sport – Kathleen Jowitt

Looking upwards into a church ceiling where wood and concrete form an eight-pointed star, with the gaps filled with blue, yellow, green and red stained glass

About time I did one of these again…

The good

A trip to Sheffield for the annual Ultreya GB. I missed last year’s, though I hadn’t intended to (in retrospect, my ideas of what would be possible with a small baby were somewhat unrealistic), and it was good to be back. It was quite a different experience: I was very tired (see below) and also I don’t usually spend the event climbing up and down all the available steps in the cathedral. But it all came together for me in the last hymn – a very lively Amazing Grace – with the banners lined up and the baby clapping along in delight.

Some delightful fellow passengers and some railway staff who may in fact have been angels.

The difficult and perplexing

A month’s worth of interrupted sleep has trashed my immune system, the nursery germs have pounced, and I was very wobbly earlier in the week. And I’m not a nice person when I’m ill and tired.

Two hours and forty minutes on a train, each way. The way back was more trying than the way out.

What’s working

Sloggi long pants. Do they make me feel about a hundred and two? Yes, particularly the beige ones. Is it worth it to make bare legs bearable in hot weather? Absolutely. (Yes, I am aware of the Snag ‘chub rub’ shorts. Quite apart from the hideousness of the name, I can’t see that synthetic material next the skin would help in any way, however much I like their tights.)

Reading

Quite a bit! Having read She Who Became The Sun earlier in the summer, I picked up He Who Drowned The World (Shelley Parker-Chan) when it was on offer a few weeks ago. Equally fun (in its extremely dark way); the magical realism has more of an active influence on the plot this time round. I wasn’t convinced it stuck the landing, but the overall experience was sufficiently enjoyable to render that largely irrelevant.

Also on offer recently was Sea of Tranquility (Emily St John Mandel). This was a bit of a disappointment. I read Station Eleven early in 2020 and was very struck by how vivid and alien the post-apocalyptic world was. Sea of Tranquility, by contrast, all seemed extremely twenty-first century in terms of the way that the characters thought and spoke, with the different settings just so much window-dressing. The time travel plot also didn’t work for me; I think the aim was to subvert the usual clichés, but it just felt like a cop-out.

And Kobo also suggested Consider Phlebas (Iain M. Banks) for 99p, so I decided it was probably time I tried the Culture series.

Yesterday I started One Pair of Feet (Monica Dickens) which is very entertaining so far.

Then today I picked up N or M (Agatha Christie) because it was on the floor. I am less fond of Tommy and Tuppence than I am of most of Christie’s other series detectives, so missed this one on last year’s epic re-read. But I breezed through it and then picked up Postern of Fate to remind myself what happened to the family afterwards.

Writing

Nothing to speak of, though I have been doing a little worldbuilding in my head.

Making

One ridiculously huge baby sock, and now most of one more sensible one. I also converted a little binder into an earring holder (I will try to remember to post pictures of this).

Watching

The Paralympics, on and off. I was pleased to catch Sarah Storey’s umpteenth win, as Channel 4 also showed a decent chunk of the race. (I have found both the BBC and Channel 4 very frustrating in their tendency to show fragments of an event that have a Great British Medal Hope and nothing else. But it’s probably just as well this year, because I’ve had very little telly time.)

Looking at

Ely Photographic Club’s exhibition at Babylon Arts. There were a few pieces there that made me smile, and several that were clearly very technically skilled even if not really my thing. Also, Sheffield cathedral.

Cooking

A very hot vegetable curry: the veg box contained a bag of Padrón peppers, every single one of which was the ‘really quite spicy’ variety, so unsuitable for serving as a main/side dish in the usual way. Not one of my most successful dishes, though I’m pleased with it as a creative response to a problem.

Eating

This year’s fancy Magnum flavours, an impulse buy when they were on offer in Co-op. I’m still not entirely convinced that ice cream and popping candy is a happy combination, but it’s different, I’ll give it that.

Moving

We continue our WalkRuns (being runs that are in fact mostly walks).

Noticing

Loads of dragonflies this year. Or possibly damselflies. They don’t stay still long enough for me to be able to tell the difference.

In the garden

Ripe apples. I’ve pruned all the apple trees bar one. The next job is to take out the dead box (or was it privet?) bushes that got eaten by beetles last year.

Appreciating

Cursillo. It’s totally bonkers, but there is space in there for people to be Christians and also themselves, and that is something I was missing for a long time and something for which I continue to be grateful.

And, needless to say, every night when I get to sleep before midnight and get to wake up after six.

