Category: Five Things

Always look on the bright side: Five things that made me smile this Autumn.

It’s been a little while since I wrote one of these; a series that I started writing every month in order to remind myself that there were definitely positives in my life. At a time when I felt like I was struggling, I also wondered if it would help anyone else who might stumble upon this and read about some happy or funny stories. As ever, some are related to me and some are just the kinds of things that I’ve spotted in the news. Because everybody needs a bit of a smile now and again.

My new job. In September I started a new job and I have to say it’s been tough going since day one. I’m lucky enough to work in a very supportive environment and I’m still just about enjoying the challenge. There are plenty of positives too, but one in particular stood out from last month. As with most schools, our behaviour system has negative points as well as positives. Sadly, I find myself having to log a lot more negatives than I’d like and at times it can mean that there’s not enough time to catch up with the positives. However, some groups are very keen to remind you to put them on the system! One boy in my Year 7 group really managed to make me smile last month with his reaction to being given an achievement point. He’s always very keen to get them and always asks on his way out of the class if he’s earned one. And on this occasion when he asked and I responded positively he walked off with a barely audible, yet emphatic ‘Yes’ and a bit of a fist pump! A lovely, golden moment!

The Morley 10k. The town where I live has been holding a 10k race for a few years now and I’ve managed to run every one, despite my health issues. For this year’s I’d trained pretty well, running the route a few times and bringing my time down every time. I’d also ran quite a few 10k+ training runs and was feeling good. However, on the morning of the race I felt terrible. Like I was going to vomit imminently. I considered not running, but managed to pull myself together, resolving that this year’s goal was just to get round. But when I got into my running I felt quite strong and, checking my watch, was going quite fast. Sadly, I slowed a bit in the second half of the course before managing to put together a strong finish and eventually came 342nd out of 849 runners. Not my finest hour, but easily enough to make me smile (once I’d gotten my breath back and stopped groaning)!

The Winner of the Great North Run. Sadly, it wasn’t me. Partly because I didn’t take part but mainly because it would have taken me most of the day. Also, it’s the women’s race that I’m writing about. You see, I have a connection to the winner. Let me tell you about it. Every Saturday morning, me and my son volunteer as marshals at one of our local Park Runs. Every week we wait eagerly for the first runner to arrive, often marvelling at how fast they’re running. A short while back now, we were stood at our usual spot, not expecting the first runners for a couple of minutes yet. And then, as I glanced to my left, down the track, she appeared. A female runner, going extremely quickly. She was a real sight to behold. Graceful, powerful, effortless; she looked like a proper athlete. It turned out that she was! Mary Ngugi-Cooper is a Kenyan athlete who apparently lives locally and she’d just ran our course record time! She even came back the next week and broke her own record again! Fast forward to September and I found myself watching the Great North Run – a very famous half marathon) on telly while I did a bit of Sunday morning ironing. It was held in torrential rain (the race, not the ironing), but something else began to pique my interest. Every time they cut to footage of the women’s’ race, I was sure I recognised one of the leading pack. But I couldn’t quite place her. Anyway, after a thrilling finish the same lady won the race with just 5 seconds separating the first 5 athletes. When her name appeared on the screen, the penny finally dropped. My mate Mary from ParkRun had just won the Great North Run!

The return of Gone Fishing. ‘Gone Fishing’ is a BBC series where two blokes go fishing. Yet, of course it’s much, much more than that. The two blokes are comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, both heroes of mine. The series came about after Bob had a triple heart bypass and had pretty much given up on life. When no one could tempt him to leave the house, his friend Paul got in touch and suggested a spot of fishing. It worked. Not only that though, after a few trips the two realised that they could make a television series about it, which they went on to do. Amazingly, given that this is a programme where two blokes just go fishing, it’s just been commissioned for an 8th series and I’m currently enjoying the 7th. Gone Fishing is much more than just some fishing though. It’s about health, friendship, nature, humour and much more and is a truly heartening watch. Needless to say, the latest series has me smiling.

