It’s official. I’m a horrible, ungrateful, grumpy beta mother who would prefer to go to the pub with her children (if she can’t find somewhere else for them to go) than wander around the school summer fair.
All around the country at this time of year, school sheds are filling up with unwanted presents and old toys, thousands of tiny plants are being carefully nurtured and lots of fraught parents are either having to plead desperately with local shops and estate agents for donations or rack their brains for who, out of all their contacts can get them something really really impressive for the top raffle prizes. It is all a nightmare. Thank god for enthusiastic, young parents. I’ve been there, done that. But even when I was enthusiastic and young, I didn’t get school summer fairs. All that planning and effort for what?
Our school fair was on Saturday. “Wild West” was the theme, but I kept forgetting that and wondering why some of the parents were swaggering around looking like Woody from Toy Story. I did my bit, obviously. Took the money for the Octopus ride for precisely 10 minutes before it pissed with rain and had to be shut (phew). Then stood about looking useless at the adult tombola trying to persuade people to buy yet more crappy things. But mainly I roamed around pretending that I was looking for my children in an effort to avoid doing anything useful.
Things my children came home with:
9 coconuts (all bad)
Bin bag full of crap from the toy stall
Bin bag full of crap from the book stall
Bin bag full of crap from the cd/dvd/video stall
Green hair
bag of squashed fairy cakes
face covered in glitter
My daughter was on the face painting/hair spraying stall. Her father agreed to let her spray his hair green. The only problem is that he doesn’t have any hair left. Brave move.
Tue, Jun 19, 2007
BLOG, KIDS