2009. The Year That Won’t Pass Quietly.

06/01/2009 by Steve Tierney.

It’s The Economy! (Stupid)
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this is going to be a horrible year. The economy is taking a swan dive into the abyss. Retailers are closing faster than Gordon Brown can borrow money to mindlessly waste on pointless gimmicks and an ever-expanding bloated public sector. Unemployment is rising sharply. The banks are asking for another bailout (and it wont be the last). But if other governments or international bodies decide they no longer want to loan us money or buy our bonds, what then? I can hear those printing presses warming up as we speak, ready to print pounds until they no longer have any worth at all. Hold on to your hats. It’s going to get scary.

But look on the bright side. We’ve got our families and friends. We live in a (mostly) free country. I suspect, despite Labour’s criminal mismanagement, we’ll get through it. Older and wiser. Perhaps poorer, but maybe with a better understanding of what’s really important. And hopefully with a different party governing us…Birthday parties are a threat. Apparently.
My son had his four-year-old birthday two days ago. He goes to pre-school in Wisbech. I had decided to throw him a party at play2day (a kids adventure-play type place) in Guyhirn. We wanted to invite ten or so other children he knows to the party. Since he is so young we don’t really know who his friends are yet. He mentions names of other children at school, but we thought it would be a good idea to ask his teachers the first names of the children he commonly plays with at school so we could then give them invites to pass to the parents of those same children. Does this seem unreasonable? We didn’t want pictures of them, or to meet them, or to be allowed to give them sharp objects to play with. We just wanted their first names, so we could write on the invites “to the Parents of…. whoever” and then ask the teachers to pass those invites on to the relevant parents. Apparently, this is not allowed. Child Protection forbids it. My son’s schoolmate’s first names need to be ‘protected’ in case their classmates parents… god forbid… invite them to a birthday party.
Help! Help! There might be cake! There might be games!
I wonder if the teachers would reprimand my little son for telling us his friend’s names? “How did you find out this boy was called Jack? Your son told you? Police! Police! Arrest that child!”

Anyhow… Happy new year to anybody who stumbles across this page. I don’t know if I actually have any readers, but if I do, Best Wishes for 2009! It might still all end in roses!

Posted in Family, Credit Crunch | No Comments »