Rosie had her birthday party last night. She's grown out of needing to be entertained, and is perfectly happy with pizza and a sleepover. I think I enjoy children's birthday parties about as much as the Child Catcher enjoyed working as a classroom assistant when he fell on hard times after Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Some mothers like nothing more than to lovingly bake a birthday cake and decorate it with fondant icing - but not me. Life's too short to spend hours labouring over something that gets cut up, shoved in a bag and then smeared all over the car seats on the way home. In my defence, I have to say that I did make each of my girls a model farm. The second one was fashioned out of an old wooden drawer. I cut down the sides to make walls and made a hole at one end for the gateway. Then I constructed a tractor shed and pigsty, made a gate out of lolly sticks, with proper hinges, and a duck pond out of a piece of Perspex over a circle of tin foil. But to add proper authenticity it needed something extra; something that I didn't have lying around my workshop. I had to get the paper that looks like brickwork, and the green stuff that looks like grass, which meant a trip to a fusty, dusty emporium of signal boxes and balsa wood gliders. All I can say about the experience is that baking a cake is a piece of Battenberg compared with entering the weird world of the model maker.

I usually like shops that are full of interesting bits and bobs, but model shops are the domain of those strange men who actually enjoy watching a tiny train go around and around a miniature world of their own making. If you've ever visited an Internet dating site you will have come across just the kind of man I'm talking about. He's probably called Keith, he'll have flattened-down hair, clogged pores and nostril hair that shouts, 'Don't look in my hanky!'

When I walked into the shop, everyone turned around and stared at me. The uncomfortable silence was broken only by the soft chugging of a Hornby locomotive in the shop window, and the faint whooshing sound of air being drawn sharply in, and then meeting stiff resistance in the clogged and clammy recesses of a dozen unkempt noses. I half expected a teeny-weeny tumbleweed to blow across my path and was just waiting for the man behind the counter to look up and say, 'We don't get many of your kind around these parts. Can I interest you in a miniature bush?'

It was all a bit scary being the only woman in there, so sneaked over to the model railway section and tried not to be too conspicuous; but it's hard not to stand out when you're the only person in the shop who has ever removed a bra, and it's hard not to stare when the man beside you is gently caressing a tiny stationmaster, who isn't the only one wearing a glazed expression. It must be like some kind of drug, some kind of strange compulsion to see the world in miniature and want to live there. I didn't want to live in a tiny town with odd-looking men who spend all their spare time shunting. I grabbed the brick paper and the plaster of Paris, brushed aside the man in a tank top at the counter who was absentmindedly humming 'Love my Tender' whilst shaking coins out of a half-moon leatherette flip purse, and made for the safety of the real world. I haven't been back to the model shop since that day. I'm prepared to do a lot for my girls, but I draw the line at spending quality time with chuffing railway enthusiasts.

I really don't like throwing children's' parties at all, and for me, hell is a world filled with balloons and cheesy wotsits. When the girls were younger I made it my mission to get their party guests to such a level of excitement that they often had to be given junior Valium for the car journey home. I achieved this feat by filling them with e-numbers and giving them a sugar rush that was guaranteed to last for the next 48 hours at least. It makes me sad that I don't have Charlie around to help me, and it's always a huge low when all the children have gone home and I'm left without anybody to talk to about that little boy who broke Alice's new Barbie house, or the girl who went home with a Smartie up her nose.

Party bags are another major source or irritation. I can remember spending a fortune on bits of plastic that would invariably end up discarded down the back of the sofa, or stuck up a tree, but other parents judge you by the quality of your party bag and I didn't want to be thought of as the woman who doesn't make a cake and is a bit tight with her party favours.

Most children are polite enough to say 'thank you', but there's always one who refuses, and when that happens I have to fight the urge to bend down, look the little blighter in the eye and say, 'Don't you realise what I've just gone through for you? I sweated hundreds and thousands to give you a good time this evening and I'm not letting go of this bag until you give me some indication that you are grateful for my efforts, and happy to be given gifts that cost twice as much as the pencil and rubber set that you've just given to Rosie.' Some parents are so lax with their children that they will happily ignore the fact that I'm waiting for a 'thank you'. They'll turn and head for the door, leaving their ill-mannered child stuck in a grim tug of war with that horrid lady who doesn't bake her own birthday cakes. Tears and tantrums have no effect on me; party bags cost a fortune, but manners cost nothing at all.

Anyhow, that's all behind me now. Another successful sleepover party bites the dust. The Dougal cake that I didn't bake is down to its last two slices, and after staying up talking and giggling until midnight, my girls are so tired they'll sleep all afternoon. Who says apathy doesn't pay?


© Kate Boydell 2004. All rights reserved. e-mail: [email protected]. Close window.