7276/19796
I managed to get to my first Park Run for ages. Only to find out that the Park Run wasn’t happening - I am guessing because of bonfire night, though not quite sure why that stops people running in the morning. I ran the two laps of the course on my own, rather more slowly that I would have done with the two hundred nerdy pace makers. It’s no fun if you don’t get to stand at the start line as a man does an unnecessarily over the top and show offy warm up right in front of you.
I then took my daughter to her first match as a member of the village U8s football team. Adrian Chiles told me yesterday that a new rule had come into force where spectators were only allowed to applaud and not shout anything. Which seems ludicrously unenforceable. The applause of a couple of dozen gloved hands will not reach the players. No one mentioned it today (until afterwards) and I, like a normal person, used my voice to offer encouragement and call the teenage referee a blind wanker.
As it was only 5 a side and there were 8 players available, Phoebe only played for half the match and she’s still pretty new to the game, but she’s keen to play and proud to be the only girl on the team. She’s got some pace and she’s bigger than a lot of her team mates and I have a feeling she’s going to get pretty good. Our team quickly went 3-0 down and the other team had a cocky star striker who strutted around after every goal. And I’m supposed to not shout out and call him a prick?
Charmingly, when we were 5-0 down, the rules allowed us to bring on an extra player (but only as long as there was a five goal difference). In the second half things began to turn and Phoebe had a shot and then set up our first goal. In the end it was an exciting 6-4 loss, but both sides cheered each other and no one cried and Phoebe seemed very happy about her contribution.
We went to bonfire night at the local pub, in the drizzle and the little ones wondered whether the figure being licked by flames on the bonfire was a real person or not. As always this occasion brings up memories of previous November 5ths (not least of all the first one - apparently the gunpowder would have taken out everything in a 1km radius so would have killed a lot more than all the country’s top nobility) and I suddenly had a hankering for homemade toffee and thought of the Cheddar First School field and Catherine wheels and going to look for dead fireworks in the morning and of the year my mum told me she had to go into hospital and I cried because it would affect bonfire night. Also of the bonfire nights that Catie and me went to in West London before we had kids and the first time we took Phoebe to one and had to leave immediately because she found the fireworks too scary (she still doesn’t like them). Of last year in the pub and also I thought of next year in the pub. How (hopefully) somewhere in the future me and my slightly older family will be here again. It was nice of Guy Fawkes to lay all this on for us and create these memories. Somehow bonfire night is more vivid for me than Christmas. I mainly wish I’d made a tray of toffee.
