The joy of 20:20 hindsight: Park Life

I'M NOT sure if it is the effect of TV action replays, but my son Darcy likes to re-enact scenes from his football games not just later, in case I wasn't there, but immediately, while the game is still in full flow. "Dad, did you see the way I flew through the air to tackle Danny?" he says, launching himself into the air to tackle Danny once again. Not only was I there, I was actually on the pitch: no mere spectator, but the referee, following the action at close quarters instead of from the touchline.

While Darcy acts out his replay, the game has continued around him. "You'd feel pretty stupid if your opponents scored while you were in slow motion," I tell him to little effect. The pitch is his stage: the compulsion to milk every ounce from an incident cannot be resisted.

Perhaps subconsciously Darcy is polishing the incident in order to fix it in his memory bank, the better to summon it later when he is lying in bed, or staring out of the window during a dull lesson at school. I still find myself downloading the highlights of a game of football or squash I have played that day as I drift off to sleep. As a consequence I possess a mental library full of snapshots from my sporting life at all ages, sharper, better focused and more highly coloured then my impressionistic memories of people or places, let alone the blank sheets where, for instance, the entire science curriculum from my school years should be stored.

Some of the sports action found here seems so banal that it is impossible to work out why it struck me at the time: In one clip filed away when I was eight - Darcy's age today - I run across the pitch to intercept a ball before it reaches the opposing winger. Could this have been the first time I was able to "read the game", as commentators say? And if so, would I have recognised it then?

Other incidents are logged for more obvious reasons. A few years later, I caught the ball with a left-footed volley that was bound for the goal until a beefy boy from the year above me headed if off the line. He then had to retire from the pitch for 10 minutes nursing a headache, which almost made up for my disappointment at not scoring.

When ageing sports stars retire, they routinely tell the world: "I'll always have my memories." But if you've spent the best part of your life scoring breathtaking goals and serving aces, where do you start? David Gower's personal reel of his top 100 cricket shots must be a succession of perfectly timed, crisply executed drives and hooks, which soon acquires the monotony of watching match highlights.

I was never a contender, which makes the memory-editing process much easier - there's so little decent material to choose from, so even goals tapped in from a couple of feet get remembered from one season to the next. If I turn to the cricket file and call forth the selection of cover drives, there is precisely one on offer - which is why it is such a golden- hued memory, to be brought out and pored over at any opportunity.

It's a hot day in Australia, circa 1985, and the bowler pounds in to release a quickish ball to a good length just outside my off stump. For once in my undistinguished cricket career, everything goes according to the book: early backswing, foot forward, weight transferred with the shot, swing through the line of the ball which strikes the meat of the bat and accelerates away in a beautiful curve. I set off for a run, but ease back almost immediately in the certain knowledge that it will beat the fielders to the boundary.

What perfect joy - but why is it that my memories of sport are so straight- forwardly enjoyable? Other memories, no matter how happy, are tinged with feelings of loss, regret and transience: where is that person now, why aren't I still lying on that idyllic beach, young and carefree? When I recall golden moments from my sporting life, by contrast, it is enough that for a split second I knew what it was like to hit the perfect backhand volley.

So my advice to Darcy is: store up your sporting memories by all means, you may need them. But wait till the game's over.