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Happy Birthday Dad I've bought you a certificate to stop global warming

Tom Winnifrith
Tuesday 5 April 2016

My two sisters are a politically correct duo with a tendency to be rather earnest. Both work in the public sector and are married to half Germans - the Krauts. It is fair to say that we take a rather different view on more or less everything. Of course we are all united in having one father who turns 78 today. Happy Birthday Dad.

My younger sister in particular has "form" when it comes to uber-PC presents. I think it was two years ago that for Christmas she gave her husband membership of the Labour Party. One can only imagine his delight as he unwrapped a party membership card and a personal letter from Ed Miliband. A year later she gave my father a certificate saying she had bought a tree outside Coventry Hospital in his name to make the world more carbon neutral/combat global warming. Hmmmm.

I am reminded of the fairy tale of the King who asks his three daughters for a present. Two gie him gold and daimonds, the youngest gives him salt. And so I am not sure what PC gold my father has received this morning from my sisters. From me there is a promise that when I see him on Saturday I shall bring alcohol and nicotine - he has always loved the odd cigar and right now, why the hell not have a few more?

I did try to fit into the family by telling him that I was sending him a certificate saying that a tree in the Peruvian forests now bore his name for his birthday and we were thus doing our bit to preserve global bio-diversity and combat global warming. He said thank you in a almost genuine way but seemed mightily relieved when I said that this was a late April's fool and that the Mrs and I would, as per normal, be gifting him vice rather than virtue.

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About Tom Winnifrith
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Tom Winnifrith is the editor of TomWinnifrith.com. When he is not harvesting olives in Greece, he is (planning to) raise goats in Wales.
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