, with all the finishing touches in place, and everything looking perfect.

You can stop laughing now.

Once reality had dawned again, and I'd realised there will never be "perfection" as long as I have a cat, a child and a husband, I also realised that I might as well post some pictures of the new room being mostly done.

LittleBear and I got the important stuff done last weekend - we put all the books in the bookcases. Then we moved his toy cupboards into place, and had a major purge of toys and games as we shifted the contents of the toy cupboards into the room as well. Then we moved BigBear's desk and chair in. And then BigBear himself moved in and has been working from home in the room for the past week. Which means my beautiful, tidy room has an explosion of cables and odds and ends all over it, as we're still negotiating on the correct choice of shelves/cupboards to go into the study area of the room.

When I say "negotiating", I'm not sure which of us is currently occupying the home-furnishing equivalent position of the ERG and who is Mrs May, but there will be indicative votes later tonight, and I may need to enforce the sovereignty of The Wife soon.

We have some interesting criteria for our selection of shelves. Firstly, and we are in agreement on this, the shelves should be no higher than the existing toy cupboards (96cm) and ideally a similar width (140-150cm). After that, our priorities are slightly different.

I require that they are adequate to house the various language-reference books still piled up on the bedroom floor (dictionaries and their friends), and I also want to be able to put all the home-computer related detritus away somewhere. The printer paper, the spare USB cables, the backup external hard-disk, the random CDs and DVDs of driver software and other-people's-photos. Seems fair doesn't it? Because I am nothing if not fair and reasonable. BigBear however, has a requirement to house not one, not two, but six vintage computers - three Ataris, a Commodore, an Amiga and a Spectrum. Each must be stored flat, at a stable temperature and with nothing else on top of it. This therefore requires a minimum shelf depth of 30cm.

As with the current shower who are occupying the Palace of Westminster, I am capable of offering multiple solutions to the above conundrum, any of which satisfy two or three of the requirements, but not all of them. One solution houses everything perfectly, except it has drawers that wouldn't open as they'd hit the desk legs. Another solution allows access to the vintage computers but has no space for the books. Another solution is almost perfect except the vintage computers wouldn't fit. Something has to give, and if I wait until we reach a decision, install it, and tidy up I think half my readership will have forgotten who I am.

Herewith therefore, some before and after photos, with very little in the way of furniture featuring yet...

Before: exterior with rakishly angled windows

After: including mini footballer (a permanent installation)

After: bifolds thrown wide open

 The before and after of the outside do show a distinct improvement, but perhaps not as significant an improvement as we've achieved on the inside.

Before

After

The light! The space! The absence of horrible ceiling!

Before

After, with funky new radiators

Reference books installed in high-level shelves

Before: unusably small stump of room

After: stump has become "my" library corner

After: once I have an armchair I may never leave

The Final Countdown

So, we enter the last few days of drama. The last chance to make decisions that we may have to live with for many years to come. The first crunch day came and went with failure; the second crunch day came and went with failure. What of the third? Would there even be a third?

No, I'm not talking about politics.

I'm talking about the imminent completion of our building works. Because, yay verily, and forsooth, the windows and doors were delivered at the third time of asking.

And since they arrived on site, a mere six days ago, we've moved from having a non-weather-tight, cold, dark, concrete-floored cave, to a place that is almost a complete room, needing only a coat or two of paint and the final fit of the electrical sockets. There's even carpet. It's almost unimaginable. BigBear was away for most of this final process, only arriving home yesterday to a transformed home.

The only thing was, we spent a huge amount of time several months ago debating colour schemes, and then (when the windows were delayed) we rather shelved all thoughts of finishing details. The process of reaching any kind of consensus had been sufficiently painful, we had no desire to revisit it. Actually, this is sounding more like Brexit all the time.

The process had gone something like this...

I would become wedded to an idea, and announce it eagerly to BigBear, who wouldn't like it. So I would abandon my idea in a huff, and start planning another idea. Meanwhile, BigBear would give careful thought to my idea, and adapt it to something he liked. By that time I was about three ideas further on, and would dismiss his idea, despite it indubitably bearing a striking resemblance to something that only days before had been the one thing in the world I absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, wanted more than anything else at all. Yes, I am a nightmare to live with. He's a very patient man.

