B is for Ball Games

I have never been any good at ball games. As a child, I simply didn't see the point of a ball. If you couldn't stroke it, eat it, read it, ride it or climb it, it was of no interest to me.

The other problem was that my brain interpreted a ball coming towards me as a missile. Not friend, but foe. Run or duck, it told me, but do NOT go near it. This fear was hard to overcome.

And then there was the sheer discomfort. Freezing days on the hockey pitch, my (then unprotected) shins an easy target for that wickedly hard ball, Miss Brown, in her cosy royal blue track suit, yelling at me from the sidelines, my thighs purple with the cold. And all this followed by the humiliation of being the only flat-chested girl in the communal showers afterwards. Tennis was almost as bad, if warmer and less dangerous, and as for rounders, I don't think I once managed to hit that tiny ball with that silly little stick.

So, in my teens, I was relegated, with two equally incompetent friends, to the far end of the playing fields, to throw the discus. Of what possible use that was ever to be in future life I have no idea. Health and safety would have had a ball (ha) as we could easily have killed each other (accidentally, of course; we were best friends). In the event, we lay in the grass and talked about boys and made daisy chains. We made a lot of daisy chains. No-one ever came to see how we were doing.

But at least I have never been asked to play the Mayan Ball Game. Apparently, the winners are heaped with accolades, but the miserable losers are put to death.

Perhaps I should have counted this small blessing, and tried harder at the discus.

G is for Games

I am very, very bad at all sport. If I see a ball coming towards me, there's a(probably primitive) part of my brain that says "missile! duck!" and that's what I more or less do.

Of course, with a vicious game like hockey, when a blow on the ankle is something to be reckoned with, this is actually quite sensible. Not duck, exactly, but at the very least, run away. But if you want to succeed at sport, you must go for the ball, embrace the opportunity, love it, even; and hit it/catch it/kick it.

At my school, if you were bad at sport, that was it. No-one bothered to help you to improve. You were a failure; a person of no value; and (worst of all) that common humilation for the school child: Last To Be Picked for a Team.

In the end (and I now I've referred to this before), I was relegated to the corner of a large sports field, together with two equally useless friends, where we were equipped with a javelin and a discus and told to get on with it. Can you imagine? Three giggly teenagers, armed with potentially lethal weapons, left on our own to "practise". Oh, Health and Safety, where were you when I really needed you?

Safety issues apart, to this day, I cannot see what possible use the ability to throw a discus can be in the life of a young - or, come to that, any - woman. Certainly, I have never found it to be useful. In any case, I was as hopless at discus-throwing as I was at any other sport. So the three of us (mercifully, we were close friends) lay in the grass and made daisy chains and gossiped about boys.

My small grandson (and he is very small for his age) asked me the other day to guess what he worried about when he couldn't get to sleep at night.

"I don't know," I said. "Tell me."

"Rugby," said poor Max, who is regularly battered on the rugby field.

Oh, poor Max. I think that in that respect at least, you take after your grandmother.

Winners and losers

While I am (still) delighted for Phoebe's triumph (see below), I am a bit against the whole voting-for-form-captain thing. I am all for winners and losers. After all, that's what a lot of life is about (and as writers, don't we know it!), and kids need to get used to it. I think the new custom of having neither winners nor losers at school sports days is ridiculous. Kids aren't stupid. They know when they can't run fast, jump high, or whatever. I was so bad at all sport at school that I was dispatched to a far corner of the sports field with two similarly untalented friends to - wait for this - throw the discus. How useful is that? (And what would Health and Safety say about three clumsy schoolgirls mucking about unsupervised with a potentially lethal weapon?) But I survived (pysically and emotionally), and learnt to make lovely daisy chains.

But form captains are different. If your fellows are voting, then it's a measure of how popular you are, and this matters far more to a child than the ability to leap over a pole. I remember with dread those Christmas post boxes we had in our classrooms - my grandchildren still have them - into which children posted cards to each other. I didn't care a hoot who had sent me a card; it was how many cards I received. They were like votes; a measure of poularity. One small grandson received just one card one year. I think he will remember that far longer than the fact that he wasn't picked for a team.

So while Phoebe deserves her success - she is a kind child; she notices when people are upset; she is sociable and chatty and fun - I can't help thinking of the child who longs to be form captain but who will never - perhaps merely through shyness - get that little badge to wear.