DUCKS & DRAKES

Last night our great-granddaughters slept over at their Great Aunt’s house (our eldest daughter). I would describe her as a Great British Eccentric and she absolutely adores children. They were feeding the wild ducks in her garden when one of the little girls said “do they have names?” “yes” replied our daughter without batting an eyelid “the one with the green head is called Idontgiveaflyingduck and the other is a Secret Agent duck called Deefaduck". See what I mean about her being eccentric? I have no idea where she gets that from!

Her house is beside the river and is now full of children. They adopted her husbands’ nephews when their mother died and now they have given a home to our grandson who has returned from France to resume his education in England.

I have great hopes for this grandson who is without a doubt the most intelligent of all the children (and we do have some bright kids in the family). If he keeps the standards up he will easily qualify for Oxbridge and could go on to higher things. Some of my colleagues in the office think that I should be Prime Minister (are they a biased, sycophantic bunch, or what?) but I seriously think that this boy could be one of the great and glorious in this land – so I will now attempt to influence him with my brand of truth.

To change the subject, interesting thing about my daughter living beside the river and feeding wild ducks, OG’s observation is “she’ll regret feeding those ducks, they shit all over the place. And they’ll eat all grass. It just goes in one end and straight out of the other”. And my mother, god-bless her, if she was still alive would have said “you don’t want to live near a river, you’ll have rats”. Whereas our blissfully optimistic daughter just sees that it’s lovely to live near the water and have wild duck to watch, feed and provide her family with fresh eggs. It’s all a matter of perspective.

And to change the subject again, although I guess it is related to perspective, yesterday I read that the Olympic creed was inspired by a sermon given in St. Paul’s Cathedral by Ethelbert Talbot, the Bishop of Central Pennsylvania, on 19th July 1908 when he said “the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” Amen to that.

One last thing. I heard that immigrants that paid NI and claimed child allowance and tax credits in this country could have these payments credited to a bank account in their own country. Is this true? I tried checking it out on Google and got my knickers in a twist. I couldn’t find any reference to the rules on how payments were made but stumbled across another question. It seems that child allowance can be claimed in this country for children that still live in their homeland, not only that, in some instances child allowance can sometimes be claimed in both countries. Is this true?

I can’t believe that this government could be so stupid as to allow this. Or could they? Surely not when we have so much economic injustice in our own country, like, for instance the pittance that OAP’s are paid and they way they neglect to look after our armed forces etc, but that is another subject!