A warning for half term

Normally it's the tennis coaches who come in for the attention. Never ones to miss out on a good cliche, the women round here, largely deprived of male company during the day - "Honestly, it's like living in a lesbian-only community," complains Vicky - gravitate to the courts to salivate over the teachers, all tight curls, trim bodies and tighter shorts, who twist and leap with precise elegance in their conscientious demonstrations of the perfect backhand return.

Not Bad Lindy. Bad Lindy fell for her son's football coach. Normally, Bad Lindy discards men like empty Wotsits packets, consuming the contents, additives and all, in one gulp, then licking her fingers and moving on to the next.

That's intimidating enough. So Bad Lindy in love is like one of the seven wonders of the world - the colossus of Rhodes, say - being brought back from the past, animated, and set on your trail.

He was nineteen, slightly built, tremendously earnest about his job, focused only on inspiring the boys a generation down and, who knows, being the first to spot the next Beckham or Rooney. She was Amazonian, loud, and simply there. To start off with, she appeared only at the beginning and end of the training sessions, car parked close to the wire mesh of the school playground where the training took place, window down, enormous sunglasses raking his shorts like the Jodrell Bank Telescope searching for signs of life.

Then, she began staying for the entire session. By now, you could see that her presence was getting to him. He'd be blowing the whistle, or doing a bit of fancy demonstration footwork then start nervously as he recollected her presence, and gaze away towards the parked cars while the little boys clustered round him clamoured for his attention.

A few weeks later, she took to leaning against one of the fence posts and eating things like outsize bananas or juicy peaches and within a few weeks, his concentration was completely shot.

Then it was his birthday. She'd got her furiously embarrassed son to ask the date. As the coach emerged at the end of the session, darting glances right and left, then relaxing as he became convinced he'd escaped, she appeared suddenly, holding a large present and a cake.

"For you," she said.

"No," he said. "It's very kind, but I just can't."

She continued to advance. He backed, no doubt thanking God when his hand, feeling behind him, closed round the the handle of his car.

The last anyone ever saw of him was his car, accelerating, while Bad Lindy pursued him on foot, present and cake still in her outstretched arms.

Being Bad Lindy, it took her almost no time to recover. Maybe she was a little less buxom for a while, her breasts slightly less perky. But being Bad Lindy, she didn't let it cramp her style. Soon she'd found another target - a leftover husband at a party - and was fully occupied again.

But sometimes I wonder if she doesn't have the occasional dream. It's full of passing, slide tackles and penalties but, above all, scoring, scoring, scoring.