Saturday morning sport and all that...
It has happened. Having resisted the UCs attempts to involve himself in Saturday sport for nearly 20 years (the armchair kind for most of those you will understand - apart from the Iron Man), I am now finding myself, on a Saturday, at the edge of a pitch, in the rain, dreaming of bacon sandwiches. Luckily I can do bacon sandwiches.
Anyway, they start them young here. The under-fives football tournament was tremendously well attended, mainly by under fives. There were lots of accompanying parents too. They can be categorised as follows: mums and dads. They were quite different in their behaviour. Mums were generally allowed to shepherd younger siblings and chat a bit to other mums. Dads didn't really do these things. I had heard about competitive dads, but hadn't seen them in action before. They were very funny indeed. My favourite type were the competitive dads who tried to pretend they were not competitive. I like the way that these dads chat in a cool kind of way to other dads, looking furtively at the pitch until the ball goes near their child. Then they scream at the top of their voices "Goooooooooonnnn gettttttttttiiiiiiiitttttttttt" or something like that. At this point their child is so scared that they stop dead in their tracks while a savvy thee year old picks up the ball and runs away with it. Then the dad turns back and continues his conversation as if nothing has happened. It really is entertaining. Next time I am going to watch very closely and attempt to categorise football dads further. On a different note entirely, I have read about some interesting categories in the news today: alpha socialisers, attention seekers, followers, faithfuls and functionals. You will all know what I am talking about. Now I am not one to be critical, but I am not convinced that these categories are exhaustive or very subtle.... (I really love the socio-economic grouping statements). I can't fit myself in very easily.... apart from being an attention seeking C1C2D mother of course. This is all rather too structured for my liking - in a context where surely structures such as age, gender and socio-economic banding are being subverted and played with in all kinds of ways. I am going to mull this over next time I stand on the edge of the football pitch in my wellies. It will take my mind off the bacon.
posted by Clare at 4:44 PM
2 Comments:
Goooooooooonnnn gettttttttttiiiiiiiitttttttttt"
Lol!!!!!
I am a bad mother as never went or go to football.
there is Saturday- and Sunday- morning football at the end of our garden in Brosmgrove every week as we back on to the local rec. We can hear the dads screaming and yelling all through- very scary! we ocasinally walk through on our way for a country stroll and the kids- a bit older than yours- seem to tune their dads out actually and to be completely oblivious to the ranting..
the big question is, of course, how the UC behaved..?
and yes, I thought those categories were v unhelpful- was looking at that stuff this morning. Am sitting here trying to prepare a presentation on social networking etc for a thing in about ten days and so pretending that commenting on your blog is work.. if you get time over the next week or so to add a comment to the (imminent) new posts on mine it would be v helpful!
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