Describe your ideal week.
The problem with an ‘ideal’ week is that you are very unlikely to know it is happening. You have to be entirely present in everything for seven days in order to achieve that level of ideal. I think you can have ideal days and, at a stretch, an ideal weekend, but an ideal week is out of the scope of most of us.
Even if you could have things come together, you are not likely to be able to see the ideal nature of a period of time until afterwards. Then, are you judging it properly? Are you looking back through rose coloured glasses? So many questions, so much over thinking! I guess that’s the problem isn’t it? You need a level of simplicity and level headedness that most of us don’t share. With all of the caveats above, the weekend just gone was pretty much ideal. We went to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday to watch Arsenal Women win 4-1, then took the train down to Eastbourne and had a very pleasant late afternoon and evening there. The following day we started with a lovely walk along the beach, explored the town and then went to Eastbourne Town Ladies ground to watch my daughter’s team win 6-2 in the First Qualifying Round of the Women’s F A Cup. Today we are back home and my wife and I are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary – Coral apparently – with a quietish day.
So, there you have it. Sometimes you can get close to ideal if you don’t plan, don’t have preconceived assumptions and just take life as it comes. Trying to plan for an ideal week cannot work in my opinion.
Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.
For the last 15 years I have seen first hand the growth of women’s football at both the grassroots and then the professional level. It has been a long journey, but what an amazing amount of progress the sport has made in that time.
My daughter started playing football as a nine year old in 2010. By the time she had finished playing for her team seven years later she was the only original member of that team left and she played 150 games without missing a single one through injury or illness. At the end of the first season the team reached the cup final for the Under 10 girls and I wrote a report to go into the local paper. For the rest of the time the team played together, another seven seasons, I wrote a report for every single one of their games. When I missed the odd game I got the details from the players and parents and then used my knowledge of the players to write a report that would fit in with the rest of those I wrote first hand. At the end of each season I put the reports together as a file and sent it through to the club chairman who printed them out. The girls were presented with the reports at the end of the season and, I was always pleased to note, immediately looked for their names, statistics and, for the last four seasons the short paragraphs I wrote about their playing style, their contributions to the team and their standout moments of the year. It was a labour of love and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I also tried to mark special occasions with something that money couldn’t buy. For my daughter’s 100th match I organised a card from the Lionesses which contained messages from all the players and for her 150th match, a congratulations card from Sir Alex Ferguson the manager of Manchester United, her favourite team. In the last couple of seasons we had a striker who was so good that she scored two goals a game and obliterated all our previous scoring records. She was a huge Chelsea fan so I got her a card from the Chelsea Women’s Team at the time. I was emotionally invested in the team to an incredible extent and I regard it as an absolute privilege to have given something back to the them. Actually, one of my previous posts reflected on my organising of Boxing Day matches to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Christmas Truce and the football matches in No Man’s Land. https://davidgpearce205.wordpress.com/2022/12/22/the-christmas-truce-1914/
I suppose that has given me a huge amount of interest in the rise of Women’s Football at the professional level especially over the last four years. I am a regular visitor to the Emirates Stadium to watch Arsenal Women and it has given me a love of football that the Men’s game never engendered. The atmosphere of enthusiasm and the shared love of the game comes without the aggressive tribalism and nastiness of Men’s Football. The mainly female, mainly young and wholly inclusive crowd is always totally safe and utterly enjoyable. I am always so pleased to see young girls with their replica shirts on and I have noticed that in the past three seasons, the previous split of about 75/25 in terms of names on those shirts of men’s team players to women’s team players has completely reversed. Even I go along proudly wearing the name of my favourite player on my back!
