The Loneliness Of The Part-Time Football Manager

Sunday afternoon football has taken over our lives, and I don't mean slumped in front of the television, drinking Carlsberg and watching whatever game happens to be on at that moment. Two of Two is playing in a league for the school team. Three twenty-minute games every Sunday, stretched over three to four hours. Different time every week. No more planning what to do on Sunday, not for the moment. You hunker down in the bomb shelter of expediency and wait to discover what time the first game is going to kick off.

There are twelve teams, each of which has been given the name of a country which they are nominally representing. Sadly Two of Two's team was landed with England. On the plus side, the strip doesn't particularly look like England's. (On the negative side, his grandparents just bought him an England strip for his birthday, and he wears it all the time. We call it the Strip of Shame.)

The kids enjoy the Sunday afternoon football league, the parents have far more angst. Now I had a small moment of epiphany a few months ago when watching One of Two playing a mini soccer tournament on a Saturday morning. The following day was the NFL AFC Championship game between the New England Patriots and the San Diego Chargers. I've followed the Patriots religiously for the past twenty-two years. I've travelled to Boston several times to watch them; I sit up through the European night when they're playing an evening game in the States; when their games aren't on tv I following this absurd little helmet graphic online, as the helmet moves up and down the pitch with every play. I'm that sad: I watch an online helmet graphic for three and a half hours, starting at 2.30am. However, that epiphanic morning - I was bound to get to the moment of epiphany eventually - I realised that despite my obsession with the Patriots, I cared far more about my kid playing in a pointless soccer tournament than in my sporting obsession playing in the NFL semi-finals. And it was more fun to watch. And I don't just mean more fun to watch than the helmet - because there are a whole host of things which are more fun to watch than the helmet - but just plain more fun to watch.

One of Two's team won the tournament, but that wasn't the thing that made it so great for me watching in my position as Dad. It was just getting involved in watching a game that really mattered to my kid, and realising that that was far more important than a bunch of absurdly overpaid sports stars who I'll never meet.

If that's not an epiphany, then I don't know what is. Well, apart from the manifestation of Christ to the Wise Men of the east...

The drawback of caring this much about your kids' sports teams, is that it's equally and oppositely rubbish when they lose. Last Sunday Two of Two's team lost their first game 4-0, to a bunch of giant Polish kids who are obviously stretching the age-limit to breaking point and cheating horribly. I mean, some of those kids have beards. Not wanting to be an Angry Soccer Dad, I kept my Soccer Dad Rage to myself and stopped myself sticking a leg out onto the park and tripping up one of the six foot behemoth "eight year-olds" who were holding my kid at arms' length away from the ball.

For the second game we were up against the other team from our school, so really just playing against their mates. This was a no-stress game, as generally both sides - and both sets of parents - root for either team. For this game, the coach had to go off somewhere, and for some reason I was placed in charge. I seemed to be bestowed with this honour by a committee of soccer mums. Maybe they thought, Ah, he's Scottish, he'll know about football....

I really, really, really didn't want to do it. If it happens again I'm going to pull the classic faking an aneurysm manoeuvre so beloved of dads in this situation. I hate being in charge of other people's kids. Never know what to do with them. Can't shout at them, can't order them around, can't whack them, so what's left? I just get the feeling that they're looking at me, thinking who are you and why are you giving me orders? Where's the coach? Have you actually got anything to do with this team or are you just some strange man who's wandered in off the street? My mum told me about people like you. So, no, I'm not going in defence, and you can bugger off!

Well, that's what I presume they're thinking.

In that type of situation, you have to hope that you don't have too many players. Unfortunately I was two to the good, so had to have two kids on the sideline, looking pathetic and constantly tugging my sleeve asking when they were going to get on. I rotated of course, but kids don't care about rotation, they just want to be playing football NOW. I didn't shout instructions at them either, just let them wander aimlessly around the park, kicking the ball in whatever direction they were facing. They were rudderless, an even more random collection of wandering wildebeest than normal. Fortunately they escaped with a 1-0 win and I didn't have to face the opprobrium of other parents for my weak and pathetic managerial style.

