Tag Archives: childhood

Euros 2024

One of my favourite memories as a kid is collecting the football Panini stickers. I never did fill an entire album up, but those in my collection were English football league, which always included the Scottish league as well (I was always disappointed when I got Willie Watters from Kilmarnock instead of Ian Rush) and then there were the World Cup and Euros editions.

The 1988 Euros was my first one but, for anybody my age, the Italia 90 World Cup sticker book was THE collection to have. Panini really stepped up for this particular collection but the event itself was also fantastic as there were so many great teams competing around that time. Brazil, West Germany, Italy, Argentina and the Netherlands all had incredible talent in their squad and, of course, England had Gazza.

Gazza stole the show, but David Platt’s sublime volley against Belgium was a highlight. It was the only match that I missed. For some reason, my school decided to have a parents evening that night. My parents wanted to watch the match too. I remember my mum quickly asking the music teacher if I ‘sang like a bird’ before making a swift exit to get home to see some of the game. We listened to the patrons shouts of anxiety come from the pubs as we walked past each one, so we knew it was a close game. I think, if memory serves, I got to see the goal in extra time.

As it is tradition, I got my two boys their very first sticker album for Russia 2018. Jonas especially has been hooked on football since and I sometimes still see him looking through the pages of his unfinished collection (does anyone ever complete the whole book?!) but as a parent I now realise that these little packets of stickers are an expensive do when your child wants a pack every time they pass a shop. 

And the quality isn’t what they used to be. The books aren’t as good somehow, the stickers aren’t as sticky and they don’t include the same facts as the ones I had. I don’t know why I needed to know the height of Toto Schillaci but the information was appreciated.

Jonas and Finlay still ask for Panini sticker albums for major events but they also want to collect Pokémon cards, Brawl Passes, Fortnite Skins and any other tat the shop sells by the tills. Where do we draw the line as parents?!

Anyway, the stickers for the Euro 2024 are also very popular in the Portuguese supermarkets. What information would Panini put on Trent Alexander Arnold’s sticker? Do they put him as a defender, a right back, a midfielder, a DM or an inverted full back? Nobody knows and, more worryingly, neither does Gareth Southgate.

Southgate seems like a great guy. I met him once. Well, I say I met him, but I actually drove past him on the motorway to Middlesbrough. And it might not surprise you that, despite his expensive range rover and my 1.2 Swift, I still managed to overtake him as he hogged the middle lane at 50 mph. True story.

And so then, his conservative approach to his coaching tactics doesn’t surprise me. He is very safe. But to continue the similarities between his motorway driving and his coaching, he might play it a little too safe but he has a knack of getting to his destination. Three years ago he led England to their first major final since 1966. And this year he is trundling along the middle lane in a souped up muscle machine as he gets to his destination. He might be grinding the Bellingham brakes and grinding the Gallagher gears but, I can’t deny, he’s still en route.

Apart from Italia 90, I don’t ever remember really ‘supporting’ an international team in a tournament. Of course I’d like to see England win, but I just don’t get as excited as watching Liverpool in club football. But now I’m living in Portugal, I can just imagine the festas if they were to win it! So England or Portugal for me.

Watching the games with Portuguese commentary has really helped me in learning the language. I’m not sure where phrases like ‘goal kick’, ‘two minutes to go’ or ‘they’ll have to check if that was ball to hand or hand to ball’ will get me in life, but it’s a start.

It’s the quarter finals next. The event has been a nice distraction from the work we have to do here so I’m really enjoying it. But I hope to see two things happen…for Ronaldo to start scoring and for Southgate to risk leaving the middle lane. It’s the only way either of them will see the final.

Happy Birthday Finlay

My two boys are very different. This is something that has always been apparent to me, but now they are developing their own unique personalities at ages 8 and 10, it is wonderful to see how brilliant yet very different they are to each other.

I was concerned when it came to Finlay’s interests. I just wasn’t sure what he wanted to do as an activity outside of school. Jonas was easy. He showed great running ability and ball control skills from when he could stand up! His love of football came during the 2018 World Cup when he was 4 and he seems to have a great knack of understanding most sports quite easily.

But, although Finlay played football, it almost seemed like he wanted to do it to please me or Jonas. As the younger sibling seeing the accolades that his older brother was getting, maybe he just wanted to do the same. I knew though that his heart wasn’t in it and I knew that he could find his own talents and interests elsewhere.

Finlay has got footballing talent, but it is very different to Jonas’. Jonas can take it past a few defenders with either foot and plant a goal in the top corner, but I never fancied him in a 50/50 challenge. After most games I would have to bite my tongue in asking him why it looked like he had bottled a tackle.