Alessia Russo is not only one of the hardest working forwards I have ever seen, but she displays none of the petulance of her male counterparts and plays the game with the same joy I saw with my daughter and her team mates. The other players, who I also love watching never lose sight of how lucky they are to earn their living at the sport they love. They are always wholly appreciative of the fans and play the game without the tiresome play acting that has scarred the men’s game. I have lost interest in the Premier League and the rest of the male game. For me, football is now all about the young women who play with smiles on their faces and a realisation that they are the role models for a sport that is on the up with our amazing Lionesses leading the way at international level, Chelsea dominating at domestic level with amazing players like Sandy Baltimore and Erin Cuthbert, and of course our Champions League winners, the Arsenal team with players like Leah Williamson, Katie McCabe and Mariona Caldentey showing skills that take the breath away at times.
It’s the Women’s F A Cup First Qualifying Round today and I am in Eastbourne. Why? My daughter, who has carried on playing, joined a new team that was being set up two years ago by Hollands and Blair. They have been promoted twice in those two seasons, got to a Cup Final, beating a number of higher ranked teams and today they face Eastbourne Town in the F A Cup. It’s been an incredible two seasons for them and this is just another huge step for a young team who have been inspired by the trailblazers of the Women’s game over the last decade and a half. Win, lose or draw (although I am not sure if I can go through a penalty shootout!!) the Hollands and Blair Ladies can be incredibly proud of themselves as they write a new chapter in their own story.
UPDATE!! Eastbourne Town Ladies 2 Hollands and Blair Ladies 6 (SIX) Through to the 2nd Qualifying Round! What a proud Dad moment!
How do you relax?
You might expect it to be really easy to relax when you have finished year round teaching. Actually, it’s the complete opposite. The sheer novelty and uncertainty of the situation makes it very difficult to settle. Now, I know I am in the first week so it’s very early days, but I feel like the transition from lesson planning, teaching and marking is much more difficult than I expected.
Every day I feel like I have to ‘achieve’ something, however small. Now, that’s a pretty good approach in the long run, but at the moment I am not sure how much I am supposed to achieve! I am also very tired both physically and mentally, as you would expect, so I am somewhat restrained by that.
What am I trying to say? I suppose I am trying to say that relaxation is always something I have had to work at, and my new circumstances will be no different. I will try various things and see what works, but until I work out how to relax I won’t be able to relax!! 🤣🤣
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
As a lover of words from my childhood and an English teacher for 30 years, the idea of giving up a word is anathema. I have taught my students to expand their vocabulary and make it more nuanced rather than contract their vocabulary and make it less fit for purpose.
George Orwell recognised this in the book 1984 when he invented Newspeak, the restrictive, very easily controlled language of the state. You could argue that we are in a situation with some similarities today as social media and its reduced character count, or its focus on getting the maximum impact in the minimum time and space is moving our languages across the world in that direction.
Let’s just imagine you wanted to remove the word hate from your vocabulary. On the face of it, that’s a laudable aim, but actually it’s just removing your ability, both lingually and cognitively, to express the full range of emotions and ideas you may have. So, you replace hate with loathe, abhor, detest, deeply dislike or take exception to. You now have five words or phrases instead of one and those words are appropriate to a whole range of situations. People will understand more precisely what you mean and you can use those words to give you the platform for a discussion not a shouting match.
So next time you think of cutting out a word, either online or offline, make sure you have at least three or four options to replace it.
Are you holding a grudge? About?
I remember reading somewhere that holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting to kill someone else! Now, I have been an expert at holding grudges throughout my life. Many of the people I have held grudges against for decades, those I went to school with, have almost certainly not bestowed one thought on me in the intervening years but I have been carrying around hatred for many of them. Has it affected them? Of course not. Has it affected me? You bet it has!
So, the message for me was clear for a long time but I could never internalise it until I started using the Calm App. Now that I am more present, these long standing grudges have assumed less importance. I have gone on with my own life and I have a wife and family I love. They will have gone on with their own lives, no doubt continuing to bully co workers because bullying is hard wired into them and bullies hardly ever apologise or change. There in that last sentence is the major part of my problem, a view of humans as basically bad with goodness being the exception.
So, I am a work in progress, but I know that only I can affect my mindset and I can only do that with hard work, psychologically speaking. I am putting in that work day by day and I am seeing some progress, but take it from me, grudges are a waste of time.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 