Acquisitions

I found a little makers’ cooperative shop in Sheffield and picked up a fabric patch (to join the several I have still to sew on), a sticker, and a pair of teal stud earrings.

Line of the week

Monica Dickens, weighing up her options:

The Land Army? One saw oneself picking apples in a shady hat, or silhouetted against the skyline with a couple of plough horses, but a second look showed one tugging mangel-wurzels out of the frozen ground at five o’clock on a bitter February morning.

This coming week

The emerging routine is slightly disrupted by a committee meeting, and then at the weekend there’s an exciting sea voyage. And that’s the last excursion for a little while, and that’s probably just as well. I might even update this blog more.

Once upon a time there was a woman who sold dreams for children. Do not mistake me here. She did not sell dreams to children – children, after all, do not usually have much money to spare – but she sold them for the children. She sold them to the parents.

‘Your daughter could be great,’ she would say. That one, she gave away for free.

‘Your daughter could be the greatest.’ And, to do her justice, it was true. She did not bother with those who had not the matter within themselves to make a return on their parents’ investment.

She rarely said much more than that. Not at first, anyway. She had no need. Everyone knew that, of all the dreams of all the sellers of dreams, hers were by far the most likely to come true.

‘There will be a cost,’ she said, each time.

‘We will pay,’ the parents would say.

She would name the price, and again the parents would say, ‘We will pay.’ Most of them said so, at any rate. As for the others – well, their children are not our concern, and whether that was good for them or whether it was ill is not my concern. My business is to tell you how it went with those who pursued the purchase of a dream. After all, you aren’t interested in the others, are you?

And I realise now that I have barely told you the substance of the dreams that this woman sold. They were common enough, in that many wanted them. They were rare indeed, in that few could fulfil them. They looked different – to some they seemed like fame, to others, skill, to others, victory, to still others, beauty, and so forth; to one the dream would seem a golden crown to be placed upon her head; to another, a wreath of laurel leaves – but what I mean to say is that all were the same dream, for this was the only dream the woman sold, and all who came to her knew what they were buying. That was why they were happy to pay what she asked.

‘There will be a cost,’ she said, each time.

‘We will pay,’ the parents said.

‘There will be a cost to your child, too.’

They would all look at the child, and see her wide-eyed and dazzled by the golden dream they hung before her. ‘She will pay.’

Perhaps the parents should have asked what that cost would be. Perhaps then they would have heard: her youth. Or, her health. Or, her freedom. Her happiness. Her future. Or her soul. Perhaps some of them did ask. Perhaps some of them thought it better not to know. I can’t say. At any rate, many of them bought that dream.

And many of them were satisfied with the bargain. The dream they had bought for their daughter was golden indeed; given time, it was very clear that she would be great, that she could be the greatest. I heard once that there were some who paid the price and regretted it, but if you were to ask the woman about them you would find that she did not recognise their names, and nor would you recognise their names, and so we must conclude that they are of no concern to us.

Where were we? Ah, yes. The child whose parents bought a dream for her, a golden, gleaming dream; a dream for which they paid with money and for which she paid with her health and her youth, her future and her freedom and her happiness. And, perhaps, her soul. A golden, gleaming dream, a circlet that rested heavily on her head, with the weightiness of skill and beauty, victory and fame. A dream of greatness.

And it was hers. Do not mistake me. It belonged to her, truly, for – this is a fairy tale, so shall we say, a year and a day? Very well. For a year and a day, she was the greatest, and in her golden dream-crown she ruled over all, and all praised her skill and her artistry, her beauty and her fame. And then –

What?

And then? Nobody wants to know what happened next. Are you sure? Well, if you must. When a year and a day had passed, she woke, and she found that her golden circlet had changed into a wreath of dead brown leaves that crumbled into dust when she touched them, and her limbs were racked with pain, and her bones were the bones of an old woman, and no one remembered her name.

And with agony coursing through her with every step, she went to the city that she had ruled and she saw that another girl was the greatest, another girl wore her crown, another girl had bought and had claimed the dream.

Her parents were furious. ‘The woman tricked us!’ they yelled, and they stamped off to complain, their daughter limping behind them. She would have wept, but she had learned that there was no use in weeping.

She did not weep, but the woman smiled. ‘Why are you surprised?’ she asked. ‘Surely you know that a dream only lasts as long as you sleep.’

The parents ranted and fumed. But the woman turned away. She had no time for them. She had another dream to sell.

The End

A crown embroidered in gold and red thread on a black background

More on the question of sport, and whether it’s worth it all? Try A Spoke In The Wheel:

The first thing I saw was the wheelchair.
The first thing she saw was the doper.

Find out more

Tag: sport

Week-end: South Yorkshire edition