That said, I have been informed by the Parental Collective that the next time the coach is forced to leave early, I will be relieved of my deputy managerial duties and placed in charge of the socks. As long as it doesn't involve having to interact with Other People's Children, I don't care.

Bob

On our recent family holiday to New Zealand, there was one clear standout moment above all others. We were on the shores of Lake Tekapo in central South Island. The weather is typically so clear here, that it is the location of the Mount John Observatory, which sits on the hill just above the town. It was a gorgeous early evening. The lake is a most wonderful and incredible blue, we were booked to go on a sightseeing tour of the southern night sky that evening at the observatory, after a day when we had driven up from Queenstown, past azurine lakes, over incredible moon-like plains, with a stop for lunch at a vineyard, the mountains of the Southern Alps in the near distance, and a stop at Lake Pukaki to take photos of Mount Cook. A breathtaking day, and you're thinking, it can't get any better than this.

And then it happened, the defining moment of the entire trip. We got a text from a friend in Warsaw saying that Bob Dylan was coming to town in June. To be honest, I just got on the plane that night back to Poland and set up camp outside the venue, where I have lived for the past three months.

There was a bit of a stramash over the tickets. My friend ordered them, they got lost in the post, she had to turn up at the ticket office and stand before them armed with several pieces of heavy artillery and a battalion of paratroopers before they would issue replacements. And much to her chagrin, she couldn't go to the concert and instead I took TPCKAM. About which TPCKAM was also fairly chagrined 'n all.

Dylan tours all the time, playing over a hundred gigs every year for the best part of the last twenty years. Always on the move. Saturday in Warsaw, Monday in Prague, Tuesday in Vienna, Wednesday in Salzburg, Friday on to Croatia. The guy was sixty-seven last month, but you can't really say that he's worn it like Mick Jagger. There's no leaping around the stage, no grabbing microphones, nothing athletic. He shuffles on, he stands at his keyboard, he shuffles around in the dark between songs, he shuffled off at the end. You wonder if he'd fall over if he didn't have the keyboard to lean on, but presumably if it was that bad, he'd be sitting at it. His voice is kind of shot, but you know, the guy was never Elvis, so it still works. He does a lot of songs from his most recent studio album - Modern Times - mixed with a random collection from the back catalogue. He tends to reinvent songs, either to suit his mood or the state of his voice.

He played a small venue for an international rock icon. An audience of 1500 or so. The concert was great, but what else am I going to say? Even TPCKAM enjoyed it, and she hates listening to Dylan. A few too many songs which are basically twelve-bar numbers and which blend into one another - The Levee's Gonna Break and Summer Days, that kind of thing - but more than enough other great stuff to compensate.

He has a different set-list every night, someone who would reward following around on tour. I said to TPCKAM that we could up sticks, bung the kids into the back of a winnebago and follow Bob around the world. In the past year we would have been to Uruguay and Canada, America and Russia, Australia and Argentina, Estonia, Iceland... An endless list. He's in Andorra this weekend. TPCKAM is still considering this as a life plan. We probably won't do it. Maybe when the kids have left school. But by then Bob might be in a old people's home in Saratoga Springs, and all we'd be doing was parking the winnebago at the bottom of the driveway.

A Grand Day Out

It's school trip time of the year. One of Two has had two in the last few weeks. Parental volunteers called for. I went both times, sucked in by the expectations of my daughter. I wonder if other parents are expected to attend by their kids, or whether the kids don't even think for a second that their mum or dad will pitch up and spend their day with twenty other rampant spawn. I think by going once, whenever the first time was, I set the standard, and now I meekly acquiesce and troop miserably along to the school bus.

