Rain and managing stuff!

Raining! I looked out of the window and the bit of blue sky had gone. The rain was just starting. In no time at all it was the kind of rain that children put in weather pictures: diagonal stripes across the garden. Within minutes, however, it was all over and the mix of cloud and blue sky was back. Come day, go day weather!

Like the flash in the pan rainstorm, Sam Allardyce has come and gone as England manager. I always thought he had a face rather like a potato. Now it seems he also has a brain rather like a potato, a mashed potato, and allowed himself to be flattered into explaining to some "businessmen" that he knew how to get around football association rules. When they turned out to be reporters he realised how silly he had been but by then it was too late; his England job was gone. What a mess!

Talking of mess, our two eldest granddaughters both have the messiest bedrooms in the world. Stuff is piled around. The floor is covered with a blend of papers, homework assignments in the case of the younger of the two, discarded bits of creative writing, crisp packets, sweet wrappers, clothing that has been worn or that has been tried on and rejected, hairbrushes complete with hair, whichever book they are currently reading and goodness only knows what else. If anyone dares to enter and pick up rubbish or attempt to find homes for the stuff that is hanging around, there is an outcry when that action is discovered. Accusations fly around: "Someone has been tidying my room!" As if that were a major crime! On one occasion the older of the two blamed me for the disappearance of a pair of jeans. I had simply hung them up with other jeans but, clearly, that was not where they were supposed to go and she was unable to find them for weeks. Or so she claimed.

Their mother finds this messiness hard to understand or accept. Other faults there may have been but messiness was not one of them. She was the kind of girl who liked to rearrange her room every so often, moving the furniture around to new positions and finding new ways of organising her den. So having two daughters whose bedrooms really are like animal's dens is hard for her to fathom. However, Tim Lott, writing in the Guardian at the weekend, comes out on the side of the untidy girls. Teenagers bedrooms, he maintains, should be left alone. This is their space and parents, and grandparents for that matter, should let them stew in their own mess, only intervening when there start to be rat droppings and mould!

I remain unconvinced! I had to share a bedroom with two sisters and there was no chance of any of us leaving stuff lying around. It was a communal space and anything left around became communal property. We all three longed for a bedroom of our own. So much so that when our brother, who had a bedroom to himself as he was the only boy, went to scout camp we took it in turns to take over his bedroom for a few nights and have our own space for a brief while! Ah, nostalgia!

In Manchester the other day I took myself off to Harry Hall's cycles to buy myself a new helmet. The old one has been around so long that I doubt it has any protective qualities left. As I tried one on, a bright yellowy-green one, the same colour as those hi-visibility jackets, the sales assistant told me it also came in black, if I wanted something a bit more restrained. Well, actually no, I didn't want something more restrained. As well as protecting your head, a helmet should help make you visible to those crazy car drivers who look through cyclists. If I am going to look silly in a helmet, something hard to avoid, then I also want to be easy to spot.

Now I just need some  more fine weather so I can get the bike out!