To catch a leaf

Build your coffin of balsa wood

Spend all that you earn

When you go, you are gone for good

Never to return

  Have you ever read ‘Rivals’ by Jilly Cooper? Stop sneering. Jilly Cooper is a literary genius, and I will shoot anyone who says otherwise. She gets dismissed as a writer of bonkbusters, but her books are so much more than that. They’re clever, funny, touching, romantic, puntastic escapism. In my dreams, I live in Rutshire, riding horses and lounging about in front of apple log open fires. It also helps that a lot of her books feature maps at the front. Being an aficionado of cartography, just wave an Ordnance Survey map at me to fondle, and take me, I’m yours, you tempting little peddler of map porn…

     Oh yeah, sorry, Rivals. Right. In one scene in the book, our heroine Taggie O’Hara (bit wet, but we’ll forgive her) gets Rupert Campbell-Black's children to catch falling leaves to give to him so that he’ll have thirty happy days in November. I’d not heard of this as a superstition before, but apparently it is A Thing. Like picking up a penny for good luck, catching a falling leaf is lucky/good luck/full of good bodes.

     I forgot all about this until two years ago, one grim autumnal afternoon, tugging two reluctant and whiny Blondies home. It was drizzling, it was windy, the sky was dark. There was low level pushing and shoving going on, a fair bit of sibling kvetching and deliberately winding each other up. Then, to cap it all off neatly, large, brown, wet leaf fell from a nearby horse chestnut tree, got caught by the wind, and wrapped itself around The Boy’s scowling visage.

     And The Girl HOOTED. Of course she did. Har har, annoying brother, you’re cold, wet, and have just been slapped by a leaf, allow me to point and laugh to make the situation so very much worse.   But, in one of those lightning flash moments of parenting genius that makes you so impressed with your brain that you’d snog yourself if you could, I said ‘WOAH! The Boy!!! You are going to be so lucky! That leaf was meant for you!!!’

     The Boy was intrigued, so I explained further, and what should have been a fairly miserable ten minute trudge home became instead a giggly race back and forwards, hither and yon, darting all over the pavements and verges, trying to catch leaves before they hit the ground.

     Try it. Seriously. It is so much harder than you expect it to be. Partly because it’s unpredictable – you never know when a leaf will sail past, but also because leaves being so light, they tantalisingly fly past your face, only to sail twenty feet to the left in a gust of wind. It’s fab exercise, leaves you breathless, and makes you laugh. A bit like the best kind of lover.

     Obviously, it’s quite season specific. Not many falling leaves in May, whatever darling buds are being shaken by rough winds.  But it’s been a failsafe way of cheering up The Blondies on gloomy afternoon school runs when I’m out of ideas. On good days, we compare our haul, and tot up how many good days we’ve harvested. On bad days, we end up chasing up and down the driveway for hours at a time, Blondies reluctant to go into the house until they’ve caught at least one leaf. Those are the days when I curse my flashes of parenting genius.

Always to thine own self be true

Not to fools like me

Who’ll change their mind

For the sake of rhyming schemes

     Because it’s bollocks. Don’t put your faith in superstitions, prayers, songs, poetry, writers, or anything else that starts life in the mind of another person. People are contrary, contradictory, changeable. Don’t rely on ideas or ideology to guide you. Think for yourself. Make your own decisions, and never ascribe good or bad occurrences to anything other than pure coincidence. Things happen. Make the best of what you have. That’s what I thought I’d taught my children.

Au revoir joi, bonjour tristesse

Good times come and they go

Life owes nobody happiness

Only pain and sorrow

     And I had cause to curse my flash of parenting genius again last week. After the events of Tuesday and Wednesday, having dropped The Girl off at Infants, The Boy and I were making our way across the treelined playground when his attention was caught by a leaf flashing by in a tailspin. He leapt forward to grab it, missed, and hissed ‘Dammit!’ like a nine year old Jack Bauer.

     And that of course was it. He refused, point blank, to go into school until he’d caught a falling leaf to ensure that the rest of his day was going to be good. After five minutes, despite an absolute sodding blizzard of leaves tempting us with their unpredictable and confusing journeys to the asphalt, we were leafless. Checking the time, I realised we weren’t just a bit behind, but on the verge of ‘go-to-the-office-to-make-sure-you’re-on-the-register-and-that’s-a-playtime-detention-for-you-young—tardy-fella-me-lad’ LATE.

     In yet another lightning flash of parenting genius so amazing I’m thinking of taking myself out for dinner to wine, dine, and possibly 69 me, I ripped a leaf of the nearest sycamore tree, handed it to The Boy and said ‘Here. A leaf. It’ll be a good day.’

     ‘MUUUUUUU-HUH-HUM!!!’ That doesn’t count! You just took it off a tree!’

     ‘You make your own luck in this life, The Boy. So there. Make it a good day.’

     Superstitions are the thief of responsibility. When things go wrong, it’s not the fault of some bearded sky fairy, or because you broke a mirror six years and 364 days ago. It’ll be a bad decision, yours or theirs, the weather, an accident, a coincidence. Have faith, by all means (I don’t). But don’t let that absolve you of your own responsibility for making yourself happy.

So don’t rely on the starry skies

Screw the universe

You ought to try

To live your life on earth.

I'm going to try
To live my life on earth.