| Oscar's First Birthday |
[Oct. 29th, 2012|02:19 pm]
Tony Grist
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Our great-nephew is a year old. Yesterday was his birthday party. He received a number of big expensive presents and got just as much fun out of the boxes they came in. The best present was a yeti as big as he is- though I can't see its fur staying white for long.
His mum and dad are football crazy so the big match was playing on the flat screen. I hardly ever watch football so I was interested to see how they play it these days. There was a lot of artistic footwork, some very inartistic thuggery and at least one dive that was so thespian it got the diver sent off. Manchester United won by the margin of a goal that should have been disallowed for violation of the off-side rule. This morning it turns out the biggest drama was something that happened out of range of the cameras- a couple of Chelsea players were "racially abused" by the referee. We're not being allowed to know what he said to the black player, but he apparently called Torres- the diver- "a Spanish tart"- which, in the circumstances, strikes me as mild.
At one stage there was a conversation going on in my vicinity about IDS and his decision not to give child benefit to any more than two children in any one family. Two people were taking the Daily Mail's line and one was taking the Guardian's. I didn't get drawn in. For the record I think this is a callous policy that'll return us to the age of child beggars and the workhouse, but I could be wrong. |
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