She shoots…She scores

Tilly is quite sporty.

She does not get this from me.  I consider I have had a workout when I have to walk up and down stairs more than twice a day.  I detest sport, and would rather stick red hot needles in my eyes than take part in any form of exercise.  I consider lifting heavy books to be an imposition.  That is all.

My ex, UE is not sporty either.  He tells me that when he was young he used to do rock climbing.  I think he must have been very young indeed, for in all the years I have known him I have never known him indulge willingly in sporting activities.  I believe he does go to the gym now.  My feelings around this border on the cynical and involve the words ‘potential girl friends’ and ‘mid life crisis.’  I may be being unkind.

I doubt it.

So. I am not entirely sure where Tilly’s sporting propensities come from.  It is possible that she is a throw back to my maternal grandmother who was a keen hockey player at school, and such a good swimmer that she trialled for the Olympics.

It can only be that, I am sure.

Tilly went to her first after school football class last week.  At her last school she started playing football with the boys at lunch times, and got really cross because they were all so utterly sexist in their approach.  Quite often she would be forced to be in goal, or to sit on the side lines while the really exciting stuff was going on.  It seems clear that the football pitch, even in primary schools, is one of the last bastions of the unreconstructed male ego.

At this school there is now a girls football club.  It has only just started, and it was originally organised on a very informal basis.  In fact, when Tilly first asked me if she could join it was hard to find out when it was, where it was, and how long each lesson would be, it was so informal.

After a week of the idea being run up the flagpole, it seems that the school were utterly amazed at the number of girls who wanted to play.

I do not understand this.  I mean, I know I hate sports, but it’s not because I’m a girl and I think that sporting events are an expression of ultimate manhood.  It’s because I’m a lazy heifer who doesn’t want to strip down to her undies and run around doing star jumps in the freezing cold. 

Football is a national obsession.  Why should girls be exempt from it?

So, given the number of girls clamouring to join the football club, the school got their shit together and organised a bus to another local school who have a girls team, and took all the girls from Tilly’s school who were interested to play.

Tilly’s best friend went along too, and her mother offered to pick Tilly up when she picked up her daughter, and bring her home for me.  This was most welcome.  I concurred.

As she scrambled out of the car, she looked an absolute wreck.  She had mud on mud on mud.  It was hard to see her legs for the tide of mud that engulfed her.  Her boots were clarted up, and she had Indian brave stripes of mud on her cheeks.  Her hair hung round her face in dank, muddy strings.  She looked filthy and knackered.

She staggered up the drive into the house, barely able to speak.

Eventually, as she was peeling her kit off in the hallway, where I had corralled her before she could do any further damage to the house, she answered my question, which was:

‘How did you get on?’

She gave me a wobbly smile, and said in a euphoric way:

‘We lost….(I was about to interject some parently wisdom about taking part being the thing and all that, when she carried on)…IT WAS BRILLIANT!’

I forsee hours of standing by the side of muddy fields, cheering on girls in nylon tops in my future. 

I thought I would not have to do this for another few years until Oscar was bigger.

Curses.