Tom Daley in the stands

Watching the games on TV, somewhat distractedly, I see that British Tom Daley, twenty-seven years old, gold medalist in synchronized diving from the ten-meter platform (he still has to do the individual event), is sitting in the stands knitting a wool hat, while his teammates perform different events. Naturally, the cameras linger on the image and sports newspapers turn it into news.

I will tell you that what I have read is that he "was crocheting," but it seems to me, rather, that he was knitting (or "calceta," if you prefer). I say this thinking that, when my mother knitted wool hats or socks for us, she used two needles and, on the other hand, when she made crochet doilies she used only one which, as its name indicates, had a small hook.

My mother claimed that knitting while watching TV, for example, relaxed her (I could never understand it) and surely this is the purpose of young Daley, in the stands. But Daley surely has a latest-generation mobile phone, because apart from being an athlete he is a YouTuber and influencer (he has many followers, because he is a standard-bearer for the Lgtbi movement). I mean that he surely has games on his mobile and could have been in the stands playing Candy Crush, like everyone else (I will never understand that either). If he had done this, he would not have appeared on TV. That he killed time doing something so untechnological and so "from before" as knitting seems nice to us. And of course, this will, paradoxically, make all his followers share the photo on Instagram.