It’s Lila’s birthday. Today. Why its not an official bank and public holiday, with street parties and processions, possibly a carnival, free parking everywhere, all speed cameras turned off for the day, speech by the Queen, 21-gun salute over the Tower at noon… I’ll just never know. In my mind its all that and more. But try telling that to the government!!

That’s why I’ve posted a pic from ‘when she was little’. Just so you remember where she started from. I know you care.

Her mummy and daddy made her a party yesterday. It was… messy. Loads of kids there, that was the problem. All eating stuff and spreading the joy around. And we had a-nentertainer. Times have changed. 25 years ago you called up Smartie Artie and they sent you ‘number 3’ or ‘number 7 is really good with 1-year-olds’ or basically, whichever one wasn’t locked up for child sex offences on that particular week. Because in a clown costume, most 50 year-old men look rather dubious. Now we had a babe. Safe. Nice. And she enthralled the children in one room so I could eat all their food in another. But again, times change.

Jelly and ice cream is the 2019 equivalent of offering a child heroin. Sugar is pretty much out of the equation altogether, so I s’posed I wouldn’t be getting a ‘party bag’ laden with Smarties and Buttons and Jelly Tots. Damn. How are these kids, these tiny tots, ever going to develop proper levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes if they’re not fed properly?

And then, once the nentertainer had packed up her shit and left a dozen two-year olds and various others to their own devices (read: ‘cake’), some of us just had a peek at the afternoon’s football. With cake, obvs.

Mistake. Big fucking mistake. Should have just sat there getting rid of the ‘wind the bobbin up’ ear worms another way. Could have been the wheels on the bus. But, for Spurs fans, the wheels fell off in the 90th minute, oddly at a time when we had parked our bus to defend a corner. Having, in the previous 10 minutes, had not one, not two, but THREE wonderful chances to take the lead. For Spurs. For England. For God. For LILA!!!! But all tragically squandered and then the indignity of catastrophic indignities, an own goal to finish off our chances. And hopes. And dreams. And virtually everything else worth living for except granddaughters.

Fortunately for Lila, kids can’t get officially depressed-by-football until they’re 5. Ask any psychologist. So at a mere ‘choo’ (as she so adorably says; whilst holding up 7 fingers to stress the point) she was blessedly spared our suffering. Rightly so. She has years to learn the joys of being a Spurs fan.

Happy Birthday to the most wonderful little person on the planet.

(Poppa-)A xxxx