The Chinese idea of football

It began with a seemingly innocuous text message from my partner. "Please get a Fussball for G - Red - at the Sportsman's Warehouse". Dutifully, I went to the said Sportsman's Warehouse and asked for a Fussball - Red, please, without any idea of what I was asking for. After some discussion between the shop assistants, I was presented with a very large, extremely heavy cardboard box. The shop assistant seemed eager to assist. They could make it up, if I wanted. I wondered whether or not I could see the finished product - and was shown - to my astonishment a hand football set, as pictured above. Far too large to fit into my modest little car. So I smiled bravely and said, no, it was fine. I would assemble it on my own. No, No, No! I insisted, it would be fine.

Christmas day brought the usual and wonderful excitement. The tree, the clutter of presents beneath it, the lies and deception of the cookie crumbs and drained Amarula liqueur glass, which Santa left behind as evidence of his appearance down the chimney. The indecent ripping of paper and unwise tearing open of boxes containing the only dreamed of treasures. The chaos, the confusion, the joy - followed by the harsh reality that someone, somewhere, needed to put the Fussball thing together. All eyes fell on me.

And so, dutifully, I started with the instruction manual, which, albeit only four pages, had such density of instruction, such complexity of design and arrangement, that I reeled in disbelief. But there was my son Gabriel, staring at me, with such utter belief in my ability, that I simply could not declare the job as one needing an engineer to complete - I had no escape route. I had to do it.

Together we made a start on the first set of instructions. You had to first take the two sides of the thing with holes in them and turn them upside down, so that you would be working on them upside down. Then, according to strict instruction, you needed to thread both of the sides onto the skewers which have various numbers of footballers on them. You start on the one side with the one (presumably the Goalie) then you build up to two, three, five, five, three, two, one - you get the picture. The instructions were extremely explicit - we followed them to the letter.

Three hours later, thousands of numbered screws later, aching knees, wrists and sweating brow - triumphant, we carefully turned the entire apparatus to stand for the first time, right way up. We stood back to admire our handiwork. We started putting the final touches to the construction, adding grips to the skewers, goals to the gaping spaces etc. And then I (hardly the football expert, you understand) noticed that the Goalies were facing their own goals! That seemed a little strange - even to a non-footballer.

Further investigation revealed that just about everything which could be wrong with the arrangement of the skewers of footballers, was. With rising hysteria, I re-checked the instructions, point for point. We had followed them to the letter. And then my eye spotted the country of origin - China. The awful reality began to dawn.

Now, given the fact that it was the very first manoeuvre which we had performed, the entire structure depended on it. To undo it (my hysteria started to rise uncontrollably at this point) meant that we had to undo everything. Absolutely everything.

It was at this point that I noticed the first flicker of uncertainty in my child's eyes. Was it possible that he was staring at an inadequate parent here? Someone who simply could not be entrusted or relied upon to put together a simple Fussball table? Was it possible that he was looking at a bluffer? A fraud? An incompetent? And if I had tried to deceive him about my ability in this regard, what else had I deceived him about?

Now, did I mention that the requirements of putting this Fussball table together required the use of virtually every tool in my toolbox? A cement mixer? A welding kit? Bricklaying abilities? Structural engineering qualifications which would have put the construction of the new World Trade Centres to shame? I didn't? Well, it did!

Did I mention that after round one, I needed a knee replacement? Swedish Sports massage? 6 months rehabilitation and occupational therapy? I didn't? Well, that's what I needed. So, as calmly as I could, under the circumstances, I told my child that we would have to re-do the thing later on.

Of course, I admit, I tried to think of ways never to return to the task again. I rehearsed telling him seriously that the Chinese were like that. They always gave instructions which didn't work and if you don't understand Mandarin, you will never get it right.

Needless to say, tired, resigned and weary, I returned to the job an hour or so later and after another grueling three hours, the task was finally complete.

I am recuperating from the rigours of the festive season. Parenting is not for sissies - and not helped at all by our close ties with China.

Sacred Cow

I have learned, through bitter experience, that there are some things I dare not bring up at even the most boring of dinner parties. It is simply not worth it. It is not worth the inevitable tirades, the abuse, the threats and the eventual injured silences. Somehow, certain topics just seem to trigger it all off. Like ... Satanism, for example.

