Half an Hour
Half an hour. That's how much of Sunday is my own, so I'm spending it emptying my head into the keyboard once again. There are probably more productive things I could be doing, but then all you might find of me on the internet is an occasional photo on Instagram, rather than this swathe of forgettable nonsense.
The day began (for me) at 7am, when the alarm should have gone off. I squinted at my wristwatch and figured we could at least stay in bed until 8am, and drifted back off to sleep. The alarm then went off at 8am. Strange. I rolled over and was busy telling it to shut up when I noticed the radio alarm clock, and the phone both said 7am. Ah crapthe clocks went back. It really was 7am.
Oh well. After another half an hour daydreaming about anything and everything, I scraped myself out of bed and wandered downstairsfinding the younger children knee deep in some forgettable Sunday morning cartoon marathon.
Skip forwards another half an hour, and we had all got dressed, had something to eat, and were on our way out of the house to catch the bus. After departing at the destination bus station, I sprung a surprise on the kids.“Why don't we walk to the rugby ground? It will save money, and mean we don't have to sit and wait for the next bus.”“Ok”I couldn't believe my ears. Of course they had no clue that we had a two and half mile walk ahead of us, but if I didn't tell them, they might not even think about it. That plan lasted about ten minutes, and the first “how much further is it?“The walk to the rugby ground took 40 minutes. We arrived as a few of the other ladies team members arrived, and something about a woman playing for the senior team caught my eye. You know how you see somebody from behind, and you see an old friend? I'm not sure if it was the shape of her build, or the fall of her hair, or the way she walkedbut she was the absolute double of somebody I used to be very close to. In the end I had to consciously look awayaware that I was staring at hermy poor brain dredging through all manner of memories.
We dropped Miss 11 with the rest of the team, leaving me with Miss 10 to entertain for the next hour and a half. I spent than hour and a half watching her dingbat acrobatics around the various activities, and got roped into “having a go” at a few of them. One particular piece of apparatus seemed designed to wrench shoulders from sockets while trying to swish your feet from side to side in a graceful manner (or in my case, the last dreath throws of a spider dunked in disinfectant). Miss 10 thought my exploits were particularly entertaining.
You know when kids laugh at you, but you're actually trying? Yeahthat.
When rugby ended I wandered over to Miss 11, while trying not to glance at the mystery woman. She was caked in mud, which we carefully covered with her tracksuit before starting out on the long walk back. Promises of snacks and drinks from the shops en-route seemed to erase any concept of it being a long journey, so I got away with it again.
You might think, after a day spend marching across town, playing ruby, and being tumbled, squashed, and twisted by playground apparatus that the kids would be crashed out on the sofa now, wouldn't you. Not a bit of it. When we got home they spotted some of their friends on the green out side the house, so dumped everything, grabbed a football, and ran flat-out to meet them.
As I started filling the sink to clear the pile of washing up that had magically gathered during our absence, I wished I had the energy of a ten year old again.