Finlay, however, I’d back against anyone in a 50/50. So much so, I’ve heard that Roy Keane has nightmares about coming up against Finlay. Legend has it that Vinnie Jones retired from football after hearing that Finlay was a twinkle in my eye all those years ago. And it just so happens that Diego Someone cancelled Finlay’s trials for Athletico Madrid because he didn’t want his players getting hurt. Even Chuck Norris refused an arm wrestle with Finlay.

Finlay is fearless in competition. I worried about the other kids when he did play football. If they dribbled past him they’d be on the floor, usually from a rugby tackle type bear hug. It didn’t matter how big the other kids were. My ankles would be bruised after a 30 minute kick about in the garden. The last time my ankles looked like that was after marking Dealer Dave from the Swan’s Head in 2002. Finlay is ruthless.

Finlay has shown excellent gymnastics ability. He can cartwheel, hold himself on the rings, balance beam and, probably after watching me, can plank and press up without cheating. In fact, his press ups are super impressive with perfect form. And this discipline has led him to another interest in martial arts.

When Jonas was a toddler it was pretty easy to play ‘tickle monster’ and play fight with him. He would just giggle and roll about. Finlay, however, would fight back. I mean ‘go for the knackers’ fight back. Headbutts, chops to the throat, anything to gain the upper hand on his old dad. Martial arts might just be his thing.

Finding a birthday present was made much easier then. We got him a punch bag and gloves. Lou was apprehensive at first but I have always believed that punch bags and being taught a martial art discipline is good for young people. Well, at any age! It teaches control, technique, following instructions and respect. It can channel anger and create self esteem in its participants.

Indeed, having worked with children in sports I know that, taught correctly and with the right message from a coach, any sport can have this impact and, knowing how a gym environment impacted my young self, once a person finds their happy place in a sporting environment it can be life changing. I knew it was time for Finlay to have a punch bag.

He is extremely happy with his birthday present and in the future we will be looking at him joining a dojo if it is what he wants. But for now he’ll have to settle for me teaching him, as I am Jonas with football. We’re still settling into our new life in Portugal and eager to set up our business to make an income. I can’t do the trips into town each evening until that is sorted. The boys are being patient.

So, happy birthday Finlay. You and Jonas are both wonderful boys. Keep doing what you’re doing.

My Name Is…My Name Is (wicky wicky) Shay D.D

For the past couple of years my boys, aged 7 and 10, have been asking me if I know who Rick Astley is. As a child of the 80’s, I certainly do know of Rick Astley. Well, now my kids know of him too. Apparently he has a ‘Rick roll’ dance on the game Fortnite. But Rick seems to be yesterday’s news (or dance) and it is now a craze of Eminem.

Last week Jonas asked me if I knew of Eminem. With a ‘Pffft!’ I answered ‘yes of course!’

You see, back in the early 00’s, I dusted off my old Brian Harvey baggy jeans that I wore during the ‘Stay Now’ days, out came the basketball vests and bubble jacket, I bleached my thinning hair blonde and tried to capture the Marshall Mathers look. There’s nothing that my kids can tell me about Eminem.

Well, they can. Worryingly so.

Jonas is now walking around the house like Harry Enfield’s Kevin from Kevin and Perry quoting songs from Eminem.

It seems like everything that those of a certain age did back in the day to worry their parents is coming back to bite us in the arse. Rick Astley aside, it seems that my kids are beginning to dredge back up all of my most unfortunate memories from being young.

I vaguely remember getting stoned to Family Guy. I could easily get through four seasons without moving from my pit. Low and behold, Peter the ‘Family Guy’ has become a video game character that my kids are obsessed with.

If Mr Tumble brings out a hit song with Marylin Manson then I’ll start to think that the universe has it in for me.

Recently, I’ve begun to realise just how hard it was for my parents. It’s difficult to keep your children away from the latest craze if all of their mates are into it. Doing the right thing is tough. What is the right thing?

Today we bought them both smartphones for Christmas. They’re both too young, I know, but their friends all communicate on WhatsApp and seeing as our boys can no longer see their friends in person, a phone seemed like our only option.

I’m not sure you can ever get it right as a parent. Jonas is obsessed with Eminem now, but how can I allow Jonas to listen to his sweary lyrics?!

Well, luckily there are a few YouTube sites with ‘clean’ versions, but I’m putting a lot of trust in Jonas in keeping to those sites that I have found for him. If he comes out of his bedroom with a hockey mask and a chainsaw, I will know that he has detoured from them.

