What a very small world

A few months ago I picked up the phone in the middle of the day to hear a broad Australian accent telling me they didn't have my Roos shirt. To be honest, it's not what you expect in the middle of North Yorkshire when you've just been listening to the Archers. Roos shirt? Excuse me?

I was a bit dim, because the girl had to tell me three times. And even then, any minute, I expected the voice to change into one of the boys or their friends. Then I remembered. The Australian football shirt...

It's probably all to do with watching too much Neighbours, but Smaller Son had developed a yearning for an Aussie rules football shirt. As far as I can gather, Aussie rules is a cross between rugby league and hand to hand combat. Anyway, the players all wear these skin tight sleeveless shirts which gives their opponents nothing to grab on to.

Smaller Son wanted one. Goodness knows why. As we already have the definitive collection of Arsenal home and away shirts, Hartlepool shirts, his brother's Darlington shirts and a random selection of Holland, Brazil, Celtic and Greenock Morton, I didn't think he'd have room in his wardrobe for any more. But then I'm not a teenage boy.

So in a moment of weakness, I said if he could find one, I'd buy it for him, thinking that would put him off for a few weeks. No. In thirty seconds he was on the Internet and came back demanding my credit card number.

That was when a few days later I got the call from the Edna Everage soundalike. It was a bad time, she said, stocks were low, there wasn't much choice in his size.

And it was all forgotten. He faced the disappointment and decided life was complete, even without a macho football shirt.

Then one day when I thought he was finishing off his English coursework, it turned out he'd actually found the Aussie Footie Shop on the Internet again. And this time they were fully stocked. Rows and rows of football shirts went scrolling past me. If you think the English football shirt business is big, you should see this lot.

Having absolutely no loyalty to any particular team, he was undecided which to choose. So I told him he might as well get one with kangaroos on. Well, if you're going to be Australian, then you might as well be Australian, if you see what I mean. So he ordered this blue and white job with a big blue kangaroo bounding across his chest.

He e-mailed the order off on Monday night and this time I was prepared for the Edna Evrage phone call.

Instead, on Friday morning - Friday, mind you, just four days after we'd ordered from the other side of the world - the shirt arrived.

It's suitably tight, butch and, according to the label, "engineered to the exact specifications of championship athletes." And he's lived in it all summer.

He takes it for granted, of course, but I'm still bemused. You can order a shirt in seconds and in four days it arrives all the way from Australia. What a very small world our children live in.