Weekly Photo Challenge: Red

The first (but not last) team the Hub coached.  He was driving past somewhere in Johannesburg one day (sorry to be so vague but it was twenty-five years ago and I wasn’t even there) and saw a boys’ football match going on.  He had time to pass so he stopped to watch.  One team was dreadful.  It was Wanderers.  Wanderers is a famous cricket ground in South Africa.  Or is it rugby?  Not football, anyway.

The Hub is not a shrinking violet: at half-time he walked up to the manager and said, ‘Do you mind if I give you a few tips?’  And did.

The manager fell on to the Hub’s shoulder, crying.  He was a young man, about twenty, who played rugby and knew nothing about football.  His brother was in the team and they had no coach, so he took it on.  The Hub was a gift from the heavens.

The Hub loved it.  So did the kids: they equalised in that game, and won many more afterwards.  A novel experience, as they had only ever lost previous games.

I’m not sure how good an example he set, though.  I once went to watch a match and I heard one mother ask another mother, ‘Who is that angry young man?’ 

He was once sent off by the ref, and he didn’t even play.  Hurling abuse from the sidelines doesn’t count as a sport.  If passion for the beautiful game was a sport, however, he’d be the stuff of legend.

Weekly Photo Challenge: One

 One happy day in 5576 of them (so far):

The Worst Thumb In The World

I’ve just heard that the Olympics have finished.  The Winter Olympics that is, not the real ones.  Who won?  Does anybody know?  It has been a bit of a non-event in this country.  I don’t think it’s because of the different time zone; I think it’s largely a matter of indifference: if they ain’t using a ball, it ain’t a sport.

I really should have known the games had ended because the Hub is not so keen to let me go up to bed at seven o’clock anymore.  Olympic highlights were on BBC 2 from seven to nine, you see, so I could make my escape.  The Hub is sports mad.  Sometimes he’s just mad; usually when I go to bed at seven on a school night and there’s no sport on the telly.  I’d ask him to join me but there’s no room for him and my book, my notebook, my netbook, my pencil case, my cup of tea, my light snack and my pear tree.  Something has to give and if there’s food involved, it won’t be me.

Thinking about the Olympics reminds me of the real ones in 2004.  Not that I remember them at all, but that was the year we held our own Olympiad, one Sunday night.   The boys had had their baths and the whole family was sitting on our bed chatting about this and that, me not yet owning a notebook, netbook, book, et al, and the boys decided to have a mini Olympics to fill the time until Top Gear.  The Hub was too fatigued to take part so he was voted the equipment and me the referee.  We had five events – underarting, eye pumping, zerbeting, dadprodding and wedgying.  If I tell you that underarting consists of little boys’ armpits making rude noises, you’ll get the idea.  Eye pumping is not as gross as it sounds, and involves bigger boys making rude noises by cupping their sockets.

The main event was the zerbeting competition; aficionados of The Cosby Show will know exactly what I’m talking about, but if you are uninitiated I will explain – childish wet lips blowing bubbles on reluctant parents’ skins, as long and as loud as possible.  The Hub is the perfect victim: he has a belly that wobbles like Santa’s when under attack from his children; if zerbeting was a real Olympic sport he’d be sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Spud is our acknowledged King of Zerbeters but he was a little off form that night, despite a couple of short sharp zerbets, so I was forced to make the boys try over and over and over and over and over and over until I finally had to declare a draw.  Poor Hub.  If he’d been exhausted before, he was now exhausted and covered in spit.

The penultimate event was a bout of dadprodding which caused the Hub to demand the Government set up an NSPCD (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dads).  The finishing flourish was Spud wedgying himself into his pyjamas, and then turning them into the largest y-fronts you’ve ever seen.  At this point the referee took part in the competition, but only because her own particular wedgy had been a work in progress for the past eight years, as her backside spread ever wider.

2004 was the year the boys went table tennis mad; they set up their tt table in the lounge in front of the telly; we had to stand to watch tv: that’s okay for a while, but try following both marathon events standing up and, like us, you’d soon be looking out for adoption agencies.  We played table tennis constantly for two weeks.  Tory Boy is pretty good at it but the ball kept hitting his thumb and he got more and more frustrated.  He was playing with Spud, who happened to be winning because said ball kept hitting said TB’s said thumb and as a result the point is not allowed.  Tory Boy finally lost his temper, slammed down his bat, thrust his thumb into the air and raged, ‘I hate this thumb!  This is the worst thumb in the world!’