seeing red

Premier League football went mad yesterday!

I think it was because I was off fund-raising with my kids and wasn't supervising it from my sofa that so many players got in an absolute tizz and were redcarded.

Eight players were sent off in one afternoon in nine matches (beating the previous record of 6 in one afternoon on 7th May 2005).
Even our own normally levelheaded Kenwyne Jones got his marching orders! The other reprobates were Bilyaletdinov (Everton), Carragher (L'pool), Cuellar (Villa), Degen (L'pool), Geovanni (Hull), Keovac (WHam) & Samuel (Bolton).

Liverpool lost 2 players and were soundly beaten 3-1 by Fulham; Portsmouth got their first win against Wigan 4-0 and were very convincing, Arsenal clobbered Spurs 3-0 and thankfully the Black Cats got a 2-2 draw against West Ham. We're still 8th on the table (phew)

A recent book discussion on Ravelry made me realise that my tastes in literature have been limited to white European authors and have not included many by People of Colour (POC). I could only think of 7 books which I've read in this category : Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie), Wild Swans (Jung Chang), The Color Purple (Alice Walker), Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini).

So on my next visit to the library I moved away from the audio classics and found Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie . The story is set in Nigeria in the 1960's, during the civil war between the Hausa and Igbo and the

creation of the new state of Biafra (and is brilliantly narrated by Adjoa Andoh).

The violence of the Hausa towards the Igbo is shocking and the rage between the different peoples descends like a red mist. But I have to ask myself if I would be any different if my own children were threatened. Would I strive for truth and reconciliation like Mandela or would I be a berserker? Sadly, probably the latter.

Funnily enough, one of the customers who gave a donation yesterday had lived in Nigeria for many years. I told her about this book and she is going to track it down to read it too. What a small world we live in ! (thankfully a small blue planet, not a red one!)