Beekeeper discovers lost bees. A lovely story from the BBC website in September. When he became a father something inspired Ross Main to set out to find his grandfather’s lost beehives. Maybe it was the memories of tending them with his grandad and possible hoping to pass on similar lessons to his own children. Anyway, Ross set off to the abandoned quarry where the hives had been and despite the hugely overgrown area, he found one last hive, having worried that they’d all been sold off. Even better news though, was that the bees had survived. After a bit of research Ross was able to transfer the hive to his home town and start to tend to them. Now, some 9 years on he has set up an apiary business, manages around 300,000 bees a week in 90-100 colonies and sells honey to local farm shops as well as teaching locals about the value of bees to the ecosystem. What’s not to like about that story?

I hope at least some of those made you smile!

Euro 2024: Sometimes the bright side feels a bit harder to find!

I’d set out to try and stick to the positives when writing about these Euros. In my experience, when watching your country play at a major tournament – in any sport – the negatives are never far away and it can be hard to stay positive. I mean, I left work early last night in order to rush home and get a few things done before settling down to watch what I’d hoped would be a decent England performance. Look how that ended.

Anyway, here are my 5 positives from England’s latest effort…

Kieran Trippier won his 50th cap. I think Tripps has been the focus of far too much negative attention so far in these Euros. The notion that Phil Foden’s poor form is down to Trippier filling in as a right footed left back seems ridiculous, but it just keeps getting mentioned. Perhaps a look at Phil Foden or the manager’s tactics might reveal the truth on that particular matter? Anyway, Tripps earned his 50th cap and for me, has looked pretty solid while defending at this tournament so far…and I’m aware that I’ve probably just cursed him in saying that!

Jordan Pickford. The second positive and I’m already stretching things a bit. Hear me out though. Pickford is receiving a lot of back passes so far and although people say he’s good with his feet, I’d look more at the fact that he’s liable to drop a bollock at any moment without warning. So there’s my positive. Despite seeing a lot of the ball to his feet, so far there have been no attempted hospital balls to Declan Rice or Cruyff turns in his own six yard box. Fingers crossed it stays that way!

We’re almost out of the group! It looks to be a 99.9% certainty that we get out of the group from this point. Despite the disappointment of the performance and the result, we’re still top of the group. Knock out football awaits as long as we don’t do anything silly. What awaits when we enter knockout football might not be too positive, but we’ll come to that another time!

Anthony Gordon. He hasn’t played a single minute yet, despite half of the country crying out for it. However, I was partly pleased that he never got onto that terrible pitch on Thursday night because that pitch combined with being a Newcastle player added up to a surefire knee ligament injury as far as I could see! Gordon with both knees still intact? I’ll take that as a positive.

Harry Kane scored. So, he seems to be playing at half his capacity, might be injured, is dropping far too deep and his wayward pass from a position that he didn’t need to be in cost us a goal, but he scored. As any England fan knows, Kane scoring once often leads to Kane scoring more. Let’s hope he finds his groove soon!

So, there you have it. Five positives…sort of. What do you expect when we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel? Hopefully the next game makes this a bit easier to write!

Always Look on The Bright Side: 5 Things that Made Me Smile in January.

I’ve not written one of these types of blogs for a little while. It’s not been a case of everything being terrible during that time; more just being incredibly busy. And anyway, who really needs a blogger telling them that Christmas makes them happy?

I went into January purposely telling myself to be positive. It’s not a month that I’m a great fan of and I decided that if I just forced myself to be relentlessly positive, it might make it easier to get through. And while I wouldn’t say that it’s been a resounding success, it’s definitely been helpful. This attitude did mean that I actively sought out reasons to be cheerful.

So, what’s made me smile this month?

The tidy Welsh mouse. I loved this and I couldn’t stop watching the accompanying video. It’s a BBC report about a retired postman in Wales who was baffled by the fact that bits and pieces kept getting tidied away in his shed at night. Seeking an answer to this mystery, he set up a night vision camera on his workbench. When he watched footage back he was greeted by the fantastic sight of a mouse tidying stuff like nuts, bolts and pegs away into whatever container had been left out.

