How Not To See Your First Football Match

Gilby is a football fiend.

He can't walk past anything that doesn't have foundations without kicking it to try and score. His first love is Arsenal. He has the kit; he has the pyjamas; he has the Arsenal football.

His sixth birthday was a football party - complete with full size pitch and coach.

He has begun playing for a local club, and his school coaching is done by the Albion in the Community team from Brighton and Hove Albion football club.

But he had, until last weekend, never been to a 'real' game.  (Sorry, Hearth-Father, Sunday morning veterans doesn't count...)

At the final cricket game of the season (a tense few weekends when the cricket and football seasons overlap) I happened to mention that I was trying to get tickets for a local game.

'Why don't you and Gilby come and enjoy the hospitality of my private box for the next Brighton and Hove Albion home game?' offered the president of the cricket club.  Now, there's an offer you can't refuse.

So, off we went - for my first visit to the magnificent AMEX Stadium (saw a few games at the Withdean, but it's been a while), and Gilby's first Championship game.

Now - there were a few rules. It's smart in them there private boxes, so no team shirts and no trainers.  And we had to arrive two and a half hours early in order to enjoy the three course meal...

We were presented with a complimentary programme on arrival.  Waitresses brought drinks directly to us,  and the view from the table was magnificent.

What's more, Brighton's Hemed scored in the opening five minutes after a shot by Dale Stephens was blocked just before. For the first fifteen minutes Brighton dominated and it was all very exciting.  Bobby Zamora came on right at the end for his first appearance at home for his old club in twelve years. The crowd were suitably appreciative, and Gilby was well aware of Zamora as a player from his premiership days. Brighton won 1-0, and whilst the rest of the game didn't quite live up to the pace and promise of the start, the sun shone and it was a fantastic afternoon.

For Brighton it was always going to be a special day - tinged with sadness as the club paid tribute to two of their own lost in the Shoreham air disaster three weeks before.

It was moving and fitting - both solemn and celebratory.

And the Brighton win meant that the club were four points clear at the top of the table. And what did Gilby do at the final whistle? Phone his father, breathless with excitement, to proclaim that, 'We won!'. What happened to my little gooner?

For one six year old boy, a truly unforgettable day. (Even if he did think the mascot looked more like a duck than a seagull.)

And he's in for a shock the next time he goes to game and has to make do with a seat in the stand and a pie...


Currently reading: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman.

2013: The Highs, the Lows

Happy new year to all my friends and family, readers and fellow bloggers; and during this time of reflection and resolution, a very quick, if self-indulgent, look back at 2013.


For the family, the biggest moment was Eddie finally taking his first steps back at the end of July. Looking at him running round after his siblings now you'd never guess it had been in any doubt. It quite brought a tear to his mother's eye. In September Gilby started school and has shone ever since. How cute did he look in his little school uniform, just a month after his fourth birthday? It...brought a tear to his mother's eye. After one term he can read and write and loves it. And Gertie becoming the Under-5 Celtic National Irish Dancing Champion in November brought, yes, a little tear or two to her mother's eye. A month later she had the lead in the school play. A star all round.


2013 was the year that I turned 40 and I had the most fantastic weekend for this milestone birthday as well as taking a long-held dream trip to Venice (just my husband and I, no kids!) to celebrate later in the year.


I think I have to count diving into the pool in Cabrieres for the first time at the start of our summer holiday as one of my top moments, and arriving at Harburn House in Scotland for Christmas as another. We can't travel the world in the same way as I once did, but clearly those little short trips and family holidays are just as special and important. Learning to ballroom dance is up there too, though we won't be troubling Strictly any time soon. We celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary very happily; where did those years go?


2013 had some professional highs: passing what I thought was my penultimate MA module last January with a merit, being accepted to present a seminar at the NATE conference in June, beginning a National Writing Project Group in Sussex in July, gaining an OFSTED outstanding at school in November. (I know that last one shouldn't count, but it does!)


There were some writing successes: Completing NanoWriMo with a 50,000 word draft of On Sudden Ground was a major achievement and now just that lengthy revision and editing process to go before securing that lucrative publishing deal in 2014. (When I will, also, finally complete my MA.) I won and was placed in a number of different short story competitions through the year; more writing to come in 2014, beginning with an educational article to be published in January.


The lows were thankfully few and far between. We lost my uncle last January. He was relatively young but it wasn't unexpected. Still very sad, though, especially for my mother. The beginning of March was plagued with illness, and I didn't enjoy going to work with an eye-patch during a severe eye-infection. On the upside, Gilby thought it was quite cool. Discovering that my final MA module wasn't was a bit of a bore (20,000 words still to go), and finding another 'suspicious' breast lump was more than a little scary, though thankfully now all fine once more. Being able to count those 'down' things on one hand reminds me of how very much I have to be grateful for.


It remains the family, of course, that is most important. We begin 2014 with a family day out and lunch with some dear friends, and that is the way that I mean to carry on.


Currently Reading: 72 Virgins by Boris Johnson. Not entirely sure why.

A Bird in the Hand...

