A wryly delivered anecdote, not a headline

This not sleeping lark is getting right on my wick – it’s been for ages now. I’ve even moved down to the basement in the hope that the added darkness and absence of cats will help. It helps to a certain extent, in that I manage to get to sleep, but I still have the same issue about waking up in the middle of the night (usually at 4am) and then not being able to get back to sleep. Maybe this is norma? Maybe this is why older people go to bed at 8. My God, I’ll probably just have to move to Florida, start wearing pastel-coloured clothes, and take up shuffle-boarding.
 
Anyway, I did finally manage to drop off again, just before I had to wake up. Mrs. Ottawacker’s nephew, Zak, is heading off to do a term’s study in Rotterdam on Tuesday. As in, he’s heading off on Tuesday, not that he is doing a whole term’s study on Tuesday. Although, given that he is studying economics, that might be doable. His understanding of the dismal science might be improved by cycling to Amsterdam and getting stoned – at least, that is what I think this trip is for. I am jealous. What wouldn’t I give to have the opportunity to go and study for a term in the Netherlands, with four-day weekends every week, and be located at the nexus of European culture?
 
To mark the occasion, we took him for breakfast at Allô mon coco! in College Square. It was central and easy to find – although maybe I should have thrown something more complex in there, given he is upping sticks and moving to a new continent. Very nice it was too – and a rare occasion to sit down and hear about his life without the looming presence of his parents (who are very nice, but are, after all, his parents – and therefore the complete truth might be somewhat massaged).
 
Home to catch up on the blips and do the laundry, and then, in the afternoon, we headed out to Ottawacker Jr.’s end-of-season barbecue and swim party. And “end-of-season barbecue and swim party” wasn’t what I had when I was playing football. We shared an orange. Between the twelve of us. Anyway, this barbecue was a nice way of bringing together all the players and many of the parents who’d followed much of the team’s journey along the way. One of the parents had volunteered to free up their garden and pool, and so we all turned up. I find there is usually something inherently “staged” about these types of events, but there wasn’t this time, it was just a nice group of people and some lovely kids hanging out. All was going very smoothly, with plenty of laughter, until K jumped into the pool. Now, I am not sure about you, but when a 12-year-old boy takes a running jump into a pool, my initial thought is rarely “that is a boy who cannot swim”. And, indeed, nor did anyone else. And it was only when the volume of spluttering and shouting seemed to reach a higher level, that I turned round to see K going under for the third time. Thankfully, Chris, one of the parents was several steps ahead of me. He was already in the pool, fully clothed, before I had managed to reach the side. He was calming down the boys, keeping K’s head above water, and slowly manoeuvring him towards the shallow end. Catastrophe averted. It turned a full-blown disaster into a parents-staring-at-each-other-wide-eyed-and-mouth-open minute.
 
Once we had all patted Chris on the back, found him a change of clothes, and helped dry out his phone and wallet, we found out what in the name of God K was thinking about jumping into a pool when he cannot swim. He is terrified of dogs. And, it seems, our hosts’ silent, aged, terrier, who had sat quietly under the table thus far, had seen K and gone towards him give him a sniff. Cue panic. I am not sure whether said panic need to have resulted in jumping into a pool of water – but it is not my fear and who am I to judge? The risks of kids. The incident also revealed that none of the kids recognised that K was drowning and therefore had not stepped into help. That, in itself, is a little alarming. So, I think we’ll have to remedy that. Thank God for Chris is all I can say.
 
The rest of the afternoon morphed into an evening and K remained in the pool, being taught to swim in a big lifejacket, by his team mates, eventually getting onto the slide and having a lot of fun. We went home around 7.30, had a bite to eat (the barbecue finished a long time before) and eventually went to bed too late. Again, I slept terribly.