If this were an 8 day week then today would be Newday and I would have an extra day in my week off work. As it stands I only have today and tomorrow left and I've only achieved half of what I had planned to do. So what have I managed to do? Get a haircut, finish my book and visit Soccer School.
Soccer School is a truly awful place.
Two Astroturf pitches in a huge cold warehouse filled with dirty
smelly boys of varying ages and lots of
shouting. After my grandsons first day I thought he would be reluctant to spend
another day in this hellhole doing nothing but kicking a ball about. I picked
him up on his first day and was ridiculously early so rather than wait in the
car I foolishly thought I would go inside the building and watch. The building
was huge, cold and ugly. Behind wire grills I could see scores of boys and
struggled to see my tiny grandson among the bigger boys dressed in a variety of
team colours. I finally managed to spot my grandson in his Barcelona kit. I had never seen him look so dirty. Even his Sunday morning games in
muddy fields don't make him look as if he has just finished a shift down a
coalmine. In the car on the way home he was tired, hungry and grouchy and
absolutely itching to get back to the school the next day. By the third day he
was asking his mum if he could attend soccer school fulltime instead of going
back to his mainstream school. 'I thought you loved your school.' his mum said.
'I did but it is getting so boring. All they go on about is phonics and we all know them.'
While I was watching two boys got into an argument and blows
were exchanged. The trainers spoke to them about their behaviour and put them
in 'time out'. The two boys sat together watching the others continuing to play
and they were totally focused on the game. They sat quietly together, clearing
itching to get back into the action, and when they were allowed to play again
they stood up, shook hands, and joined in without another bad word between
them. I spoke to one of the trainers afterwards and asked him about how they
manage behaviour with a large group of boys aging from 6 - 11, most of who do
not know each other and who play for, or support, rivalling teams. He told me
that any bad behaviour is dealt with on day one and subsequently they rarely
have any problems. 'The love of the game and the joy they feel playing
overrides any frustrations they may have to begin with' he said. 'Even rivalry
is forgotten when they start to appreciate each other’s skill'.
Pity this feeling doesn't happen around phonics.
Daytime TV makes me glad I am in full time employment although
I did watch a couple of films. I rarely watch films these days and both these
films were pretty awful although they did have good story lines. One, made for
TV film, had the interesting storyline and a good twist so despite the poor
acting, and the gaps in the story, I didn’t feel I’d totally wasted a couple of hours
of my life but the other one, despite having a good story line and a great
opening line, was a huge disappointment.
A classic film noir, D.O.A failed to live up to my (pretty low)
expectations. A murder victim has a
matter of hours, days (maybe two weeks, no one could say for sure) to find his
killer before the poison administered by the murderer kills him. He spends the
rest of the film rushing around which worried me as I assumed this would ‘pump’
the poison around his body quicker reducing the time he had in which to find his
poisoner. In addition to finding his murderer
the film shows his slow realisation that he really does love his devoted and
loyal secretary and he has been a bit of a prick to her in the past. I was quite pleased when he died in the final
scene as he wasn’t a character you could warm to and the secretary, whilst now
unfortunately out of a job, could do much better in the love stakes.
Talking of jobs I have the task, today or tomorrow, of applying
for a new job. Filling in application
forms can take a couple of hours and because of this I have been putting it off
and watching crap films instead. Or writing crap blogs. Kidding myself that I work better when working towards a dealine. The poison of 'lost opportunity' is enough to spur me on. Enough procrastination.
Carpe Diem.