Despite my capricious whims, and BigBear's rather more measured approach, we did eventually converge on a colour scheme we were happy with. And then all we had to do was find the paints that actually satisfied that scheme. And the fabrics for lampshades and cushions. I acquired quite a lot of samples.

 

 

How many shades of grey and pinkish grey are there?

You can probably see where this colour scheme is going now

Before BigBear went away, we painted patches of our final colours on the walls as testers, and waited for daylight to finally be shed upon them.

But... oh dear... the shedding of daylight revealed that I utterly hated one of our chosen colours. Frantic email consultation across the Atlantic revealed that BigBear "trusted my judgement". Brave man. (Though it did lead me to ponder, mostly in jest, to a friend that if BigBear trusted my judgement, couldn't I have just chosen the colour scheme without him all along?)

However, within a day of my change of heart, these arrived...

Calamine and Dimpse it is

And then I got busy with my sewing machine and converted a pillowcase I'd found in John Lewis, with the help of some lengths of linen I'd bought, into two cushions, to go with the ready-made cushion I'd also bought.

Cushion fronts

Cushion backs

The custom-made Etsy lampshades also arrived, and my house is now full of even more boxes and piles of "stuff" until any of this can actually be inserted into the finished room.

My house is even more full of dust than it is full of boxes, as the diligent weekend builders have spent all weekend working furiously and have, amongst many things, completed all the plastering. It was sufficiently riveting that I got a good twenty minutes sat peacefully with a cup of coffee on Sunday morning while this happened:

Plastering as spectator sport. In pyjamas

.

I was going to add a picture of the room as it is now, but given it's only a matter of a couple of days until it's really, actually properly finished, I shall wait for the final denouement.

Bollocks to Brexit

Today I did something I've never done before. I did something that scared and daunted me. I did something that exhausted me and pushed me to my limits of physical and emotional strength.

I, with over a million of my fellow citizens, marched in London to protest against Brexit. And thus I had to explain to my innocent LittleBear what "bollocks" were, and why there were some occasions when it was OK to shout "bollocks to Brexit" in the street, but there were other occasions, such as at school, where the use of the word but would be less acceptable. I confess that I was a little more vague on the meaning of "bugger". And when I say vague, I completely bottled it and claimed I couldn't quite think of a good way of explaining it at the moment.

I think I've explained previously why I think leaving the EU is a bad idea, and how I think the negotiations should have gone (and I bet my suggestions are better than Trump's "advice").  My views have only become stronger since then, and my views of the current government continue to sink, as they alternate between revealing their collective gross ignorance*, arrogance and incompetence, and attempting to blackmail Parliament with "my deal or catastrophe". So instead of a political polemic, I'll tell you about our day.

I had made a double-sided placard at work, with the assistance and blessing of my right-thinking colleagues. When LittleBear had seen said placard, he put in a bid to add his own addendum, so we completed our three-part placard and were out of the house at 8am.

A bonus prize if you can spot which part of the EU is outside the red line

Perfectly designed for a LittleBear to carry

Ready to go.

We were fortunate enough to be able to get places on a coach leaving HomeTown with the local branch of the Liberal Democrats. This meant that we had stress-free travel to the centre of London, and were conveniently deposited at Marble Arch shortly after 10:30**.

Waiting for the LibDem coach

We then convened with other regional LibDem contingents outside the Dorchester Hotel, including those who'd come down by coach from Aberdeen. They'd set off 10 hours before we had. There were a good smattering of wealthy people with strangely plastic faces and large luggage who seemed unimpressed that the hoi polloi were cluttering up the view from their hotel.

However, the crowd was friendly, chatty, welcoming and kind. LittleBear was made friends with by a great many middle-aged women who thought he was both lovely, but also patient and well-behaved. I glowed with pride. And this patience was required. We waited at the Dorchester from 10:45. 11am passed relatively quickly. But then came 11:30. And 12:00. Not to mention 12:30, and indeed 1:00. At shortly after 1:30 we began to take tiny shuffling paces forwards. Our feet were already tired and we hadn't even started.