This morning it was my turn to walk the dog. (I say 'turn', which suggests that we alternate in an equal sharing of responsibility. In practice it usually works in a weekly ratio of about 1:6, so more often than not, it is my 'turn'. Never mind, I like it.)

Since we are 'not far from the madding crowd', I feel a quotation from Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd is apt to illustrate this story. It describes Fanny Robin trying to fling a lump of snow at the correct window of the barracks to catch the attention of her lover, Sergeant Troy:

'...a morsel of snow flew across the river towards the fifth window. It smacked against the wall at a point several yards from its mark. The throw was the idea of a man conjoined with the execution of a woman. No man who had ever seen bird, rabbit, or squirrel in his childhood, could possibly have thrown with such utter imbecility as was shown here.'

Far from accusing dear Thomas Hardy of blatant sexism, I am, on this occasion, forced to agree with him in relation to the quality of my own throwing ability. A fact which has not gone unnoticed (or indeed uncommented on) by my cricket-playing husband. So, for Christmas last year, said husband bought me a strange apparatus known as a 'ballflinger' which, with the aid of a flexible plastic arm enables the user to perform a throw, the resulting arc and distance of which James Anderson would be proud. This is very useful for tiring out a big dog on short walks.

This morning I employed the ball-flinger and several retrievals of the ball were made by our retriever. She is always very good at finding the ball, but occasionally reluctant to relinquish it. I have to coax it from her, or drag it forcibly from her mouth. But it was about the fourth go that I got a little more than I bargained for. She took a little while longer than usual to locate the ball, but then came bounding back with her usual enthusiasm. The tail wag and playful pounce alerted me to the fact that she was unlikely to let the ball go easily, so I reached down ready for slimy tennis ball....and got a handful of...dead bird. Definitely not worth two in the bush, I can tell you.

Thanks, Kempy.

The Trials of Chicken-Keeping

We lost two of our chickens on Saturday, waking up in the morning to a vortex of dark feathers blowing around the garden: a sure sign that we had been visited by Mr Fox. Thankfully the evidence was nothing more grisly.

The children were delighted to see so many feathers (Gilby the naturalist has amassed a not-insignificant collection of feathers over his two-and-a-half-years on this earth). I didn't have the heart to explain why they were there, and have yet to make reference to the untimely demise of Gwinny and Nimue, a pair of black cochins who have been laying for about six months. They are survived by Cecily (a pretty Partridge Wyandotte bantam) who doesn't seem in the least bit bothered and is delighted to rule the roost once again.

We generally, though not exclusively, have 'Arthurian' named pets. Vivien (a Rhode Island Red stray rescued by Daddy) and Isolde (another Partridge Wyandotte), met a more dignified end last summer, dying 'peacefully' within a few days of each other.

This was in stark contrast to our first pair: Gertie (a Buff Orpington bantam) and Guinevere (our first Wyandotte). Guinevere came to a very sorry end when she was pecked to death by her 'friend' after just a few days. That was our not-so-happy introduction to smallholding, and a reminder of nature's cruelty. We took Guinevere back from whence she came (to a poultry farmer a few villages away) and swapped her for a pair of Wyandottes. One of whom is the still-surviving Cecily, but the other didn't make it through the first night, as 'something' (a stoat?) tunnelled beneath their little run and got her. We nearly didn't carry on after that.

But I do love the hens running round the garden and the eggs, of course, so we reinforced the run with concrete and chicken-wire beneath, and tried again. The black cochins were the best layers, but they unfortunately insisted on roosting in the trees above the henhouse rather than returning to the henhouse itself of an evening. There seemed to be nothing we could do about it, but we've learned our unhappy lesson and will ensure that any future birds are better trained.

RIP: Gwinny and Nimue

No birthday cake

I am very grateful to Josie at Sleep is for the Weak for providing the inspiration for this post on loss. This is my first attempt at the Writing Workshop, so here goes:


Can you feel loss for someone you have never known?

November 3rd was her birthday, so an observer from the windmill late in the afternoon would have seen in outline against the lonely horizon this: a woman struggling in the wind and rain with a trug of planted flowers over her left arm and a bouquet of flowers in that same hand; a heavier load weighing down the other. In fact, a car seat, containing a 15 week old baby boy. Behind, a tired little girl, running every few steps to keep apace.

The watcher would have witnessed the strange convoy heading along the flagstone path past the church and then turning right onto the grass and across a line of graves.

What that spectator could not guess is that none of the party have ever met the woman at whose grave they now lay flowers.

For that woman is my mother-in-law, who died 5 years before I met her son, and 11 years before we married. A woman who never got to know of even the possibility of the existence of her two, beautiful grandchildren.

Rosemary - for remembrance - is in the bouquet. An irony, since none of us remember. And the flowers are all pink, for this small thing I know about her: she loved pink.

And Gertie, who has not even begun to formulate a concept of mortality, and knows that we are leaving flowers because it is a birthday, asks,
"Why doesn't Grandma Janey have birthday cake, mummy?"

And I can't explain, but feel an inexplicable loss. For this woman that I never knew, whose son I know so intimately: a mother who never got to see her own children grown and married and happy. And I look at her grandchildren and hope that I will be granted this grace.