{"id":1582,"date":"2024-02-25T21:21:20","date_gmt":"2024-02-25T21:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/?p=1582"},"modified":"2024-02-25T21:21:20","modified_gmt":"2024-02-25T21:21:20","slug":"games-without-frontiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2024\/02\/25\/games-without-frontiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Games Without Frontiers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My enthusiasm for sport has always surpassed my ability. Except for soccer. At school, me and John Grant would always play in defence and hope the ball never came our way. I still don&#8217;t see the point of that one.<\/p>\n<p>But I enjoyed cricket and tug-of-war (I wasn&#8217;t very heavy but I had brains and understood the importance of rhythm), and hockey and swimming, and above all, rugby.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re fortunate now to live right next door to not one but two rugby grounds, and a year and a half ago I got around to signing away our Sunday mornings to take Joshua to rugby training.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a &#8216;journey&#8217;, but the squad is finally coming together, and in their little matches Joshua is showing flashes of genius, not to mention grit and determination\u2014and kittens for <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/\">his mother<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Rugby training\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0sRiJd4qyz8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He had 2 days with Saracens coaches at half term, along with four of his squad-mates, and it might have made a difference.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;ll also happily sit and watch the 6 Nations, cheering along whoever is playing (let&#8217;s not mention the Calcutta Cup though), and even though he was cheering for France at the outset was quite devastated when Paolo Garbisi&#8217;s rushed penalty bounced off the posts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-scaled.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1583 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-300x161.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"161\" srcset=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-300x161.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-1024x549.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-768x412.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-1536x824.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/files\/2024\/02\/IMG_2399-2048x1099.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s also discovered that he can swim. He&#8217;s been having lessons since he was 5 or 6, but something has suddenly clicked, to the extent that when his primary school trust organized (I use the term loosely) a gala at the Olympic Park in Stratford, and his school only had four swimmers for a 5-lap relay, he was chosen to swim twice and helped the team to a silver medal\u2014the only podium slot his school managed that day.<\/p>\n<p>So he&#8217;s not just smart and handsome, but athletic too. Probably all due to his mum, again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My enthusiasm for sport has always surpassed my ability. Except for soccer. At school, me and John Grant would always play in defence and hope the ball never came our way. I still don&#8217;t see the point of that one. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2024\/02\/25\/games-without-frontiers\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[417],"tags":[405,289,369,418,419],"class_list":["post-1582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-offspring","tag-15minutepost","tag-joshua","tag-proud-dad","tag-rugby","tag-swimming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}