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Phoebe and me went up to the rec to play a bit of football before lunch. We're still just at the point where I have to hold back a bit to let her win, but we're not far from the Tipping Point now and she already has the advantage of making me run around for 15 minutes and waiting until I collapse and die so she can score as many goals as she likes. Also I can pretend to myself that my worst mistakes are me being kind, rather than me being shit.
The stone field is by the rec and I saw an odd object about ten metres from the edge and wasn't able to work out what it was. A big stone, a large chunk of metal that had fallen off a combined harvester, an unearthed medieval treasure chest. I had to go and check it out, but it turned out to be something that it really did not look like from a distance: a fairly colourful crushed up football. It had probably got kicked into the thick crops and then had been chewed up and spat out by the harvester. I cleared it anyway, but was sad it wasn't treasure. Or even better a big stone.
We went to play in the playground. I thought Phoebe might have outgrown this, but she asked if we could go there. It was just me and her so no one would see and we had fun on the big swing with the circular base that you can lie on. I remembered pushing her on the swing round the corner from our house in Shepherd's Bush when she was under one year old. She's hurtling towards ten now and no longer trying to catch the clouds.
At lunch we discussed how we'd have to have a bit party for her tenth as it's such a significant age, but she said that we'd also have to do something special for 11 because that's her first repeated digit birthday and I said we'd have to do something special for 12 as it's her last year as non-teenage and then 13 because it's her first year as a teenager. So it's all special birthdays and all moving too fast. I don't think she'll ask me to push her on the swings too many more times.
We had proper meal times at the table, which is the exception rather than the rule as it was when I was a kid. Both kids were full of cheekiness and jokes, sometimes pushing their "burns" a little far. But Ernie is just like his dad and once chastised doubled down in the hope he could get out of things by being ruder. I recognise this so hard, not just from my career, but from being 6 years old.
He has my sympathies. I have to help him through this curse I have given him. I have never had a greater incentive to live for the next 12 years (at least). I put him in this mess, I've got to help him out. The world doesn't need another one of me.