And it got better – Rodney (our retired postman) then started experimenting by leaving different types of objects out, but whatever he left got tidied away! The only disappointment was the name that he gave the mouse; Welsh Tidy Mouse. I mean anything would have been better than that! Anyway, you can watch the little fella on the link below. The mouse that is, not Rodney.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67902966                            

Newcastle United winning the derby. If you’re not a football fan or just have no knowledge of Newcastle United and our derby match, allow me to fill you in. Our closest geographical rivals are called Sunderland. However, we haven’t played them in a long time due to being in different divisions. Well, this all changed when we were drawn to play against each other in the FA Cup in early January.

The lead up to the game was tense, to say the least and there was the usual back and forth about who would win between the two sets of fans. It’s an intense rivalry, to say the least.

It’s a game I really don’t enjoy and the nerves are horrendous. Suffice to say, come the day of the game I was unusually quiet and felt very sick indeed. I needn’t have worried though, as we wound up winning the game fairly easily (3-0) and it was an absolute joy to behold. Football eh? It’s only a game and yet somehow, it’s really much, much more than that!

Making plans for a bit of a meet up. I live a long way from both of my childhood best friends. One of them, I see a few times a year as he lives in the town where I grew up, so a visit to see family will always take in a meet up with him and his family.

However, the other spends a lot of his year living abroad as part of his job. We haven’t seen each other in a good few years, so when we were exchanging messages a few months back we came up with the idea of a meet up. It’s something we’ve often floated in the past but it just never seems to happen.

This time though, things are looking good and the provisional idea is that we’re going to meet somewhere that is reasonably equidistant to our houses and go for a hike. It might be in the Peak District, which also happens to be one of my favourite regions of England. We’ve not quite got anything concrete planned as yet, but I’m right in the middle of planning and for once, it looks like we will actually see this one through. Definitely a reason to smile.

Some good news on the running front. Regular readers of my blog will be familiar with my love of running. People who are new to the blog, forgive me; it’s something that I never tire of banging on about and I’m probably very much a running bore!

Anyway, so far this January I’ve managed to get myself entered for two 10k races – one in March and one in May – and my training is going fairly well. I’ve not pushed myself too hard, but have still been regularly going out and running between 5 and 6 miles a week. And as of yesterday, I learnt that the 10k I’m taking part in this March will also feature several mates from work, which is always good fun. It’s always lovely to see people at these things, not least because they’re all incredibly encouraging.

I still get incredibly nervous at these things and nowadays am always worried that something will go wrong and that I’ll have another episode with my heart, however unlikely that might be. So, when I’m getting ready to run, I know that I’ll probably bump into someone that will ask about my health, my pacemaker and just really help to calm me down. And that, dear reader, will at least make me smile a tiny bit.

Yoga. Several years ago and with more than a hint of cynicism, I was persuaded to give yoga a try. I was sure it wouldn’t be for me and sure, given the fitness I thought I already had that it’d be a breeze. I quickly learnt that it was very tough going indeed.

However, I loved doing yoga from that very first session and although it confirmed my lack of flexibility, I was keen at least! Sadly, with the pressures of work and having a young family we ended up giving it up after about 6 months. We always thought we’d start again fairly soon. That didn’t transpire though.

This January my wife suggested we try again and given that I seem to be constantly training for something or other, I was quickly in agreement. We started about three weeks ago and have been doing a couple of sessions per week. We’re not attending classes, just using the YouTube app on the television to follow the regime of one of many yoga instructors out there, but it’s working.

I have to say, I’m loving it once again. Yoga is generally tough, especially when you’re as inflexible as me, but it helps me to relax and I know that in another few weeks I’ll start to reap the benefits. So, when I’m stuck in some ridiculous position, every sinew straining, my body probably wobbling a bit with the pressure of that particular pose, you can be sure that a smile won’t be far away.

If you’ve never tried yoga I can definitely recommend it!

Always look on the bright side: Five Things That Made Me Smile in June.