A few weeks ago we went to the local Big Park in Warsaw, to look at squirrels and the old royal palace. Two days ago we went on a much more fundamental school trip, sitting for hours on a bus to go somewhere for a few minutes, before hopping on the bus again to sit for hours on the way back. There were two other mums on the trip. At the start of the day one of them said to me, "I thought you were the only other parent coming, so I brought my iPod..." They sat next to each other, and I made One of Two sit next to me, so that I didn't have to sit next to another adult I wouldn't be able to speak to, or a kid that I'd want to give a skelp round the ear.

We didn't come prepared for a long trip, and had to talk to each other and play I-spy and the like. Eventually I produced my phone and we played eight hundred games of bowling. Other kids were much better equipped. iPods, portable DVD players... one of them even had his own iPhone. Is that normal? A ten year old kid with an iPhone? Whatever happened to endless choruses of The back of the bus they cannae sing, and every third kid throwing up into a poly bag? Happy days...

The purpose of the trip was to see life in Poland in the old days, a neat contrast with the plethora of new technology evident on the way down. Making rope, bread, butter, washing clothes, old windmills that kind of thing. The collective seemed interested and milled around in the sun sending text messages about how 200-years-ago they were being. They trooped off to lunch, to eat rolls which had been freshly baked in the 18th century. I sat outside, far away from the madding crowd. The chap who was showing the kids around the low-tech facility, wandered over for a chat. He asked me if I was the guard. I said I was a parent. You look very tired, he said. He was going all out to strike up a warm friendship. He offered me a sandwich. I said yes, but was dubious. We were in the heart of ethnic Poland, and the chances of me liking the cheese, sausage or ham that was likely to be in the sandwich were virtually nil. Ten minutes later the bread appeared, fortunately not delivered by my new friend, which meant I didn't have to eat it. It was covered in smalec. Smalec is a classic peasant food, lard, filled with bits of bacon and any other bits of the pig and maybe a bit of onion. But basically it's lard. There was a lot of lard. A giant, open-faced, square-cut lard sandwich.

I went and beat up one of the rich kids with an expensive phone and raided his lunchbox.

The trip home was about five minutes shorter than the trip out there, possibly because one of the kids had brought along their own satnav and told the driver a quicker route to take. We made it back safely which, on Polish roads, is no small achievement. About half an hour at the low-tech detention facility, six hours on the bus. A grand day out.

As the kids played on the grass after school, I wandered down to the changing rooms to collect all their things that they'd forgotten. i.e. everything. I became aware that there was a mum from the PTA walking behind me carrying a large box. She didn't seem to be having too much trouble, so I didn't rush to help her, but eventually, since we were approaching a couple of doors, I thought I'd better make an offer of some sort of assistance. She handed me a couple of keys, and I led her through to the room at the back, in the very bowels of the school, where the PTA keep their stuff. Suddenly she said, 'I have the leaving presents for the headmaster and the head of Key Stage 2, would you like to see them?'

Well, no, not really....

'Sure!' I said, hoping I hadn't overdone the faked enthusiasm. She put the box down on a table and started slowly unwrapping cups and saucers. There I was, thinking that the worst part of the day was over, and suddenly I was in the bowels of the school, alone with a mum from the PTA, looking at crockery. And if I was not mistaken, she was after my opinion.

I stared gobsmacked, as cup after cup, saucer after painfully unwrapped saucer was placed on the table. I thought, what on earth am I going to say? I'm from the west of Scotland. I don't have an eye for crockery. I couldn't care less about crockery. I can tell when it needs washed, and I can tell if there's something in it that I can drink or eat, but as for patterns and styles and designs... Eventually I found the words, several cups in. 'They're lovely,' I said. The PTA mum smiled. 'Oh, I'm really pleased you like them, because we weren't sure what people would think.' It appeared I was the voice of the parents.

I could imagine her later, when other bitchy mums were scowling at the cups and being brutally and frankly honest, saying, 'Well that miserable Scottish bloke liked them.'

She continued to unpack cups and saucers. I wondered if she was doing it all for my benefit, or whether she was unpacking them anyway. So I stood there in silence with the mum from the PTA in the bowels of the school wondering whether or not I could leave.

That was two days ago. And I'm still there. And she's still unpacking cups and saucers.