Hanging with the LibDems

The march was a very good natured affair, with people hanging from scaffolding and cheering, people leaning out of windows and starting chants, a general camaraderie of strangers getting to know each other. The chants were largely inoffensive, being along the lines of "What do we want? A People's Vote! When do we want it? Now!" There seemed a certain lack of charity in standing behind the "Labour for Remain" contingent and chanting "Wher-ere's Jer-e-my Corrrrbyn?" but I think any protest where the worst is a slight dig at a politician is going OK.

On the other hand, once we set off, and LittleBear and I slipped ahead of the LibDems, past Labour, through the Greens and into a more general area of unaffiliated marchers, I was forced to confront the meaning of a wider variety of chants, as mentioned. Fortunately LittleBear didn't read all the placards being waved, or I'd have had a lot more explaining to do. As I had a rucksack, a placard and a small boy to keep hold of, I didn't manage to get shots of many placards, but here are a few that caught my attention, one for its wild incongruity. I'll leave you to spot the odd one out.

After being on our feet for several hours, my LittleBear began to seriously flag, despite my efforts to keep tanking him up with food, so the time came when I had to start carrying him for short spells. I tried piggy-backing and I tried simply carrying. Neither were much fun. My ribs hurt. My back hurts. My hips hurt. He is no longer a LittleBear in quite the way he used to be. Nonetheless, by 4:30 we'd made it to Trafalgar Square. We'd passed the massive sign thanking us for taking part, and we only had half an hour till our coach left from Temple Place. So we didn't continue to Parliament Square. I have minor regrets about that, but it was clear that by that time the crowds were generally reaching Trafalgar Square and then dissipating so we didn't exactly miss anything.

Exhausted, we stumbled down the Strand, and finally found our way to our coach, on the dot of 5pm. The miracle was that we were then home by 7:15 and I managed to get LittleBear bathed, fed him pizza, brushed his teeth, read him a bedtime story and got his light off at 8pm. I may be more proud of that than of marching...

Having been awake since 5:15am worrying about losing my LittleBear in the crowds, I think I may sleep well tonight. Goodnight all.


* A Northern Ireland secretary who admitted, "I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.”; A Brexit secretary who admitted "I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

** Yes, this had meant leaving the house at 8am, earlier than a school day. We managed surprisingly well, considering.

Tumbleweed

I have been sorely neglecting this blog lately. Not intentionally and not through malice. Mostly it's been through tiredness, boredom, and a sense that I don't really have anything worth sharing with the world.

The highlights of my LittleBear's splendidness seem a bit nauseating to write about - I'm the first to grumble about the ubiquity of Facebragging about one's progeny, so I'm reluctant to dedicate an entire blogpost to my LittleBear's parents' evening, or his starring role in a school dance show, or his fascination with maths, or his dedication to his swimming lessons, or his general adorableness and loving behaviour. See? You're sick of it already.

Meanwhile, there haven't been many moments of delightful whimsy to write about, nor any periods of foolishness on my part which I can harness in self-deprecating fashion. There have been moments of Serious Parenting Failure, such as the point when at 3am I threatened LittleBear that if he didn't go back to sleep he wouldn't be taken to the zoo, which (unsurprisingly) then resulted in a sobbing small boy and a guilty-feeling mother at 3:02am. We cuddled, it was fine, we went to the zoo.

Nor has there been any progress on the building site, though we do now have rumours of a date for the windows to arrive, but I'm pretending to myself it isn't real, to avoid being disappointed when something else bizarre and unpredictable occurs to prevent the windows from arriving.

Work has been so deeply tedious, it's not even worth ranting about.

After a cardboard box was inadvertently left blocking the cat flap, IdiotCat obligingly relieved himself in the building site, and not in the living room. Which is probably good, but still involved having to clear up cat poo. Again.

