Nobody wants to risk an ugly outburst by telling him he has missed the boat.
It’s not his fault.
He wasn’t born in 2020 when "Let’s keep moving" was Labour’s campaign slogan.
It’s disappointing. In these cash-strapped times, fashionably ignoring labour laws, I could have hired him out as a walking, talking (and rather cute) billboard during the election campaign.
His stock phrases — "Keep moving!", "I want to keep moving!" — would be easier to sell than "I want ice cream!" and "Stop building!" (a baffling instruction issued frequently to his uncle who is busily banging in nails to extend his family home).
If I could just get him to say "Stop building new roads!" perhaps I could find a market forthat.
His eyes lit up at the possibility he could be responsible for the brainwashing. He immediately suggested his next lesson for my grandson should be on perfecting the Donald Trump stiff-armed clap. (This is something he likes to do while striding about behind me — similar to The Donald roaming around the stage behind Hillary Clinton — to wind me up when he wants me to hurry up. I feel Hillary’s pain.) His suggestion has not found favour.
In my fantasy, the 2-year-old and I could go on a roadie to put a bit of fun into what is shaping up to be a dire campaign full of race-baiting, insults, yelling of misleading rubbish, and too many politicians who are stuck in the 1950s.
They may say they believe in climate change, as if it is some sort of a religion where we have a choice, but they sure as hell do not have the guts to do anything meaningful about emissions reductions, particularly when it involves farmers. If eventually farmers, and this country, are punished by markets for their tardiness in this area, it will be too late to moan about why nobody did anything sooner. It will not be pretty.
At political meetings, my grandson could blurt out his lines, and I could accompany him with a few blasts on my pink bike hooter which sounds like a particularly irritating and loud squeaky toy. Yeah, nah.
Perhaps we would be better to use the "Keep moving!" mantra to ensure enthusiasm for women’s sport, evident from the success of the Fifa Women’s World Cup, does not fizzle out.
There is much warm fuzziness about what the world cup has done for the cause of women’s sport and football in particular. Great, but let us not be blinkered about how far there is to go.
Not all teams competing in the cup were happy with the support they had been given in the lead-up to the event. In winner Spain’s case, last year 15 top players raised concerns about micro-management and the technical standard of coaching for the national team.
Were they taken seriously or were these women treated like naughty school children for daring to speak up? I am inclined to suspect the latter.
Reporting suggests there was an uneasy truce reached rather than a comprehensive addressing of the issues. (The behaviour of Royal Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales towards winning players at the medal presentation ceremony, which included kissing one player on the mouth and lifting several of them off the ground as he hugged them, had shades of the sleazy relative everyone avoids at family gatherings.)
The bulk of the complaining players did not participate in the world cup. Given the turmoil, it makes the team’s win all the more impressive.
Across the Ditch, at the weekend, almost as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced he would be splashing the cash for women’s sport, we had the Australian women’s rugby team hitting the headlines about the shabby way they are treated compared with the blokes. Women from many sporting disciplines will have similar stories.
Further to the issue of support, is there opportunity for women to do better than men at questioning sponsorship? Was it right for the women’s world cup to be promoting gambling, fast food, fizzy drink, and booze? I wonder how that sits with the collaboration agreement the World Health Organisation has with Fifa to "promote healthy lifestyles through football globally".
Still, hoping for more fitting sponsorship may be like my grandson’s demands for ice cream. Forlorn.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
