Sat 14th Mar 2009

It is my birthday tomorrow. My sister gave me a four-pack of Guinness, as a gift from my nephew. At 14 months of age, it is quite astonishing that he knows me so well. This was almost a perfect gift. However I can’t help feeling a certain sense of disquiet.

Don’t get me wrong, my nephew is very clever and is clearly developing at a pace more rapid than his age. But considering that he cannot articulate anything more than a clumsy delivery of the most rudimentary words and often needs assistance getting certain shaped blocks of plastic into correspondent holes, I suspect he may not have bought this gift his self. Being 14 months old, I can’t see how even the most liberal of off-license retailers would have served him. I strongly suspect this is a sham and it was in fact his parents were the ones who actually decided upon and purchased this gift.

I have always been in awe of my sibling and her husband’s devoted parenting skills, but I worry they are now sabotaging this high esteem. In legal terms, they are technically claiming that their 14-month-old son has purchased four cans of Guinness. Surely this would not look very favorable towards him if this purchase ever came to light in any judicial process. They clearly haven’t thought the consequences of their actions through. For parents I hold in such high regard, such irresponsibility seems almost incomprehensible. By passing off the purchase of an alcoholic gift by a 14-month old child, don’t they see how they’re incriminating themselves by buying beer for a minor. In isolation, I could just about stand this. But they were also being short-sighted of the implications their actions would have on the innocently unwitting parties, such as the retailer who sold it; and more significantly, their own son himself.

Of course, in order to verify the exact level of moral and legal untoward that occurred, I must remember to take a surreptitious check of the young boy’s savings balance for any value-corresponding transactions. Then I’ll be able to tell if he was personally the monetary (therefore legal), purchaser of these beverages. If I see the price of a four pack of Guinness has been withdrawn from his balance, it will technically be some transactional evidence of alcohol having been bought by an underage. Which is a shame, because the appropriation of a fantasy fairy-tale world where a nephew obliges his uncle with gifts of Guinness, is a world-view I see as being rather beneficial for me.

But sadly the law is still the law. Lest we forget, in real terms this is a customer that isn’t even 18 months old yet, let alone 18 years. And rules are put in place for a reason, no matter how pedantic and unnecessary their technical implications may seem. They still need to be obliged by everyone, for the sake of a soundly functioning society. It doesn’t matter whether they’re family or not.