Every once in a while I like to write these blogs, mainly to remind myself that in amongst all of the reasons to moan about life, there’s always something to smile about. It’s nice to send some positivity out to readers too though. We all need to moment to smile about, don’t we?

So, what was turning the frown upside down in June then?

  • The weather. I don’t know about where you live, but here in the UK, in our little corner of West Yorkshire, it was wonderfully sunny for a while. The British joke about this, of course, is that we spend most of our year complaining that it’s too wet or too cold only to then complain that it’s too hot when we get our annual 5 day heatwave! It seems the weather gods can’t win! However, the sunny weather made me smile. And while it doesn’t make running or working in the garden any easier, it does make the whole place look better. We had a few afternoons spent just sitting, reading and chatting in our back garden and the colours are fantastic. And then you look up and see a clear, vividly blue sky. How could you not smile?
  • The Borrowdale Banksy. If you don’t already know, then Borrowdale is in the Lake District here in the UK. It’s a National Park and an area of outstanding natural beauty. Borrowdale itself is a particularly remote area but for the last couple of years, slate sculptures have been appearing; the work of the Borrowdale Banksy. No one seems to know this Banksy’s identity, but the sculptures are fantastic, as you can see below and news of the latest one made me smile.
The latest Borrowdale Banksy sculpture in the Lake District
  • Eating Out. June is a very busy month in our house as there are two family birthdays within 3 days. So, much of the first part of the month gets taken up with planning and buying presents and it just feels like we’re rushing around for weeks. This year however, we decided that rather than just eat out to celebrate both birthdays at the same time, we’d go out twice. This was smile-worthy for two reasons – delicious food and drink and no dishes for me to do! And then, having enjoyed the meals so much we decided to end the weekend with a Sunday roast in the pub!
  • A Science Cover. Covering lessons is one of my least favourite things as a high school teacher. You often don’t know the class or have the faintest idea about the subject and you’re usually required to move halfway round the school to get there, meaning that you often arrive late with a chaotic cluster of children waiting for you, excited by the fact that their teacher’s not here. It also means that you’ve lost a free period. On a delightful Friday last month, I walked into my room and turned on my computer to discover I’d been given a Year 7 Science cover. My only free of the day, gone! I was gutted. However, a few minutes later, things got better when a member of the Science department came down to tell me about the class being moved. She asked if I’d like them to come down to my room, so of course I said ‘yes’! First problem removed. Then it turned out they were doing an exam; a peaceful cover almost guaranteed. Sadly – but much to my amusement and hopefully yours too – once I’d settled the class and got them going with their exam, my inner teenager came to play. I had the brainwave of thinking I might try to do the exam myself. Why, I don’t know. I was appalling at Science at school. But when I opened the first page I was delighted. The first section was human reproduction and try as I might to have a proper go at the questions, all I could do was attempt silly answers. The results, below, had me stifling giggles and holding off smiles for what felt like the rest of the day. And yes, to confirm, I am a 51-year-old man.
  • Local Legend on Strava. Lots of you will know that I love running. It’s been important for both my physical and mental health, especially over these last 5 years or so and it’s been something I’ve done on and off all my life. Nowadays I track my runs via the Strava app on my watch and was thrilled on a recent run to find that I’d earned a ‘medal’ for an achievement. Eager to see if I’d beaten some kind of personal best, I was straight on the app in order to have a look. Imagine my surprise to discover that I’d become a ‘Local Legend’ on a stretch of my run that others in my town must use regularly. Imagine my surprise turning to fits of laughter though when I discovered what I was the local legend of. My official title is ‘Local Legend of Poo Bins to Topcliffe’, a stretch of path that leads up to a local mill building at Topcliffe from…well you can work the rest out for yourself.
Let’s concentrate on the ‘legend’ rather than the ‘poo bins’.
  • The Leeds 10k. I’ve written about this already in another blog post, but June was the month that I completed the Leeds 10k, which would have been reason enough to smile in itself. However, I also managed to run it in the fastest time I’ve managed since my heart surgery – 56 minutes, if you insist on asking! – and this kept a smile on my face for days!

