3 september 2012, and the other one

With the elder getting so much attention, on saturday I took out the younger (8). We started at the local pool, as he was always a big fan (not coincidentally, unlike his brother - see 29 august 2010) and the olympics have inspired both him to swim and us to convince him to go to lessons. He loved it, going up two classes in one session. Then subway, his current favourite, cashing in two of the seven promised on hols so we could walk past one in barcelona and have more of that fancy food we horrible parents force them to try. We then marched up and down heald green high street, buying bread from the bakery and odds and sods we needed in the greengrocers, chemists and charity shop. It doesn't sound a lark, but we had a whale of a time, as we pretty much always do when it's just two. The sting in the tail though was my weakness at the very end, as we passed the bookies, which he recognised from our annual grand national pilgrimage, which avid readers will recall he actually won (see 14 april 2012). I generally encourage him to read what's in the windows, and this time of course he did, discovering the 25-1 shot of manchester united beating southampton 3-2 and then of course we did maths too with many questions about just what led to that enticing bright red £250. In the blazing sunshine of all that cheer it was too hard not to pop in and put five pounds on, diligently explaining how highly unlikely this outcome was. The next day, after dropping my deteriorating mother home, I switched on the radio, exactly as robin van persie scored, making it 3-2 to the reds. We haven't told him yet; the dilemma again writ very large (see 10 april 2011). Feeling a bit like the rabbi who sneaked onto the closed golf course on saturday afternoons, and one day shot an incredible 18 holes in one. An angel questioned g-d how he could make that happen. Well, was the reply, who can he tell ?