What a way to spend your day off from work, travelling on a coach to Southend and back, to watch your youngest would-be footballer, play football against Southend Academy.
Surely what dreams are made of, for them, if not for you!
Leave home at 10 am with packed lunch in a cool bag.
Play Avicii really loudly (this helps me feel young and hip) en route to Folkestone where we are meeting the coach. The coach has been booked, as the academy feel this is an impressive way for us to arrive at Southend.
For those of you that know your geography or know where I live, you will already have realised I have driven back on myself to catch a coach that an hour later is going to drive past my house.
I did want to query this matter, but I have a tendency to want to control everything, so I decide to keep quiet and be a passive parent, well I would try at least.
We arrive in glorious Southend at 2.30pm, to what appears to be council managed pitches and a play park. Not quite the imagery I had in my head. This is possibly because on Monday we had an amazing experience of being invited to play at Tottenham’s training ground, now that was jaw-dropping and very impressive. I did realise a second division football team would be different, but this?
Carrying our packed lunch in a cool bag with ice packs, we cross the grass and head for the changing rooms…not a cafe in sight. I am gasping for a cappuccino and would possibly have settled for an instant in a polystyrene cup at this point.
Onwards we march to the roped off pitches in the far distance. The irony is our coach couldn’t drop us near these pitches due to height restriction in the near by car park, so much for an impressive arrival!
The pitches are flat, well cut, no weeds. I have lawn envy….well a little.
I don’t pretend to know much about football, I watch it regularly barely grasp the concept of off-side but feel I appreciate a good game. Sadly today I am watching our team play their worst football this season and heads drop, including mine.
Meanwhile, to make matters worse my mobile is bleeping away. Texts from my estranged husband, who never usually makes any form of contact if he can help it. I squint in the sunshine and read, he is bemoaning having to pay his agreed monthly installments this month. He feels after our last collaborative meeting he would be justified in reducing his outgoing costs, although nothing has been agreed upon. After yesterday’s curveball, I am really not happy. I decide he is clearly bored at work, or his girlfriend is challenging his current position.
God, I am beginning to hate her too.
I don’t remember him volunteering to spend the day going to Southend to watch football and he feels it’s all about ME!
We eventually get home at 7.30pm, a nine and half hour day…was it worth it? NO.
Would I do it again, probably, ’cause that’s what mummies do!