So, in terms of good stuff happening, June was an excellent month. Even getting a cover lesson ended up with me smiling, even though it was a very juvenile reason! I hope you enjoyed reading about it all though!

In lieu of a better title for a feature here’s ‘Stuff I enjoyed this week’.

So clearly being not very good at titles doesn’t just afflict me with poetry! But I’m hopeful that as a feature, not only will this grow and become regular, but I’ll come up with a better name for it.

Anyway, while I was sitting trying to enjoy the sunshine this week I found myself reflecting on stuff I’d enjoyed over the course of said week. That and worrying that I’d burn or just end up reduced to a puddle on my patio that would swiftly evaporate and leave my wife and kids forever wondering about the mystery of my disappearance! And so, I thought I’d write a blog about the stuff I’d enjoyed! It was a good excuse to get inside before I melted. So, here we go.

  1. Julie’s Facebook post. My friend and former colleague Julie moved all the way from Yorkshire to Devon a short while ago. It was a complete lifestyle change and a huge gamble and I was full of admiration for the bravery that it involved. Anyway, this week on Facebook she posted this and it really made me smile. Definitely some evidence to say that she made the right decision!

2. Sanding. Sad, but true. This week, in the midst of a heatwave, I got up early . and sanded all of our garden furniture down in preparation for applying some wood oil. I did wood work at school and always enjoyed it and there’s a bit of me that regrets not persuing this type of thing as a career. I always enjoyed it and was good at it too, but I guess it didn’t seem like the kind of career choice I could have faced my parents with, so there you go. The sanding was really hard work and I was far too pleased with myself by the time I’d finished. Probably far too sweaty and hot too! But it made me genuinely happy. Here’s one of our benches – have a look!

3. Nick Pope. On Friday, a Newcastle United site on Twitter (Toon Polls) set off on a mission to get the name of our goalkeeper Nick Pope trending. They replied to a poll on a Burger King post with the alternative answer of ‘Nick Pope’, who if you don’t know is a goalkeeper for my team, Newcastle United. Lots of Toon fans joined in and then after that it’s safe to say that things went a little bit mad as football clubs, global brands and celebrities got involved and it made me smile…even if my own attempt to join in was spoilt by predictive text on my phone. Not to worry, it made for a good day on social media and was a cracking effort from our fanbase ad the internet in general!

4. A conversation. A simple one this. On Wednesday after training with my Under 14 football team (I’m the coach, not a 13-year-old for those who don’t know) I had a lovely conversation with the parents of one of our new players. They’ve recently arrived from Armenia and it seems, are loving life in Yorkshire. I was really pleased for them. They were also asking for help in getting their son some friends, obviously through football and I promised to try and help. Again, it gave me a bit of a warm glow to think that I’m lucky enough to be in a position to be able to help.

5. A notification. Now these things can be the bane of all our lives, but this one made me laugh. It was a notification from my own phone offering me the chance to view highlights of my recent trip home to Whickham, which is the village just outside of Newcastle where my parents live. I’d gone to visit my mam because she’s been poorly for months and is housebound. So literally, all we did was sit in their bungalow drink coffee, eat and chat for about 6 hours! It was lovely, but I didn’t really see the need to view the highlights, not least because I was there! I had a lovely bacon sandwich though, which my timeline didn’t pick up on!

So there we have it. Five simple things that I enjoyed this week. Hopefully I can find some more for next week and hopefully I can come up with a better name for it all!

Forget the season to be jolly. There’s loads and loads to dislike about Winter.

A confession before we start this one: I actually quite like Winter. Fresh, clear mornings, the sight of snow blanketing the landscape, the relief at walking into a warm house. So, you might think maybe I’m being a bit contrary in writing about the things I hate about it. Well, let me explain what it is that irks me so much about Winter and gives us that love/hate relatiomnship.

Having to scrape frost or ice off the car in the mornings is something I really can’t stand. I should expect it really, but every time I open the front door and discover that icy covering on the windows of the car, I’m surprised. My heart sinks. It’s hard enough getting out of the house on those freezing cold, dark Winter mornings, but then to be greeted by frost or ice is just a step too far.

