The answer

I got thinking after Idiot's post about getting broody below, particularly after yesterday and though I'd share something. The highlight of most of my weeks, particularly the hard, dark, tough ones, is seeing my son play football on a Saturday.

He plays for a fairly low down team in a kiddie league and while they train seriously and want to win, it doesn't happen very often. Most of the parents there take it as it should be at this age, they support their kid but it's only a game and a bit of fun.

My little boy is a goalkeeper. I don't say "plays in goal" because he's been born with some ingrained sporting brilliance and is the one who keeps out 10 to 12 goals a game for his team. If he has three opposition players bearing down on him and is on his own, he's almost always the one who will come away with the ball.

No idea where it came from, I would have loved to have played for a sporting team when I was a kid but I was crap at everything. Always last in the race, least co-ordinated, last to be picked. That makes his current achievements, as you can imagine, all the more astonishing.

The pride in him I feel every week as I see him be the child I never could have been (smart, blonde, good looking, lots of friends, sensitive, polite and now gifted between the posts) is occasionally the sustainer in dark times, the justification for my life so far, the 40 minutes I sometimes live for. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pushy at all when it comes to academic things or sport, he just happens to be that way, I'd love him the same if he weren't, but he's just brilliant.

I don't know where this is going (what's new?), maybe to the thought that, for me although not necessarily for everyone, kids can sometimes be the answer when you didn't know there was a question.

I have to go, my daughter is currently trying to get me to fashion her pink robe with cows on it into some kind of cape as she feels like being a superhero.