Seven days in My Own Private Guantanamo

I sometimes wonder whether the byline "Rory’s week" requires me to share with the readers what I’ve been up to in the past seven days, but I’m not sure that going into too much detail about My Own Private Guantanamo is much use to anyone. For the record, this week I have mostly been looking after three children (ages three, five and seven) and two incontinent puppies (eight and ten weeks). I’ve got rid of the children and one of the puppies this morning, but the remaining one has duly risen to the challenge. My only duty was to make sure she was fed and emptied before sitting down to write my article. In the process, she managed to spill the food everywhere and refused to do anything for a good half-hour as I paced the lawn, wondering if I’d ever get started. No sooner had I begun writing than she discovered a squeaky toy in her cage and, even as I write, she is alternately squeezing it and looking at me for a reaction.

Still, it could be worse. I could be trying to file this from Lebanon or downtown Haifa, wondering if whoever's demolishing the neighbourhood could keep the noise down.

The children still managed to shred me, even before nine o'clock, the apparently simple task of getting them up and giving them breakfast reducing me to a helpless wreck. If those responsible for the wars in the world (and they know who they are) were given sole custody of the children for the day, they'd be too tired to get up to any global mischief. And of course I blame myself, on the Philip Larkin principle: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do./They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you." (Or was it "they tuck you up"?)

I hope I haven't given my children my appalling sense of direction. Only last week I was taking them to an appointment and got lost in Abingdon's one-way system. Hoping no one would notice, I darted into what I thought was a cut-through, only to find myself entering a multi-storey car park, with the prospect of driving up four floors and down again - and paying - before getting out. None of which escaped the attention of my daughter (aged three last week). "Oh, Mister Beeeeean," she said.

While I hope the new coach brings success, I'm not sure he will unless he changes the culture. I asked a sports psychologist recently why England were so hopeless at penalties, and he told me it was because the only thing the players were thinking about was: "Don't miss." (Can you imagine Zidane thinking like that?) The brain, it seems, is bad at processing negatives. In an experiment, drivers on a racetrack were sent out with specific instructions not to hit a pole on one of the corners. Over half piled straight into it. I guess it's the same if you tell Bush and Blair not to invade a Middle Eastern country.

There's also a ludicrous culture in this country of studying mistakes exhaustively, instead of praising and repeating the positives. My friend asked some Middlesbrough players what on earth it was that McClaren kept writing on all those bits of paper he showed Sven in the dugout. "Oh, he writes down all the things we're doing wrong," came the reply. No wonder he was so busy.

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