7335/19855
Football practice returned for 2023 and it was a blustery dark evening, with spitting rain being whipped around the field. It wasn’t too cold but it was a miserable hour. One kid hated it, the other loved it. I found it rather irksome. Ernie was the one who had a bad time in the rain - not many kids had turned up and he was playing with a couple of kids he didn’t know and there were some tears. Phoebe, on the other hand, had gleefully accepted the challenge laid down by the coach to end up muddier than her brother and didn’t care about it being we or dirty. For the final exercise she was in goal and flung herself round like a cat that can play football and saved more than she missed. She was phenomenal and wanted to carry on playing at the end when her dad and brother were whining about it being time to get home. We hadn’t been swimming beforehand today and that probably escalated her energy levels. She now wants to be a goalkeeper, partly because she loved how angry Jordan Pickford got with his defenders when the other team nearly scored. But it has to be said that if she loves playing football in these conditions then she might well be a sportsperson.
Ernie, like his dad, was not so keen on any of this.
We got home and had to strip off muddy and wet clothes in a pile and the kids got in the bath. It was an exhilarating hour or so and am delighted that my daughter is so badass and sympathetic that my son finds such conditions challenging, because I felt like crying to. I should have done. No one would have been able to tell in the swirling rain.
I had had a pretty relaxing day. My only real job at the moment is to book RHLSTP and I nailed down one guest for the first show (check your secret areas Badgers and Plussers). There were children to look after (they’ll be back at school in two days!) but they were on a play date in the afternoon so I watched “The Eagle Has Landed” on iPlayer. It’s a film I’ve always loved, but I haven’t seen it for a good while. It stands up pretty well. I wasn’t convinced by the speed in which Jenny Agutter fell for Donald Sutherland, but could understand the speed with which he fell for her. I thought the script did a decent enough job of explaining the ludicrous decision for the Germans to wear their uniforms underneath their fake Polish ones, but they were asking for trouble with that one. I could have warned them. But then I’d seen the film before. It’s a clever bit of film making as even though they’re on a mission to kidnap/kill Churchill you’re sort of hoping the Germans will be successful. They’re nice Germans, who don’t like the Holocaust, but even so. It’s no Muppet Christmas Carol, but Michael Caine is still excellent and it’s still satisfying to see Larry Hagman get killed (even though he’s on our side) and the German soldiers making a largely needless sacrifice in order for Caine to get away to try to complete his mission. I’d contend they could have holed up in the church without fighting for longer than they did by their suicide mission and those fine young soldiers could then have surrendered and survived. But if they’d just worn their disguise properly then they’d have succeeded anyway and Hitler could have won the war. No point in going over could have beens.
It was a slighter film than I had remembered and the Nazis were on English soil for much less time than I had remembered. But if you’re ever on Pointless and asked to name a cast member, Jeff Conaway from Grease and Taxi is in this, but it’s probably too obscure a film to choose as no one under fifty will remember it. So most of the cast will do the job for you. Treat Williams any one?
Anyway, it’s well worth watching. It’s gripping and fun and not just all action - I sort of enjoyed the long build up to the actual operation as much as the bits that I remember where they’re shooting up a church and saving kids from water wheels.