I've become ensnared in attempting to help run LittleBear's football team, and am now in possession of the glorified title of "Assistant Coach", though in truth it's more "General Dogsbody Who Promises to Attend Every Training Session For Safeguarding Purposes." The downside of this position is that I'm now perceived to Know Stuff, which is sadly untrue, though I'm doing my best.

Much of my time over the past couple of weeks has been pre-occupied with fret-inducing health concerns, the details of which are mostly irrelevant. The short version is that my left eye has suffered a Posterior Vitreous Detachment*, and I have a blurry blob of dense vitreous lurking and obscuring my vision a lot of the time. My choices appear to be "live with it" or "have serious and risky surgery". I think we all can all guess which choice I'll go with. And apparently my brain should adapt and ignore the blurry blob over time. I'm still waiting for an appointment with the consultant ophthalmologist though, and can probably look forward to the same thing happening in the other eye. Though the other eye is exhibiting what may be an early sign of glaucoma - the neuroretinal rim is thinning. I'm caught between feeling, "meh, GrannyBear has glaucoma and it's perfectly manageable, plus my retina is fine, so I've got away with the PVD" and thinking, "Aaggghhhh, I'm going to go blind, this is terrifying." Mostly, the second one only happens in the middle of the night. Because, basically the first one's completely true.

So that's me.

Maybe something entertaining will happen soon, and I'll write about it.


* For those who haven't spent a lot of time reading about PVD, this is where the vitreous in the eye (the gloopy gel your eye is made of) detaches from the retina. It can lead to retinal damage, though hasn't done in my eye at the moment.

A tale of bravery

Once upon a time there was a very brave LittleBear.

This LittleBear had a very stubborn little tooth. The little tooth had become old and tired, and had suffered a grievous injury many years before, that had left it sad and brown. The LittleBear's body didn't really know that the sad, brown tooth was there, and so had ignored it. Instead of absorbing all the goodness from the roots of the little tooth, the LittleBear's body just left it be. The LittleBear's body grew a lovely, strong, big, new tooth, which grew and grew as far as it could. But the lovely, strong, big, new tooth crashed into the little old tooth until neither of them could move any more. The LittleBear didn't know what to do. His body was stuck with both the teeth, and he knew that it was time to say goodbye to the little old tooth, but he didn't know how.

The LittleBear's Mummy knew a very special lady who could help. She was an expert in helping teeth to behave themselves, and it was certain that she would know how to help the little old tooth.

So the LittleBear and his Mummy went to visit the special tooth lady, and she offered to help the LittleBear to wiggle the little old tooth out, but the LittleBear was scared of being hurt and he wouldn't let her. He promised to spend three weeks trying to wiggle his poor old tooth out on his own, and to come back to see the special tooth lady if he couldn't.

The LittleBear tried and tried and tried. He wiggled his little old tooth backwards and forwards. He wiggled it to the left, and he wiggled it to the right. He even tried twisting it round, but it was a stubbord little old tooth and it wouldn't let go.

Back to the special tooth lady went the LittleBear and his Mummy. And the LittleBear was big and brave and he let the tooth lady put a strange, minty gel on his gums, but it made his tongue feel funny, and he didn't like it. Then the special tooth lady, ever so carefully, made a tiny pin-prick against the LittleBear's gum, to make the stubborn little tooth go to sleep. But the LittleBear didn't like it, and he flinched, and the little pin-prick scratched the LittleBear, and he really, really didn't like it.

The LittleBear's mouth started to bleed and he cried and cried and cried. His Mummy tried to soothe him, and the special tooth lady promised that if he could just try and stay still she could carry on without any more pain. But he didn't believe her, and he didn't believe his Mummy. All he believed was the pain, and the blood. And soon he was a red and blotchy LittleBear, and the tears were dribbling into his ears as he lay on the tooth lady's funny lying-down-chair.

But the LittleBear tried ever so very hard, and he breathed in with his Mummy, and he breathed out with his Mummy, and he sat up and was cuddled and dried his tears. And then he said, "I'll try and stay still, and you can have one more go."

