saturday 14th march – Charm School

Oscar has a sore throat.  He sounds like his voice is breaking, which is rather funny in someone who comes up to your kneecaps.  He is husky and squealy in turns.  He doesn’t seem to be bothered by it in the slightest.  An entertaining illness. It may be a first.  He only mentions it when he thinks he might get more cake or sweets, or if he thinks he’s going to get told off.  He is rather clever that way. Unfortunately so am I.  It hasn’t worked, but ten out of ten for effort.

Tallulah went to a High School Musical bowling party today.  What will they come up with next? Ludo with Hannah Montana? Curling with Sponge Bob Square Pants? It is all too baffling.  It was also at ten thirty this morning, which is a ludicrous time of day to have a children’s party in my opinion.  At ten thirty on a Saturday morning we are usually still slugging about in our pyjamas growling and throwing shreddies at the ceiling.  The levels of activity we had to achieve this morning were frankly frightening.  Even Tallulah was a bit put out and it was for her sake.

Jason took her into the bowling alley.  He came out ten minutes later, got into the car and said sombrely: ‘I’m just putting this on record. We are NEVER doing a party like that for our children. NEVER.’ Luckily I agree with him.  Once, back in the cobwebbed past when I was still married to UE, we had a party at a Whacky Warehouse for Tilly. It was hideous and vile, vile and hideous.  It cost several hundred pounds and was insane.  It was too hot.  We hired a face painter. After twenty minutes playing in the ball pool of death the paint was running down their faces all over their party frocks and they all looked like something out of a horror movie.  The food was vile.  The entertainments were half witted and half assed and the parents who stayed were in the main rude, surly and spent most of the time they should have been supervising their children, nipping through into the bar and drinking pints.  Half the kids never said thank you, which is something that pisses me off beyond almost anything else.  Especially when each little darling is costing me about twenty quid.

Then there was the fact that Tilly was wildly over excited, totally unprepared to deal with the hysteria and kept bursting into tears because all her circuits were fried.  She got so many presents she had no idea what to do with them all and stashed them in a corner of the room where they were roundly ignored, and the whole thing was a giant bust.

I cannot imagine what trying to organise twenty six year olds to perform miracles of ten pin bowling whilst hopped up on Fruit Shoots and deep fried chicken’s eyebrows is like, but it can’t be good, can it?

While Tallulah was bowling we went to try and buy her Rainbows uniform.  It turns out that John Lewis has now stopped stocking them and the Guiding shop doesn’t open on a weekend. Brilliant.  I will have to go for plan Z, which is ignore it all until next week and think about it then.  It’s working very well so far.

We went and had a little lie down in Carluccios amongst the cakes while we regrouped.  Oscar charmed all the Italian waitresses who plied him with free breadsticks and colouring pencils.  This was great because we had the best service in the whole restaurant.  Nothing was too much bother.  We are thinking of hiring Oscar out for such occasions, that and for men who can’t pull women.  Jason said that if I want to leave him can I do it soon whilst Oscar is still in his ‘cute’ phase, so he stands more of a chance with the girls.  I smiled sweetly and stabbed his knee with my pastry fork.

Tilly was out all day.  She went to help granny and grandad at an antique fair.  They give her her own stall and apron full of change and she sells things.  Because she is cute people give her money even when they don’t want to buy anything, or buy things because they like her and she is nice to them.  She charmed a man who had a stall across the way who apparently loved her so much he gave her half his stock to sell.  She made about eight quid, which given most of the things on her table were priced at about twenty pence, was exceptional.  I do worry about the charm thing though. It’s fine now that she is nine and unworldly (i.e. she still thinks boys are purely ornamental), but when she gets older it may be a problem.  I may have to put hormones in her food to ensure she grows a thick moustache or something.

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