I am having a nice time hanging out with Leo, while the girls are away in Italy visiting Roman ruins and avoiding my aunt.
Hanging out with Leo means not only learning to love the Beautiful Game. It means learning to live, breathe, dream, think and talk football; all the time.
At the weekend I was trying to watch the box set of ‘Mistresses’. This is the kind of useless thing you can do when you are gainfully employed and have someone else to do the ironing. I made the excuse that it was ‘research’ for my book, and actually it did give me some good ideas. Anyway, Leo was keen to play football. So I decided to combine the two. We came up with a game called ‘Newspaper Football’ whereby I sat with a folded up copy of the FT in front of me and he had to score a goal by hitting it. My job was to protect my goal and watch the TV at the same time.
Then there are the conversations we have. “Mummy, was I born when Zola left Chelsea?” he asked the other day. Thank goodness for the Internet. The answer by the way is 2003.
As I write Leo is at a football camp. Yesterday was his first day. It is in a dome-like construction but searingly hot. He still refused to take his Chelsea shirt off, insisting on wearing the camp T-shirt over the top of it.
We head off on holiday on Saturday. I am hoping we will find some outlets for his football fetish in Geneva, Paris and London. I love the fact that he is so mad about something. If not, there’s always Newspaper Football.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010