Who's The Daddy: How a collision with Walter lifted my spirits
What happened was a very bad thing, then it turned into quite a good thing. It’s probably best if I start at the beginning.
Last week our sighthound Walter found the ultimate piece of dog treasure on one of our twice daily fartwalks, where we pound the streets for an hour or so after meals to aid digestion - because that’s what middle-aged health freaks do for kicks these days.
We’d been out for a while when Walter started sniffing under a bush, then he disappeared underneath it and emerged a minute later with a full-size football in his mouth. Hallelujah! Miracles really do happen.
So we booted it around for a while, as Walter ripped chunks out of it, because we can’t have nice things. After 15 minutes or so he’d run himself into the ground, I managed to wrestle the ball out of his jaws and we went home.
It was the following day when the problems started. Late in the evening, me and Walter went out for the second half on a field near our house and I booted the ball into the stratosphere like a mid-90s Peter Schmeichel and Walter tore after it like Andrei Kanchelskis on the counter-attack.
It was then I made a schoolboy error. Foolishly, I decided to dribble the ball away from the boy Walter, who can get up to a full speed of around 40mph in six strides and goes in for the tackle like Roy Keane in his turn-of-the-millennium prime.
Dear reader, I didn’t know what had hit me, but the next thing I knew I was poleaxed face-first on the ground, having been put there by Walter who saw the ball was there to be won and clattered through his dad to get it. Tackle from behind. All four paws off the floor. Textbook red card. Three-match ban.
As I lay there for a few seconds, waiting for the pain to start from somewhere familiar - back, elbow, wrist, knee, brain stem and other places I’d been hospitalised for - a wonderful feeling of euphoria swept over me. Nothing hurt. I’d ridden a tackle, come off worse, but was OK. Maybe all these spin and Pilates classes paid off after all?
And then I thought, maybe I could start playing football again for the first time since 2013? So I asked The Boss what she thought and it was a hard no. So that’s that.
Finally this week, our daughters are off on their travels. Daughter #1 is on the Greek island of Skiathos with The Boyfriend, while Daughter #2’s cruise ship she works on docked in the German port of Hamburg, a wonderful place to spend an afternoon off.
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