There, I have said it. I'm sure you won't be surprised to discover that all sorts of people, from all walks of life live in constant dread that their children and other loved ones are going to end up, unwittingly, in some terrible, bloody sacrifice to Satan, before which, they will attend raves, wear black, take drugs and burn a couple of crosses and bibles. The words to bandy about in this regard, are "pentogram", "coven" and "high priest" etc. Cats also seem to feature prominently and there is always someone who actually knows someone who was involved in this sort of thing.

On television, it gets one better. There you will find some rather begraggled looking creatures, with funny squares dancing all over their faces to protect their identity, saying how they were involved in a "coven" and then this and that happened and eventually, tired of drinking cat's blood, they saw the error of their ways and became converted to Christianity. You know the story.

Satanism is not a good topic at a dinner party, no matter how dispassionately you may hope to approach it. It is not worth taking the chance. It is probably better to avoid religion altogether.

Having said that, let me hoist myself on my own petard. Mother Theresa. Now there is a fairly safe religious topic if ever there was one. Or is it? The woman is now formally recognised as a Saint. She was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. If you are looking for an almost perfect example of what it means to live a life of self-sacrifice and Christian virtue, then you point at her.

I remember from my teenage charismatic days, how we were fed on a fairly solid diet of Something Beautiful for God a dewy-eyed 20 minute film made by Malcolm Muggeridge, on the exclusive subject of Mother Theresa. I remember thinking, even then, that it was a bit strange for us to be venerating a Roman Catholic nun - because at the same time, we were being told that the pope was the anti-christ and that Roman Catholics worshipped idols.

I now understand what the connection was between us and her. We were all in the business of furthering a very extreme form of fundamentalist and mostly fairly right-wing Christianity. So we could, for the moment, overlook the fact that she was in some way, connected to the pope. Maybe, even the pope was, in some way, connected to Christianity! It was all a bit contradictory as far as the pope was concerned - but not with Mother Theresa, about whom there was never any doubt.

Closer inspection, however, reveals some fairly unsaintly aspects to the Mother Theresa phenomenon. Like, for example, she seemed to pop up in support of extreme right-wing dictatorships all over the place - like the notorious Duvalier family in Haiti. Like the fact that she intervened to support the Irish Catholic Church during the divorce referendum, when it threatened to deny the sacrament to women who had been divorced. To her, it didn't matter what the circumstances were. You could be married to a man who beat you to a pulp and raped your children on a nightly basis.There would be no exceptions. That was the position of Mother Theresa, the Saint.

I remember when she arrived in South Africa, when apartheid was still in full swing. She made not a single statement about it (which for a Saint, you will agree, was a little bit odd). All she seemed interested in getting, was monetary support the house which she was setting up for her Order in the country.

Her Order, of course, is worth a fortune.Evidence from a former member of the Order, who was once in charge of Mother Theresa's bank accounts in New York, estimated then (and it was many years back!) that the account held in excess of $50m in that account alone. Now that, let us be frank, is not what would easily be defined as poverty.

But what was the money spent on? Maybe there we would find the clue to saintliness, despite the fact that public audits appear not to be easily available.

Well, the money is not spent on medicine, or drugs, or treatment of any kind. That is not what Mother Theresa was into at all. She was interested in providing a place for the poor to die with dignity. The point being, if you were doing anything other than dying, you would be in big trouble if one of the Sisters of Poverty got hold of you.

Mother Theresa had the view that the suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and that the world is enriched by the nobility of this suffering and misery. All this perceived nobility and stuff is the reason why Mother Theresa did not allow the use of something as basic as pain-relievers in her clinics, not medical treatment of any kind. Now, to my mind, that is not only horrible, it is downright evil.

This might be some of the reason why she herself might have been a little reluctant to go to one of her own clinics when she had a health problem. Her health problem required very sophisticated surgery and the very best of medical skill - which included, one can only presume, a pain-killer or two every now and again. She was reluctant to go to one of her clinics, because she didn't want to die in the same way she allowed others, who were less fortunate than she was. And all in the name of that noble cause called the suffering of the poor!

The truth of the matter is that the millions and millions of Dollars which she regularly received were not spent on relieving the suffering of the dying - well not in medical terms anyway. They appear to have been spent on the upkeep and guaranteed posterity of her Order so that more people like her could find some sort of crazy notion of nobility in the misery of the poor, who cannot afford the medical care which members of the Order receive as a matter of course.

It was a weird sort of saintliness, and frankly, I never bought it.