I was slightly insulted when Jonas asked me if I knew of Eminem. I used to be cool. I could spit some bars with the best of them…

…or maybe not.

But I still know of Eminem!

Truth be told if I had a choice I would much rather listen to Rick Astley’s songs than Eminem these days. I’m more Go West than Kanye. You get what I mean.

But either way, It looks like I’ll have to get to know these rappers all over again.

Shady spitting bars
Shay DD propping up bars

Confessions Of A Tooth Fairy

Finlay’s tooth has been threatening to fall out for months. He has wobbled it, pulled it and tugged on it but the little blighter has held on by a thread.

Until yesterday.

His front tooth finally fell out. No fuss, no blood. Just popped out.

‘So!’ announced Finlay, ‘I’ll be getting a Euro from the Tooth Fairy tonight!’

He is right, of course, that the tooth fairy does indeed visit our home on tooth-coming-out occasions but here’s what you should know about the tooth fairy that has been allocated to us.

Finlay is adamant that the Tooth Fairy is a ‘he’, so for the sake of this article and in danger of misgendering our Tooth Fairy, I’ll refer to him as male.

But this is where the issue may stem from. He might be upset that we call him a ‘him’. You see, the Tooth Fairy didn’t turn up through the night. No euro was left and Finlay’s milky white was still there, under his pillow, all wrapped up in a bit of tissue.

So Lou and I have spent the morning making excuses for our Tooth Fairy. We told Finlay that, perhaps due to us having a few different addresses in the past few months, he wasn’t sure where we lived.

We waited a moment to see Finlay’s reaction as we tried to defend our erratic Fairy friend from Toothland.

I’m not sure that was believable.

I went on to explain that, due to the backlog of tooth fallings out recently he might be running late. I used my birthday card as an example. I was due my card from my dad on the 14th of November from England. It is now the 2nd of December and it still hasn’t arrived.

But likening the Tooth Fairy to the lackadaisical postal system in central Portugal didn’t seem to wash with young Finlay.

Ok, Here’s The Truth

The truth is that the Tooth Fairy is a very hard, honest working Fairy who was well aware of Finlay’s tooth under his pillow but had fallen asleep that evening after a few glasses of port watching Netflix.

The Tooth Fairy, in waking up a little disoriented on the sofa, totally forgot to take the tooth and leave a Euro.

It was a total black mark on an otherwise glittering CV, but the Tooth Fairy had fucked up this time.

Still, I attempted to defend him. I told Finlay that the Tooth Fairy had a much tougher job than Santa. Santa has loads of elves to make presents and then Santa does his job on one night and takes all the credit!

I mean, there’s actually some credibility in my argument, right?

Tonight, I’m sure, the Tooth Fairy will have had a sobering talking to with his conscience and will totally be on it tonight. Finlay, however, is unaware of the damning truth that the Tooth Fairy got carried away with a bottle of Port and forgot to put a Euro under his pillow last night.

So we have given Finlay a little tip. We told him that the Tooth Fairy might like a note of appreciation, asking for his tooth to be taken, and this is what he might be waiting for. Just a little letter of thanks for the job he does. After all, the Tooth Fairy might also be a parent who is trying to do their very best.

I don’t think that the Tooth Fairy will let us down tonight.

Artic Roll

We provide the kids with packed lunches each day for school. There are a few reasons for this but the main reason is that Lou and I can inspect their lunch boxes at the end of their school day to make sure they’ve been eating enough.

We usually include a sandwich or wrap, crisps, a pepperami stick and vegetable sticks. They do, in case you were wondering, a very good job of eating it all (apart from the occasional sorry looking carrot stick in at the bottom of the bag).

But this morning our youngest, Finlay (6) asked if he could have a school meal next Wednesday. ‘Of course!’ I replied. ‘What’s so special about Wednesday’s meal?’

‘They do ice cream with sponge around it.’ He said.

The memories of my own childhood came flooding back. I remember eating this ice cream wrapped in sponge while watching Hi-Di-Hi every Saturday. This delicious dessert is the arctic roll. Or artic roll as I called it as a kid and probably did up until my 30’s.

I don’t recall many experiences of eating an arctic roll as an adult, but since Finlay reminded me of it all I’ve wanted all day is to eat one!

I had a sweet tooth as a child but rarely eat sweet puddings these days, but I do know that these old skool dinner puds are still available in UK supermarkets. Puddings such as jam roly poly, spotted dick, rice pudding and apple crumble.

I wonder if anyone has any more of their classic favourites that bring back childhood memories? Let me know in the comments!

Super Durant-Duckworth Bros.

It’s not often we agree on a movie to watch on our house movie days.

