How to be the World’s Worse Mum Step 8 The Football

.



I’ve never been any good at sport.

My myopic and astigmatic eyes change the shape of any incoming tennis ball to that of a flying bat that’s been crossed bred with a twelve-armed starfish.

This problem has over time, caused me to sweep a lot of empty air.

At least I’d be able to see a football. Well that was the theory.
Long ago, I'd bought a football and took the teenager, when he was just a toddler (though showing marked teenager tendencies) into the nearest park and we'd attempted to kick the ball around.

The ball I’d bought was apparently made of solid iron covered in plastic. Neither of us could kick the thing without dislocating toes. Despondently, I dumped it in the boot of the car; where it has remained ever since; scoring goals of its own whenever I took a corner too fast, and where it makes strange bouncing sounds if ever I stop too suddenly.

‘No, I haven’t got anybody trapped inside the boot.’ I’d explain to nervous passengers who became wide-eyed and concerned on hearing the strange sounds.

They never believed me.

‘Just here will do fine,’ they’d reply. ‘You can drop me off just here,’ they’d say. ‘No, it doesn’t matter about the torrential rain. Here will be fine,’ they’d insist.

There was one occasion when I also had a Furby in the boot of the car. ‘Oh no,’ the Furby cried as the roving football bounced into it and woke it up. ‘Ohhhhhhh! I’m hungry,’ came the muffled cry.

‘Can you hear that?’ my passenger had asked, who was already holding tightly onto their seat belt due to my white-knuckle ride driving.

‘Oh that’s just Furby,’ I’d replied.

The Furby began to make some gagging noises. ‘Ah, ah, ah,’

‘Here will do fine,’ the passenger had said no doubt convinced that I was some sort of people trafficker and had some poor foreigner called Furby bound and gagged in the boot of the car. ‘You can put me down here.’

The football has recently been discovered by the teenager.

‘Let’s go,’ he says. He gets ready to kick the ball.

I stand in the downpour, a reluctant goalie. The ball curves towards me; it is winged with land mine spikes. I duck. It curls past me and rolls into the nettles.

‘Ah, ah, ah.’ I say as I retrieve it.

The teenager is berating my efforts, ‘This is Wayne Rooney’s football school,’ he says in a Russian accent. He kicks another ball past me. ‘You are useless.’

We are playing football on the old disused railway line. It is getting very dark and we accidentally frighten pheasants in a nearby covert who in a panic flap up over us; their wings making a heavy sound like the helicopters in ‘Apocalypse Now’.

I can’t tell what is ball and what is bird, but I’m trying to save them all.

‘Goal,’ shouts the teenager. ‘Goal.’

‘You can put me down here.’ I finally manage to gasp.

I’m exhausted.

‘I’m hungry,’ says the teenager. ‘Let’s drive home.’

And there are rockets exploding over the town as we drive back.