Politics is a game we all MUST play

AT MY girls’ grammar school, games and gym were the bane of this bookworm’s life — except for hockey.

There was something about smacking that hard ball and the threatening, head-down posture a hockey stick requires that appealed to part of my nature. Whisper it, I liked playing a bit rough.

Maybe that’s why I even made my house team, which amazed everybody.

My position was centre half. It’s a good place to be: endlessly tearing around the midfield, ready to defend and attack as needed. Always watching, always energetic and always sticking around the centre.

The keen, fast girls were put on the left and right wings, but when I tried those positions, I hated them. Too far out.

So it was back to the satisfying midfield, always ready to back up our centre forward — as well as attacking theirs. The passion becomes all-consuming: in the speedy smashing of a hard game, all you want to do is win.

I was thinking of those long- ago games on the freezing sports field when wrangling with people on Facebook about politics.

Like many of you (I bet), I’m heartily sick of this election, which is sapping all my usual joy for life and wrapping a band of steel around my head.

Nevertheless, the game is on — and there’s no escaping the duty to Team GB, even if many things about the current campaigning have left me seriously gloomy.

Especially the fact that my old team has moved the goalposts so far and chosen a rubbish squad, kicking so many of us centrists out of the match.

So, here I am, still running around midfield, to and fro, up and down, halfway between the wings. Lord, how tiring it is!

But I really like our new centre forward — the head girl who takes no nonsense and hits hard.

The good of Team GB needs me to accept her pass and run with it — and so I will.

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.