For example, I will suggest something edgy like Indiana Jones or Men In Black. Ok, maybe it isn’t that edgy but for 9 and 7 year olds who run out of the room when the bird lady appears in Home Alone Lost In New York, then anything that is a 12 plus is edgy.

My wife usually suggests something with a talking bear or mouse befriending a middle class family.

Jonas, my 9 year old, would probably go for The Spy Next Door every time and Finlay loves The Bee Movie and Flushed Away. But I used to know every scene of Flushed Away after lockdown so I’d rather not sit and watch it again any time soon!

As a family though, we can all agree on one movie that we have been desperate to see. The Super Mario Bros movie has been much anticipated in our household. We didn’t get a chance to see it at the cinema so when it arrived on Amazon video to rent we declared a house movie day!

The usual house movie day goes like this…

We debate the movie that we will watch for an hour or two. The movies mentioned above are all in the mix every time.

My wife and I tip bags of crisps into bowls, get some popcorn on the go and allow the boys a can of pop each. I say ‘allow’ because fizzy pop isn’t something we would usually have in the house. So movie day is a real treat for the lads!

The curtains get drawn, the picnic blanket goes on the sitting room floor, cushions and soft teddies get strewn about for good measure and we all take our positions for the beginning of the movie.

A few years ago, house movie day would have been an invitation for me or my wife to fall asleep halfway through the film. Indeed, if it was Flushed Away for the twentieth time it would have been rude not to. But there was no chance that would happen for Super Mario Bros.

My wife and I have fond memories of Super Mario while growing up. The simple game play on the now very retro consoles that I had as a kid reminds me of good times. Tetris, Sensible Soccer, Donkey Kong and Pacman too just take me straight back to me in my bedroom as a kid.

So when the Mario Bros music started at the beginning of the movie it triggered the memories.

I want my kids to have similar memories that, when they’re adults, will just transport them to innocent times of being a kid.

The theme tune to a favourite cartoon, the smell of a book, the noises of the arcades at the seaside, the face you pull when you put a fizzy sour cola bottle sweet in your mouth, hearing mum and dad laugh.

It doesn’t need to be Disneyland or a trip to Lapland that makes memories. I can still smell the caravan that I stayed in at Skipsea like I was there yesterday. And the great experiences that I had there will stay with me forever.

I hope that our house movie days can do that for Jonas and Finlay.

Rain For The Next 2 Weeks

Here in the UK it is tennis season. The time where people who have never held a tennis racket before put on their white cap and head off to their local council tennis courts.

Many of them are surprisingly well kept. As a kid there were many courts on East End Park and they were generally in good working order. A few torn nets and a bit of broken glass in places but it made for an interesting game. And they were in much better condition than where we all played football, seeing as we would use the old discarded glue bags and the dog turd as goal posts.

It might have helped that the tennis courts were close to the caretaker’s house, so any vandalism would have been heard by him. I say ‘him’, but we never saw anybody coming from the caretaker’s house. A big house that resembled the one out of the amativille movie. I would quicken up my walk as I walked past.

I was one of these people who would pick up a racket for a couple of weeks during July. It is, of course, the Wimbledon tennis tournament. I would be sure to be wearing my long white shorts and t-shirt in an attempt to look like my favourite player, Andre Agassi. He was the first player to wear long shorts while his opponents were still in very tight 1980’s short shorts. I wanted room for my tennis balls to move about, so I thought baggy shorts were sensible. Agassi had a bit of a rock n roll attitude about him on court too. I had a rock n roll attitude, but I was crap at tennis.

One thing you can be sure of in England is that as soon as Wimbledon starts, the rain starts. It remains warm and muggy in the evening but the weather likes to postpone tennis matches for a couple of weeks with its incessant rain. Problematic for an outdoor tournament played on grass.

And to think, just last week I put the tent up in the garden for the boys to sleep out and it was cracking the flags for a full week. Hopefully the sunshine will come back but if we want to be entertained by Cliff Richard singing in the stands then the rain is bound to stick around for a couple of weeks yet.

So where does this leave me? A sports lover for sure but I’ve not watched a tennis match since Tiger Tim got a semi.

My only option then is cricket, where England and Australia play a game for about a year for a tiny trophy.

Yes, I’m missing the football season, which is odd seeing as I spent the beginning of this year wanting the season to end. There wasn’t much to cheer about being a Liverpool fan. A right back moving into midfield was as exciting as it got for me.

And you can bet that Wimbledon will take over the whole of the BBC. So when the continuity announcer tells us that EastEnders will be shown at a later date, I’ll be screaming ‘You cannot be serious!’ at the TV screen.