As soon as I see it I know that I’m going to be delayed. I can’t just get in the car and put up with the freezing temperature for the next few minutes before the usual drive to work. Oh no. Instead, it’s a race to start the engine, grab the ice scraper and then get to work at clearing my windows. Throw in the likelyhood of an icy driveway that may just see me ending up on my backside and we’ve got a pretty terrible start to the day. And then on my return to the car I’ll have to drive with a painful, icy numbness in my thumb for the next ten minutes. Not good.

Ice on the pavements and roads. That feeling of sliding uncontrollably in the car is just awful. It’s not too bad if there’s nothing around, but on one occasion, when I worked at a particularly rural school I managed to drive up a particularly narrow and steep road for a few hundred metres before getting stuck in the snow and ice. With no way forward this meant that I had to slowly reverse back down through the ice to get home a different way. Inevitably the car slid and we collided with a wall on the way down. On another occasion I fairly burst out of my front door laden with a few bags and ready to head to work only to find, as soon as I placed one foot on the front step, that the whole place was glazed with ice. I literally somersaulted onto the path, quite spectacularly. Arse over tit, we call it and bruised for days after. Bizarrely, my neighbour from two doors up emerged from her house at exactly the same and achieved exactly the same results. I think we’re both a lot more cautious in the Winter these days.

Putting the lights in the tree in the garden is possible the most dangerous thing that I’ll attempt all year. This isn’t because it’s a big tree or that the set of lights is particularly cumbersome. It’s because of the fact that we don’t have a proper ladder and that our front garden runs down to the tree on a bit of an uneven slope. Every time we put the lights up, I can sense curtains twitching, neighbours queueing up for what must be a combination of the most death-defying show they’ll see all year and the kind of act that a medieval jester would have put together in that it’s not funny, just kind of awkward.

Each year I dread the feeling of the step ladder legs sinking into the moist grass, wobbling as I get higher up the rungs and then veering dangerously sideways as I reach anywhere near the top. Many’s the time I’ve had to jump off before I fell off. In my head I’m something akin to Alex Honnold in the film Free Solo as he scales El Capitan. For anyone watching I’m probably a lot more like Stan Laurel or terrible circus clown; a lovable simpleton putting his body on the line in the name of looking slightly more masculine than usual. And that’s still just about as masculine as one of Steps.

The Winter wardrobe; particularly how I can’t manage a scarf. Some people are just stylish and the carrying off of a big coat or a thick jumper just seems to come naturally; they literally put on some of their Winter wardrobe and look like they’ve stepped out of the pages of Italian Vogue. They can trudge through the foot deep snow looking cool. They seem to almost levitate above the slush (that’s the dirty melting wet snow if slush is unfamiliar to you), their trousers immune to the water or the dirt, their cashmere overcoat unruffled by the wind. And then there’s me, either sliding about in trainers because I hate walking boots and wellies, or looking not unlike the Stay Puft man from Ghostbusters because of the sheer amount of layers I’m employing to fend off the cold. A few years ago I bought a new, expensive Winter coat and then almost immediately ripped the lining by one of the armholes, meaning that I couldn’t even put it on stylishly, preferring instead to choose the wrong hole almost every time and end up with one arm just stuck in the coat somewhere.

I’m a disaster when it comes to scarves though. Although it never puts me off buying them. Even this morning I made the latest in a long linesof attempts to wear a particular scarf that I must have bought in a sale a couple of years ago. It’s a bit of a Moddish affair and the kind of thing I’d expect Paul Weller or one of The Kinks to look fabulous in. Not me though. I still can’t decide how to wear it as it just seems about a foot too long. Thus, in my head I’m going to look great in it, but in reality I’ll stand in front of the mirror for 5 minutes trying different ways of wearing it before folding it roughly and returning it to the draw. I’ll wear a football scarf instead and just ruin whatever look it was that I was going for!

