I absolutely hate PE. PE stands for Physical Education. It should be banned. It is torture. I hate running. I hate netball. I hate the gym with its horse and bars and ropes. I hate rounders and cross country. I hate the long jump and the shot put. All these things are my idea of hell but I have a very particular hatred for lacrosse.
I think lacrosse must be the most awkward, difficult, frustrating game I have ever known. Keeping the ball in this ridiculously flat net made of animal gut is nigh on impossible. I’ve cradled until my arm aches and I still drop it. And I can’t run, cradle and dodge the opposition all at the same time, it’s just absurd.
Miss Morse, the PE teacher is harsh and unkind. She knows I hate PE and she hates me. I lose my navy blue knickers or my Aertex shirt far too often for her liking and my lack of enthusiasm for lacrosse elicits a palpable level of disdain. She thinks I am lazy and uncoordinated, and she’s right. I do everything I can to get out of PE. It feels like a competition between us. I try very hard at skiving, I’m not lazy when it comes to that. And she fights back with everything she’s got.
“I have a very bad tummy ache today Miss Morse” I say with a pained look on my face. “It’s my period”, I’m holding my belly. My period pains are often severe. Today they are not too bad but she doesn’t know that. Not that she cares anyway.
“Again Sophie, really?, I’m sure you had your period a couple of weeks ago”.
Ha, she’s wrong! I do have my period. But it’s quite possible that I tried the same excuse two weeks ago. I don’t remember. I don’t say anything. I wait for her next move. I just look at her with a mixture of defiance and entreaty. It’s long-distance running today and I just can’t. I really, really can’t.
I wish someone cared enough to know that because I have very flat feet, running is incredibly painful. My feet hurt so much that I could almost faint. My legs ache terribly after running even a short distance, sometimes for days after. The lack of instep affects my whole posture which means that running is a very bad idea. But no one connects the dots. No one has considered what it’s like for me to have flat feet. Such flat feet in fact that the orthopaedic surgeons I have been taken to find me to be quite an unusual case. But not unusual enough to think about excusing me from running. And it never occurs to me to say anything about it either. Why would it?
I stare at Miss Morse waiting to see what she’s going say.
She stares back at me.
“Sophie Boss you are hopeless. Go and sit in the library and read a book” She’s given up on me. I am relieved but I can’t help feeling ashamed. I wish I could be like Minty, Nicky, Kim, Louise and Caz. They are so sporty. They are in all the teams. They love PE. I wish I loved PE. Maybe life at Oakdene would be easier if I loved PE.
I do just about tolerate tennis and swimming.
Well, I almost like tennis, not that I’m very good at it but I think it could be if I tried. I just can’t make myself want to try. It seems pointless. I would much rather lie on the grass making daisy chains in the summer. Or look up at the clouds and fantasise about being in Italy.
I don’t mind playing tennis on the weekends when we don’t have to do it properly and we can just bat the ball back and forth over the net for fun. I seem to have quite good hand-eye coordination when it comes to tennis and I rarely miss, but my swing isn’t very targeted so I’m not great at staying within the lines.
I always feel so much pressure when we are playing tennis in PE lessons. Morse struts up and down the courts commenting on how we are holding our racquets or instructing us on our footwork. The aim is to play seriously and win and I just don’t care enough nor am I good enough. I am easily distracted, I find myself daydreaming while waiting for my opponent to gather the balls or take a serve, and then I miss the return or hit the ball wide. I always seem to end up feeling embarrassed and frustrated.
Swimming is ok. I’m quite good, I think. Probably because of all those early morning lezioni di perfezionamento with Endi in Monticelli last summer. He taught us to perfect our front crawl. He showed us exactly how to position our hands and how to kick our feet from the knee down. We spent hours, up and down, up and down the pool. It was fun actually. I enjoyed learning how to make swimming less hard work, how to cut through the water so precisely that we only make the smallest splash. How to turn my head just the right angle to breathe without taking it too far out of the water. And anyway, Endi is so lovely. He’s so kind. He’s so funny. He’s the best. He was definitely worth getting up at 8am for.
I’m in the swimming team. I swim front crawl and relay. I can’t do breaststroke because I have a screw kick and I’ve never managed to master butterfly. Backstroke is boring. The pool at school is freezing cold for most of the summer but I don’t mind. I’m fast and when I’m in the water I can forget about everyone and everything. I even quite like racing. But I think that’s only because I often win so I don’t have to feel the humiliation I experience on the lax pitch or the running track. My flat feet don’t let me down in the pool. They probably even help, more flat surface area to displace the water! Not really, but I like the idea of having flippers for feet.
We race against other local schools and my favourite is when we go to Wycombe Abbey. I wish we had a uniform like theirs. They have long navy blue capes, all the way down to the floor and hoods lined with red satin. They look so mysterious. And in summer they have straw boaters with blue ribbons, so much cooler than our stupid cotton berets. The tea after the races is in another league compared to Oakdene. Crustless Sandwiches on soft white bread, scones and jam, chocolate biscuits and lots of orange barley water.
Their swimming pool is at the top of a very steep slope with I don’t know how many steps to get up there. It’s exhausting. They always make sure they have walked up long before we arrive so that they are not out of breath and exhausted when it’s time to race. We climb up the hill, panting all the way. I think they bank on us wearing ourselves out just getting up there! But I’m by far a better swimmer than most of them. Their strategy fails.
Somehow being good at swimming and winning races doesn’t earn me any brownie points with Miss Morse. It’s as though by the autumn term she has forgotten my summer term successes and is as disappointed and disapproving as ever. I don’t think swimming really counts as proper PE in her books. Most of it is not a team event, apart from the relay race. And it doesn’t involve running about on a wet, muddy pitch for hours on end. Anything that is over in a matter of minutes and seems easy enough does not gain her seal of approval.
The main problem I have with PE, as I see it, is my lack of excuse creativity. Periods and lost kit, that’s the best I can do. I’m always up for the fight but I can’t seem to improve on my strategy. Sometimes I resort to getting changed and then just hovering around the pitch doing as little as I can or sneaking off for a little rest while the others run around the track. I will never surrender. I will never like PE. I will do as little as I can. I am determined.
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It was such a relief not to ever have to do PE or any kind of sport after I left school. I never looked back. For some years I bullied myself into going to the gym or signing up for aerobics (in the 90s) yoga and pilates (in the early 2000s). But all of that had nothing to do with being sporty or fit and everything to do with thinking I had to be thinner and more toned and that those things were the way.
For a good twenty years now I have stopped all of that. I am a very active person by nature, always in movement. I fidget a lot and love walking to places (loathe ‘going for a walk’). I have walked all the way home from town on occasion, two and a half to three hours at a comfortable pace. I walk to the shops, I walk or cycle part of the way to work. I always take the stairs because I’m claustrophobic and hate lifts. In the summer I swim in the sea or in an outdoor pool. I don’t need to do sport or formal exercise. I am fit and healthy, I can feel it.
The way I move today is the opposite of sport. Almost every day I do something called Constructive Rest, it comes from Alexander Technique and involves lying flat on my back, head resting on a couple of books, knees bent, elbows out to the side. I do this every single day. I never knew I had it in me to be so disciplined when it comes to physical activity. For twenty minutes I actively rest and then for another five or ten I do some gentle stretching, a mishmash of the moves I like from tai chi, qigong, yoga and pilates.
Once a week I attend an wonderful embodied movement class (Open Floor) run by my sister Audrey. I move my body to her skilfully chosen music for an hour - no sequences or steps. Just an hour to connect with myself and my body.
I wish physical education at school could have been more creative than team sports and running laps around a field. I might even have taken part.
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