Fun in the Sun

People in the southern hemisphere know about sport. They know how to throw a ball; catch a ball; kick a ball; hit a ball; run, swim, jump and even somersault.

So here I am, stuck in the Middle East, doing my first sports-day at school. Sports day, my foot! Stupid little games. And these kids can’t. They simply can not. Hoola-hoop – not too bad. Even the boys. Kick a ball – gets better. Beanbag toss. My item.  No-one knows how to throw, let alone aim. About fifty kids, (aged 8 – 12) – not a single child managed to toss a beanbag into a bucket 3m away. Less than half of them got it into a bucket 1.5m away. I found it uninspiring and not fun. Not fun at all.

Then followed the races. 

·         Sack races in sacks that were too small and therefore tore.

·         Egg-and-spoon races with wooden eggs. I remember using real eggs and real spoons and if yours fell and broke, you were out of the race. At least there was an element of fun in it! (Okay, maybe we were older!)

·         The dress-up race was stupid. (I thought)

·         The water race, which could have been fun, got canceled.

·         And finally, we were to finish with an obstacle race. My effort of bringing some fun and excitement into it. Bit of a challenge. Well, the bloomin challenge was that the teachers never got the hang of it. They were the challenge.

The whole thing is cock-eyed. The teams aren’t equally spread. In my Year 6 class of eleven, five are green and one is yellow. Two red and two blue. So it might even out with perhaps the year 3’s having more yellow and less green (not so), but even then it means the top-end of one team is loaded. Secondly, numbers are per se uneven. You would then have red with 15 members and green with 13. That means that in the green house two people have to run twice – naturally the strongest two. The younger ones get too confused. So the red team has a spread of talent whereas the green team get to run their best athletes twice. The biggest team will always be at a disadvantage. And so it goes on.

To top it off, and about this I could go ballistic, there’s this one Pakistani teacher with her holier-than-thou attitude. (Her being Pakistani is not the point.) Never opens her mouth. Never makes any contribution. Never gives an opinion… until the actual day of the event. Arrives in her high heals and evening gown. (Well, almost!)  A round robin means you change at set intervals and when every one is done. And normally you’d go clockwise. If they choose to go anti-clockwise here, I would still accept. But crossing diagonally, makes no sense! Not to me, anyway.

And so, back to the races. Madam High Heels, waits till we’ve finished three of the races, and then tells me that the red house has one extra child which hadn’t been taken into account. I got annoyed and responded “Where were you when we made the arrangements? Why didn’t you say something then?” She quickly (which is not very quickly) ran to Madam Headmistress, who doesn’t enjoy any of this anyway. And then proceeded to take over the arrangements for my said obstacle race. Could have been ‘cause I was standing, at that point, with my hands in my pockets, staring into space. Needless to say: the kids saved the day ‘cause they carried on with the race regardless of the ‘minor’ changes and adjustments made by Paris-bloody-Hilton. (Excuse my French)  

So why do I feel the need to share this boring account? Honestly! Basically because I want to say: I miss good sport. I really, really miss good sport. For that matter, any sport. And secondly, ‘cause I needed to blow off steam.