Sunday morning came to soon for me today. Its always does. Sneaking up on me when I'm not quite ready for it, dragging me rudely from my slumber in the shape of impatient children who want to be in their swimming lessons, like, now.
If I'm lucky I get to have breakfast before setting off down to the local pool where I mix with other parents, who in varying measures, feel and look like me, like they too where ambushed by Sunday morning. Bad hair, bad breath and bad posture abound as we slump, half dozing in our spindly plastic chairs, sipping on council teas and chewing on stale toast.
The children have a great time, splashing about and learning - its seems by accident - to swim. It doesn't really take that long having rushed them through the changing room and stuffed them back in the car we are soon home for a quality cuppa and a bowl of corn flakes.
Next up, its rugby - back in the car, with boots, balls and bedlam as one little boy has still too much energy and can't wait to be running around a muddy field. We arrive at the usual time and the gathered parents soon entrust their children to the Scotsman (the Coach) and his little helpers. The visitors, from some where north of the M4, soon arrive and various games are under way. They call it a sport, but at this age group, it looks like a bunch of hysterical dwarfs trying to knock seven shades of shit out of each other. There is lots of shouting, screaming and abuse and that's just the parents. The coaches try their best and the kids carry on regardless.
Most of us grown ups stand around chatting - moaning at the weather, moaning at the kids and moaning at the world in general. Gary (bad heart) makes his usual bad jokes, Mark (big beard) talks about just about anything and usually found with a bar of chocolate near to hand, Mike (woman in every wholesalers) nurses a hangover and probably a sore knob. We comment on the children, say nice things about them. We comment on the coaches/referees and say not so nice things about them. Mike, I think, wanted to kill the coach for being a bit to bad tempered with his boy but he went on and had a good game so macho pride was left just about intact. Occasionally, and today was one of those occasions, we talk about an issue of the day (yawn, parents are so tiresome sometimes but this time it was valid and worth mentioning). Today its was about gay people.
I don't have a problem with gay people. To me, they are just regular people doing whatever it is they do to get through life, just like the rest of us. OK, I'm not keen on the idea of two guys shagging each other (although two women does have a certain atheistic appeal....) but I don't have to think about that anymore than a gay bloke has to think about me and my wife banging away like a shit house door in the wind either. But some people find the idea of gay people abhorrent from start to finish.
Now I may be wrong or just naive but who really bases their world view of people on what they get up to in the bedroom? How ridiculous is it that you'd dislike some one because they take it up the arse with another guy, or that two females would wish to like each other honey pots? All of the people I like I tend to like because they say interesting things, or they make me laugh, or we share mutual interests - their sexuality doesn't really enter the equation. It would be like being best buddies for twenty years with someone - sharing the highs and lows, getting drunk etc. One day they tell you they are gay. What would you do, tell them to piss off or just say "So? And that makes a difference in what way?" I'd like to think the last answer is the right answer.
Why all this moralising? It got mentioned that a law was being talked about that is supposed to make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality (when it came to goods and services) illegal - a hotel owner, for example, couldn't turn away a lesbian couple on the grounds that they are gay. He could turn an adulterous straight couple away but that is another story. Things is, law or not, do any of us really need to know about a persons sexuality?
Its my humble opinion that we don't and we should try and judge people on their merits or not, as the case maybe.
So, thats sorted then.
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