musingsponderingsandrants

(For the avoidance of doubt this entry is not a homage to Spandau Ballet. Although I do love Spandau. So if that is what you are after jog on.)

So I may have mentioned before that my daughter is sporty. That is a massive understatement to be honest. She loves football and hockey and netball and running. She is quite good at swimming and apparently cricket. But currently we are in the rounders season at school.

Rounders is not her favourite. She is a good catch and has a huge throw. She can also run like the wind and so fields deep. But her batting is a bit hit and miss, often miss. I sympathise. At school I was not great at batting. And I couldn’t catch or throw either. Or run.

This year I managed to miss the annual ritual humiliation that is the Cub Scout Family Rounders Evening. I can’t remember why. Some fortuitous Governing Body meeting or ferrying task.

And so I didn’t have to go through those few seconds standing in front of a bowler wondering how not to make a fool of myself. Watching as hairy men slog the ball 100 meters into the bushes. And trying to field on the right of the batter to avoid having to make a crucial throw or, shudder, catch. Result.

Of course nothing is ever that simple. Just as I was basking in this narrow escape an e mail came through from school advertising Women in Sport Week. The Sports’ Department had decided to host a number of events for mums to attend. And one of those was a Year 4 Mums and Daughters Rounder’s match.

Of course there was no way Youngest was going to let me get out of this one. The temptation to humiliate her mother was too strong. A fortuitous emergency Governing Body meeting failed to materialise. And so today I rolled up at school to face the bowler. The fact that the bowler was only 3 feet tall should have made me feel better. It didn’t.

In anticipation of this event Youngest and I had been up the field with our rubberised baseball bat and a tennis ball to have a practice. We were both quite good at it, slogging them into the undergrowth. She reminded me that a rounder’s bat is much smaller and a rounder’s ball much harder and again smaller. Cheers love.

On holiday in Devon I roped everyone in to a match on the beach. With the aforementioned baseball bat and tennis ball. It went quite well until husband managed to hit a strolling man in the nadgers with a well placed slog. He was carrying a bucket of water at the time (the strolling man not my husband, although it might have been a good idea to handicap him in such a way before letting him loose with a bat) which cascaded all down his front. Woops.

So we had got a bit of practice in. I still wasn’t confident. That wasn’t helped by Youngest repeating repeatedly that her team were going to ‘thrash’ us. Competitive much?

Have you ever been ten pin bowling? I know this seems a bit off piste but bear with, bear with. I used to go quite a lot as a student. And here is the thing. Some games I could get strike after strike after strike. And some games I struggled to get above fifty pins. Often such games would be in the same session consecutively. And I have no idea why.

Well clearly rounders is like that for me too. Today after an entire life of never hitting a rounders ball I managed to score two and a half rounders off 3 balls. Astounding. I did run Youngest out whilst achieving the half. Woops. But it was a genuine mistake.

The mums were beaten 6 to 5 but for a bunch of ladies who haven’t played for twenty to thirty years (some of them are disgustingly young) we did OK. In the mixed teams Youngest and I also lost out again but only by the one rounder.

So credit due I think. Of course the only thing Youngest focussed on was me running her out. Not on my 2 and a half rounders. Which nearly killed me. The pitch is bigger than it looks.

I tried to explain to the offspring that in the scheme of things this feels like a major achievement to me. And perhaps with a bit of practise I might have been better as a child. Although it was probably just a ‘ten pin bowling’ moment.

Let’s hope the fixture doesn’t get repeated next year. People will expect things. Which is gently worrying.

And I already ache.