Silence Descends
The younger children are in bed already, put to sleep by watching the England team play their opening game in the World Cup. They had such high hopes, but completely lost interest by half time. Of course England scraped a win, but within a week or two the entire team will probably be splashed across the tabloid newspapers, labeled turnips, or something similar. The manager will be fired. Again.
Nobody ever seems to want to admit that the “system” in the UK is massively flawed. All of our children have played football for town teams at one point or another, and it’s always been a bit of a mystery. The fees to take part in football are much higher than rugby, and yet you never see any benefit from them – the Football Association takes a huge cut, and the rest vanishes into a black hole inside the local football club – I suspect the same story is repeated in many towns around the country.
Don’t even get me started about the poisonous attitude of many of the kids that play football – I’ve heard some dreadful language hurled between team-mates while walking away after losing. It never happens on the rugby field. Then again, there are no heroes on a rugby field either – the team work together, win together, and lose together. I’m so glad we continued to let our kids play both football and rugby – so they could make their own mind up about which they enjoy more – football is coming out of it very badly indeed.
Anyway. Silence.
I haven’t sat in the quiet on an evening and emptied my head in quite some time. My other half is at a planning meeting for the summer camp she helps run in town, and our eldest is watching a steady diet of YouTube while supposedly working hard on a board that will get her a place on a college course next year.
I’m almost tempted to – shock, horror – read a book! I started reading “Sleeping Giants” while in Germany a few weeks ago, and will be returning next week. I used to read so much more than I do these days. I think the most prolific period was while commuting back and forth from London about ten years ago (has it really been ten years? it seems like yesterday!). I need to get back into reading – our bookshelves are full of books bought and read in the years before children – since then our evenings and weekends have turned into endless rounds of attending sporting fixtures, or late nights collapsed on the sofa watching rubbish movies and TV shows. Maybe I can do something about it. I stopped drinking coffee. Maybe I can stop watching TV too.
Of course if I stopped watching TV, I would invariably spend even more time messing around on the computer late at night. Because I’m sensible like that.