Alison Bennett's Monday Mail: Deep August
Deep August
We are right in the middle of August. It’s always a month I have mixed feelings about.
Before I had children and I was working in an office I used to find it really frustrating. The more senior staff who had children would go on holiday, and for about five weeks no meetings could be scheduled, and no decisions taken.
Then I became a parent. When my children were very young, the school holidays used to yawn in front of me. We wouldn’t go away in August to save money, but all the pre school groups would stop for the summer. We muddled through. Events like last week’s Teddy Bear’s picnic in Haywards Heath would have been very welcome back then. I dropped in for an hour and saw lots of families enjoying a picnic courtesy of the Town Council and Haywards Heath Foodbank. Local charity Hope were there with some sensory play, as well as a bouncy castle, some rides, and the Police and the Fire Service.
The District Council still has four Play Days coming up this summer - they are free and lots of fun. Definitely worth checking out if you are struggling for ideas.
Olympic Reflections
However, the August I really remember enjoying was in 1992 when it was the Barcelona Games. As far as I can recall I lay on the floor of my parents’ lounge with the curtains drawn and watched wall to wall sports for about twelve hours a day.
This year I only managed to grab the odd hour of athletics in the evening, and I did enjoy some of the news sports like surfing and rock climbing too. I also loved these two clips:
One from Australian athlete Jemima Montag about the power of sport to transform lives and inspire girls: PlayOn.
The second is the Dutch athlete Siffan Hassan who incredibly won three medals in Paris: the bronze in the 5,000m, another bronze in the 10,000m and then to top it all a gold in the Marathon. Despite those results, it turns out that the thought of running a marathon is much the same as my thought process when I am trying to go out to run 5k. Why am I playing this kind of game?
Getting in Touch
My parliamentary email address is: alison.bennett.mp@parliament.uk. If you need my help, please get in touch and I will do my best to help, but whilst I am still recruiting, it will take longer than usual to respond.
Best wishes,
Alison