Thing Perhaps To Do Today: sponsor someone.

I'd like to thank my sponsors, but unfortunately I don't know who there are.

You see, I'd already been christened when my parents adopted me, and so I don't know who acted as my sponsors, that is my godparents, on that occasion. I can't say this has ever bothered me, though I must have missed out on a few birthday presents over the years.

Naturally I've had sponsors from time to time since then, and I've been a sponsor many times more. I've sponsored a daughter to jump out of an aeroplane*; I've sponsored a son-in-law to grow a moustache (it's amazing the things one will sponsor people to do, even when they're obviously very very bad ideas); most recently I've sponsored a singer to shave off all her hair.

Ah well, it's quite fun to see an acquaintance make an idiot of himself, and I suppose it is some sort of indication that the cause is important.


 U.S. Service members 5K Super Hero Fun Run 2013, Afghanistan.

I don't know, though. The uncomfortable thing about raising money through sponsorship is that it displays the exact extent of one's meanness to all one's friends and relations. This can sometimes feel uncomfortably close to blackmail.

Ah well. As long as it's in a good cause.

2011 Cambridge Fun Run

Thing Perhaps To Do Today: sponsor someone. This word comes from the Latin spondēre, to promise solemnly.

*With the aid of a parachute, naturally.