Cuteness abounds

Well, I’ve seen some cute things in my life. I’ve seen my own newborn babies, (funny how your own are so gorgeous, whereas other peoples'...). I’ve seen baby rabbits, and ducklings. Our next door neighbour has just got a 9-week old puppy. That’s fairly darn cute. It’s a cockerpoo (cocker spaniel poodle cross). Is that just in America that they come up with these clever cross-breed names, or are they doing that in England too?

Anyway, what else have I seen that’s cute? Nativity plays - I’ve watched a few of those. Once my two boys, aged about 1 and 4, fell asleep arm in arm. Naked toddlers wearing wellies - they’re pretty cute. Small children trying to say long words: hospital, or ridiculous, for example. Small children using grown up words for body parts. Kids wearing brand-new school uniform on their first day. Baby socks. The first unbelievably small sleepsuits that my babies wore when they were born (which, yes, I’ve kept). Their early scrawly sentences, written in mixed lower and upper case letters, with illustrations of gangly people with smiley faces.

Yup. It’s fair to say that I’ve witnessed plenty of cute things in my life. I’ve even embraced the word ‘cute’, and use it instead of the word ‘sweet’. But… nothing prepared me for seeing a 7 year old girl in soccer gear. My 7 year old girl in soccer gear. Yes, 7-yo has taken up soccer, and as if soccer shorts aren’t cute enough on a 7 year old bottom, she also wears knee-high socks, diminutive shin pads, and petite cleats. ('Cleats' translates as 'soccer boots', or I’d better say 'football boots', else someone will correct me). Pink and black cleats! Heaven. Even for someone like me, who so staunchly resists the infiltration of pink into all aspects of a girl’s life.

It was that opening sentence “Well, I’ve seen some cute things in my life” that first made me see myself as a country singer. By the time I’d got to the end of that paragraph, I was imagining Iota on a high stool, legs crossed, strumming her guitar wistfully, crooning into a microphone, in a smoky bar in a small cowboy town some place. I was trying out rhyme schemes with ‘cute’ (‘my guitar is my lute’, ‘I also play the flute’, ‘I have a pet newt’, ‘I’m in my birthday suit’), and before I knew it, I’d written a ballad.

A Ballad to my Daughter Playing Soccer

Well m' neighbor’s just got hisself a small cockerpoo
His front lawn is covered with a load of doo-doo
That mutt is so adorable, half poodle half cocker,
But the puppy ain’t a patch on my li’l girl playing soccer.

I’ve been to Hardy’s birthplace, a-down there in Dorset,
I’ll think of a rhyme here, though I might have to force it,
Twee cottage with a thatched roof, twee door with cute knocker
But no, nothing near so cute as my gal playing soccer.

A thing of beauty’s a joy forever, said ol’ Johnnie Keats
He was thinking of m’ daughter, in her size 2 pink cleats.
I’ll be standing on the sidelines, ‘mongst fat moms and thin dads,
Watching her run by, in her sweet li’l shin pads.

In your soccer clothes, My Honey-pie, you look awful purty
And I’ll take out an opponent if she tackles you dirty,
If I were an Aussie, I’d sure say you were beaut
But I’m here in America, so I’ll just call you cute.

I’m off to Starbucks right now, for my tall decaf mocha*
I hope I don’t end my days in Davy Jones’s locker
Ah’m just an ol’ sentimental and somewhat agin’ rocker
Who died of a cute attack, when her daughter dressed for soccer.

* I know, I know. Mocha and soccer don't rhyme, unless you have a British accent. How about 'So please don't be a scoffer, and please don't be a mocker'? Happy now?