And even though he was shaking and sweaty and scared, the LittleBear held his Mummy's hands tight, and he lay ever so very still, and the tooth lady made the tiniest of pin-pricks and suddenly the LittleBear couldn't feel his sad old tooth any more, and there wasn't any pain any more. And almost before he knew what had happened there was his poor little old tooth, lying in the palm of the tooth lady's hand.

The special tooth lady was very proud of the LittleBear, and told him that he was the first LittleBear that she'd ever known who had been so sad and so scared but had let her carry on anyway, and that he was the bravest LittleBear she'd met.

And his Mummy was very proud of him too, and she and the LittleBear had ever so very many cuddles for the rest of the afternoon, because he was the bravest LittleBear she knew too.

Hamster wheels again

I set off thinking about writing about the eternal hamster wheel that I inhabit in my mind, repetitive thoughts and arguments cycling round and round and round. Never ending, never concluding, never progressing, only an infinite loop of the same conversations where I supply both halves and somehow still lose the argument.

And then I looked back through old posts and discovered I have use the phrase "hamster wheel" to describe my endless, sleep-destroying, anxiety-inducing thoughts on at least four other occasions. So not only are my thoughts trapped in perpetual loops, returning to the same point with monotonous regularity, but so are my similes. I can't even manage to be original in my repetitiveness.

So what is it that my poor brain is doing to me?

It's still banging on about the windows.

Not the fact that the windows crashed (doesn't Windows always crash?)

Not even the fact that the window company someone managed to cancel the order to make the replacement windows without telling anyone.

No.

I'm still pointlessly fretting about the change in size of the windows.

I read and re-read emails where there is no hint that the specification is subject to change; emails where there is no suggestion of an apology or acknowledgement that anyone other than me is at fault.

I stare at the "finished" wall into which the bifold doors will be installed. I see all the spare wall that could be busy being window if it hadn't been turned into wall.

I study the diagrams I drew for the builders, and the 50 point text showing a 4000mm opening for bifold doors.

And I still cannot fathom why they changed the size of the doors when there is demonstrably space for the doors to be the size I specified.

I still cannot fathom why they would think it was OK to change the size of the doors without confirming it in writing with me first.

I still cannot fathom why they would ignore seven emails asking about the change in size, and then tell me it was what I wanted.

And so I have endless conversations in my head in which I point out that the builders are either unprofessional, incompetent or untruthful*. I explain why in nauseating detail, determined to demonstrate the rightness of my way of seeing things**.

I don't even know what response I would like in my head when I'm the one providing both sides of the conversation, let alone if I had the guts to actually try and express any of these thoughts and feelings out loud. Which I'm too much of a confrontation-averse munchkin to ever think about. Would an apology suffice? I don't know. Would I feel better if they simply said, "you're right, we screwed up, the bifolds should have been bigger?" What is it that I want?***

The true absurdity is that we're going to have massive bifold doors, through which sunlight will stream in all its unfettered glory. An extra thirty centimetres is unlikely to make one iota of difference.

So why can't my mind let go?

Why can't it shut up?

Why can't I be more like BigBear, with his phlegmatic shrug?

Is it because it feels like unfinished business? Is it because it is, literally, unfinished? Is it because after nearly four months living in a building site, I'm simply so stressed that there has to be a release valve for the stress, and my mind has latched onto the only thing that's demonstrably wrong on site and is venting through that?

One day I will go to bed without lying awake thinking about window sizes and the permutations of events that could lead to them being anything other than 4m. One day I will drive to work without explaining out loud, to nobody, what the problem with 3.7m windows is. One day I will sit in my new room, gazing through my new bifold doors and I won't care any more. One day.


* All, undoubtedly, massive over-reactions.

** This effect is not dissimilar to a situation identified by the cartoon xkcd, in which someone on the internet is wrong.

*** What I actually want is for someone to wave a magic wand and make both the hole and the windows that are on order 4m wide, as requested. This is clearly not going to happen, but I find magical thinking so helpful when trying to find practical solutions to my mental contortions.