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Playing games
I am trying to extract myself from Facebook and Twitter. I feel I have spent an awful lot of time on Facebook and Twitter recently and I’m not sure if I am any the wiser for it. The overriding sense that emerges is that we have been involved in some sort of massive political game whose ultimate winners are as yet unknown, but whose losers are highly likely to involve the vast majority of the British people, particularly those in the most deprived areas.
So in that spirit of game-playing, we headed this weekend to the school fete. Where else? I had foolishly volunteered to make a cake. It was on the calendar in black and white, though I only remembered when I turned the page to July.
Only son had earlier made a list of things he wanted to do at the weekend, one of which was ‘make a cake’. This could have been a fortuitous coincidence, but only son and cake making are not entirely a Good Thing.
Only son is not one to sit on his hands. Once he has made a list he gets to work. He set the whole thing up himself while I was otherwise involved checking out why daughter two was doing with a can of black spray paint and an array of receptacles.
“What have you got in the bowl?” I asked when I spied what only son was doing. “Flour, an egg and food colouring,” he replied. Only son has become slightly enamoured of food colouring ever since daughter three made her rainbow cake. Fortunately, he was unable to put a lot into the mix, but he then showed me his “icing”. “It’s butter, green colouring, icing sugar and raspberry sauce,” he said proudly. Only son is a big fan of raspberry sauce. The icing was a very vibrant green.
There followed a long talk about the dangers of too much food colouring. Only son was not listening. He began a detailed story about a dream he had had about the Spooky Spoon arriving on the Green Goblin’s glider and killing his sisters. I am sure the Numberjacks people think their programme is merely a fun way of teaching maths, little imagining the utter terror it inspires in some. Only son cannot even mention Spooky Spoon’s name.
The cake is glowing in the kitchen. It was not felt a good idea to offer it up to the school fete so I had to buy one.
Meanwhile, daughter three is focused on her school play, Bugsy Malone. Daughter three came home a bit disgruntled after the parts were handed out. While she opens the show, she is splatted within about 30 seconds. Daughter three is not best pleased about this. Daughter two has been teaching her how to do a dramatic death so those 30 seconds are utterly memorable.
To compensate daughter three has been given two other small parts. This means, of course, that she has three different costumes. Lovely. Dress rehearsals are this week. We have to come up with a 1920s dance outfit, a gangster outfit and a top hat. Fortunately, daughter one has a supply of stick-on moustaches. Why???
*Mum on the run is Mandy Garner, editor of Workingmums.co.uk.
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