Billy, Don’t Be A Hero

Seven year olds can make their own fairy bread. That’s dinner for the rest of the year sorted. 

I’m a long way through the writing of this first book but I’ve hit a little wall. It’s not a big or hard wall, and it’s nothing to do with the book (which will be great and excellent so my publisher who reads this need not freak out and go into labour or anything), it’s just a wall with a sign on it that says ‘nearly there: reduce speed now’.

It’s to do with the fact that if I keep writing at the rate I have been I will finish it well before the deadline and then what fun will having a deadline be? For surely the only point of a deadline is for it to cause enormous trauma and misery to me and everyone around me, right? Like the deadline for my thesis at university, which was approached correctly, by doing bugger bloody all for months on end and then writing almost the whole thing the night before it was due.

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You Might As Well Have a Hotdog

There’s now a five-year-old living in our house. I don’t quite understand how, since I only just gave birth to her. Her birthday was excellent and exciting, beginning with mango pancakes in bed (thankfully she let herself be talked out of having soup), and finishing with pizza.

On Sunday we threw her an awesome Peter Pan-themed party, attended by seven Peters Pan, two Captains Hook, one mermaid, one Wendy (the birthday girl) and one Michael.

We played Pass the Parcel with an ordinary parcel because when I went to buy the fish and chips to put in it I found the fish and chip shop had shut down. Instead, the parcel contained a lame prize in the middle and a chocolate coin in each layer, which turned out to be ill advised because every time someone unwrapped a layer and got their coin, they promptly devoted all their attention to eating it and not to passing the parcel. Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t yet have a chocolate coin cried.

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A Very Peter Pan Birthday

The countdown to May Blossom’s fifth birthday has begun. It is agony for the poor child. Six weeks out she started with, ‘It’s a really long time until my birthday. It’s too long. I don’t think I can wait that long.’ Sorry, my love, birthdays come when they come. And if you think this spring is going slowly, you should have been here five years ago, when the months of September and October took eleven years, I weighed the same as the average delivery of topsoil and the two sides of my pelvis were huffily turning their backs on each other and sidling apart, like siblings refusing to have their heights compared.

Three weeks out she started saying, ‘I don’t want to hear it’s anyone else’s birthday before mine.’ Now we’re down to four days and she is crying each morning because FOR THE LOVE OF PETE WHY ISN’T IT FRIDAY YET? I think the thing she is most looking forward to is breakfast in bed. She’s been begging me for it for months, and I finally capitulated and said that on the morning she turns five I will serve her breakfast in bed. Then I asked what she would like. Leek and potato soup, and baked beans on toast. I can’t think of a worse breakfast to serve in bed. Except maybe fondue, because that’s both messy and flammable.

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Children’s Parties for the Back-yardless

May Blossom turned two a couple of weeks ago, which means that she now knows All The Things There Are To Know and All The Words To Everything, and it also means that I have now thrown two kids’ parties and am thus an expert in entertaining for smalls. Here is how to do it:.

Invitations: To get the numbers up, it’s useful invite people to your party. I used Paperless Post for electronic invitations. It is simple to use, has lovely designs to choose from and makes it easy to track RSVPs. We also chose to keep the party little this year, which was a good idea, so we just invited a child’s handful of very close friends. There somehow still ended up being twelve two-year-olds. That is a lot of toddlers. We must make more friends without two-year-olds (for a variety of reasons).

Location: Last year we had the party in a park that was a short drive away. That was fine and lovely, but logistically a bit hard. This year we went a thirty-second walk around the corner to the small local park, which would prove handy for H to trudge back and forth the whole time, escorting people to the loo, and getting extra jumpers and other forgotten essentials. We arrived to find OTHER PEOPLE were already having a party, so we scowled at them and set up on the other side of the park.

The other mob were about thirty seven-year-old boys being run ragged like they were in the Army Reserve by a hired PE teacher type of fellow. He had a broad-brimmed hat, a booming voice and a whistle. How is that a birthday party? They took up about eighty-five per cent of the park, leaving us the tiny strip of land next to the metre-high sheer precipitous drop down into the beer garden of the local bowling club. A perfect location for twelve toddlers. The parties managed to ignore each other like two cats who are forced to sleep in adjoining cages at the vet but know it’s only for a week. There were no turf wars. We were magnanimous when some of their guests came over to eat our fairy bread.  Who could blame them? Our party was clearly better.  Mostly because of the…

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Do Yourself A Favour

This morning, between baking four huge chocolate cakes and dealing with a toddler suffering from what I thought was fear of the noise the mixer made until I realised it was desperation to lick the batter off the beaters, I finished making the party favours for May Blossom’s birthday party.

Party favours aren’t something I had really planned. I might have flung a few sweets into a bought cellophane bag, maybe, if everything else had run smoothly (as if). Realistically, I probably wouldn’t have had anything to give the small guests to thank them for coming.

But now I do. Now each kid will receive a handmade paper box, decorated with a drawing of an owl and a pussycat in a boat — owl playing guitar, boat containing a jar of honey and plenty of money. Inside each box is an owl or a pussycat, made from denim stamped with paint from a handcarved rubber stamp, with vintage fabric backing, stuffed with a little filling so it’s soft and squishy. They have hanging tabs made from various ribbons. Every single one is different. There is also a chocolate frog in each box.

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