Monday The anticipation! The exhilaration and exhortation! And ultimately, alas, the devastation. England lost 1-0 to Spain in the Women’s World Cup, dashing hopes they could match the 1966 men’s team and restore some sporting glory to our increasingly decrepit little isle, but it was not to be, this time. Fortunately, there is no situation on earth that a Tory cannot make worse and so ’twas with Rishi Sunak as he tweeted his pride in the Lionesses’ grand efforts: “You left absolutely nothing out there.” What? What? The phrase is “You left everything out there”, you blithering idiot. As in – you played your hearts out on the pitch, you made every effort, you gave it your all for the 90 minutes of the game. You know, how people engaged in serious sporting endeavours do? It’s a quintessential, and quintessentially infuriating, Tory misstep. It’s the perfect manifestation of everything that’s wrong with them. He, or those around him, have heard this thing that ordinary people say. They have filed it away for future use. But because they are not remotely of, or interested in, the people, when the switch flicks, the circuit completes and the point-scorer emerges from the Tory’s mouth/social media account/arse, it is wrong. Both contemptibly and contemptuously wrong. Tuesday Plans to set up 100 chess tables in public parks have been approved to help people socialise, alleviate loneliness (especially among older people) and make things just a bit nicer, really.
It’s a great idea. Now I just need it extended to cover those of us who are going to need something to do in the fresh air in our later years but to whom the mathematical complexities of chess will for ever remain an impenetrable, unplayable mystery. Could we have 100 tables of Boggle? A hundred tables of Guess Who?. You can play that in the normal version if you want a quiet time, or subjective Guess Who? if you’re in a livelier mood. That’s when instead of asking: “Does your person have blue eyes/red hair/a hat on”, you say: “Does your person donate to their local food bank?” or “Does your person correct colleagues’ grammar?” Or perhaps: “Does your person know the difference between leaving nothing and everything on the pitch?” It’s a real friendship-maker. Or, to be fair, destroyer. But strangers in the park have nothing to lose but the game. Wednesday Today marks 100 days till the first chocolate of the advent calendar may be consumed, which means, unless I am very much mistaken, it is 124 days until Christmas. Apparently Home Bargains in Denbigh, north Wales, already has its decorations up. This seems late. My inbox has been filling with press releases about Christmas events, books, special hampers, merchandise, TV specials and holidays since at least early June. I long ago stopped resisting the busting of the seasonal boundaries. In fact, the older I get, the more I come to depend upon it. One hundred and twenty-four days till Christmas actually works out to about three and a half hours of spare time left to get everything sorted. So, yes, give me those early decorations, the heads up about what I can do, buy, watch and when. Time – oh God, like summers with your children – is running out. Thursday No news is good news, they say. Except possibly if you are Rishi Sunak. No news is bad news? No, wait, all news is good news? No, no non-dom status is good news? No, you’re right, I’m off track now, I can tell, but there are exceptions. For example, the fact the former culture secretary and book-typer Nadine Dorries still hasn’t resigned as MP for Mid Bedfordshire, as she promised to do in June when her liege lord Boris Johnson stepped down as prime minister. This seems a terrible oversight. If I were a resident of Mid Bedfordshire, I would write to my MP and complain. Friday I would normally be – and indeed part of me still is – looking forward to the imminent return of the child to school as the long, long, long summer holidays at last draw to a close. Unfortunately, a friend of mine ruined this very specific and well-earned pleasure right at the beginning of this year’s hiatus by having one glass of wine too many and saying with a tear-hitched sigh: “You know, you only get 18 summers with your child.” Together, I presume she meant, unless there’s some new Running Man-style legislation that has been passed while I wasn’t looking. And that was my holidays ruined. My son is 12, so that’s just six left. He’s already five inches taller than me (useful, but heartbreaking), has feet the size of barges and a voice that keeps catching me off guard and making me wonder what Barry White is doing roaming about upstairs. In the blink of a bladder, he’ll be gone and I’ll be stuck refreshing my email to see if there’s any news of his death in foreign parts on his gap year. So I’ve spent eight weeks running to the loo and hiding under the stairs to have a quick, hysterical cry in between lining up 14 unforgettable experiences a day to future-proof our memory stores and make him love me for ever. He is exhausted, baffled and can’t wait to get back to school. I suppose it all works out in the end.