The weather can’t make up its mind. Time was, when I was much younger and lived in much more northern climes, that Winter meant snow. Nowadays, this is no longer the case. The sky tells lies. Take today, for instance. The weather forecast promised snow. Promised it! Sure enough the clouds arrived bang on time. It was freezing cold too. And then the rain started, accompanied by gale force winds and we were in the grip of another of our recent weather additions: one of those storms that the Met Office insist on giving stupid names to. And that’s the way of Winter these days; less of the kind of wonderful snowy landscapes that would block the doors when I was younger and more filthy dirty rain and horrible winds, designed to soak you to the skin and make it impossible to walk around the place! All of them given daft names – the last one was called Arwen and the one throwing us around like rag dolls today has the moniker Barras. I mean, who calls their new born baby Barra? Apart from anything else, you’re missing a trick in not adding a bit and christening it Badass, surely?

Linked to the weather is my sympathy for our PE staff at this time of year. Now I get that it’s all swings and roundabouts with PE teaching in terms of weather. I can’t help but feel envious when it’s a scorching hot summer’s day and they’re out on the fields. But in this weather, even a cold hearted old cynic like myself can’t fail but to feel a bit sorry for them. That is, sorry for them with a smug grin on my face as I sit in a lovely, modern heated classroom. Most mornings though, as I’m getting into my classroom, setting up for the first lesson of the day, PE staff are trudging out to the fields, loaded down with bags of footballs, poles and other kit like sporty beasts of burden. Then they’ll wander around said field, marking out areas with poles and cones before trudging back in soaked to the bone. And this is before they’ve actually taught a lesson. Do they ever get dry on these days? Is the only place where they’re not either frozen or soaked, their home? Is work just like one Arctic expedition after another for these poor souls? I love sport, but having to go through that on a daily basis just isn’t worth it.

This is the route to the fields for PE lessons. Runs right past my classroom window!

Sadly though, the weather isn’t something that I can avoid that much during Winter. As a volunteer football coach, I get to sample the sensation of being both frozen and soaked for what feel like endless hours, pretty much every Sunday in Winter (and Autumn…and Spring…and some of Summer; I mean we do live in England).

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, right? A time for relaxing and preparing oneself for the demands of the coming week. And yet, for most of the year I’m up not long after 7am in order to start preparing for a game. Having spent some of Saturday afternoon loading the car with the equipment we’ll need, I’ll rush my breakfast on the Sunday in order to be at our pitch – which is generally a mud bath at this time of year – setting up for around 8.40. Often, in Winter it’s either freezing cold, pouring with rain or your caught in the midst of some ridiculously high winds. Often, it’s all three at once. This will mean that by about 8.50 I’m either soaked through or have pretty much lost all feeling in my hands and toes, making jobs like putting nets onto goal frames incredibly difficult. Sometimes, when I’m really lucky, I might not be able to find any nets or corner flags – on one occasion I forgot the matchball – or there might not be enough spare kit to go around for the lads who’ve only just joined the club meaning I get to run around the place searching stuff out, which is all made infinitely better by driving rain, sleet or ankle deep mud that our winters inevitably bring.

After that I get to stand on the touchline coaching my way through the game, quite possibly losing my voice in the process, while attempting to stay warm now that I’ve thrown in the towel in the battle against the rain! (See below for some images of our pitch on a recent rainy, winter weekend)

Even when I get home, it’s not over. While the rest of the family can get inside and start getting warm, I’ll still have to unpack the car and load all of the gear back into the sheds, all while saying a silent prayer that it will have dried out in time for training a few days later. Then, I’ll have to sit on our wet step and take off my muddy boots, as well as my soaking wet socks and probably a couple of wet upper layers before I can even go in the house! Yep, you’ve got to love Winter!

So there you have it. While Winter is the season of sledging, building snowmen (snowpeople?), Christmas and hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire, there’s also loads to dislike about it. Roll on Summer where I can be far too hot one minute ad then fed up of the rain the next!

Oh, and by the way, remember to tune in next week, when in the name of blogging and content, I’ll be writing about the many things I love about this very season!