Ups and Downs

When you're six years old you have heroes and those heroes are invincible.  They are everything you want to believe and everything you want to be.  As a parent, it's easiest to put any principles or prejudices to one side and roll with it: these heroes become your allies.  These heroes know that it's important to go to bed and get a good night sleep; these heroes eat their greens; and these heroes are Good People that do Good Things. 

Wayne Rooney is Angus' hero and, for what he does on a football pitch, you can't argue with this.  And up until last week, we could deal with the rest simply by ignoring it.  Last week that changed.  Last week we had to discuss it.  Can you imagine how challenging it was to try and explain to a 6 year old that his hero didn't want to play for his favourite team anymore: 

D: 'He wants more money' - A: "Why" - D: 'Ehhhh...'
D: 'he doesn't think the club's ambition matches his' - A: "what?" - D: 'Well, er, em...'
D 'His agent is clearly playing a game, Buddy' - A "..." you get the picture.

But there it was.  I told him, and he didn't understand.  And I couldn't explain it, because I didn't really understand either.  And judging by the press and the pundits I wasn't alone.  But I was struggling, because he was really struggling.  And just when I told him that we'd talk about it tomorrow, tomorrow brought very different news - just when I was trying to figure out how to explain what had changed, all he said was "yessssssss" and trotted off singing Rooney's name once more.

And that kinda sums up last week in the world of EuroChampsChallenge.  We had a couple of knocks which set us back and had us confused about things.  We were starting to question our ability to pull this off and whether we really did have the unique and engaging product we thought we had.  Then we got two or three positive messages which really brightened our day.  And instead of dragging over the coals and trying to dissect the bad news, we skipped along to the next task with the added energy of the good.

And that, from our experiences thus far, is the way I think it's going to be.