National Book Day

National Demonstrate Parental Ineptitude Day, you mean. The school noticeboard invited us all to send our kids to school on 4th March dressed as their favourite literary character. A fact which I recalled at approximately 8pm THE NIGHT BEFORE.

Oh... fuuuuuck.

Ben was already in bed. This is a good thing – entering into a debate with him about which character from which book in his library would have surely defeated me so close to my own bedtime, so making the decision on his behalf was something I was more than happy to execute.

I think about his favourite stories, and then start a slow, downward spiral into blind terror and panic, mixed with equal parts self-loathing because oh for the love of effing Christ HOW DO I MAKE A GRUFFALO COSTUME OUT OF SOME TINFOIL, DUCT TAPE AND TUPPERWARE LIDS which is all I happened to have at hand at the time.

In the end, I totally (and predictably) wimped out and mashed together a Harry Potter costume. I was going to say ‘haphazardly mashed’ but there was nothing haphazard about it – it was pretty impressive from where I was sitting. The irony is, my kid has never shown an iota of interest in Harry Potter (he is, after all, only five, and perhaps a little young for all that wingardium leviosa-ing) but be that as it may, desperate times call for desperate measures, etc. etc. and before long, a black skirt of mine became some wizarding robes, a pimped-up bendy straw became a magic wand and some cardboard and black electrical tape made a fine pair of Harry Potter spectacles. Add one stolen-from-website-and-printed-on-card Gryffindor badge later and behold the transformation:

Enthusiasm, anyone?

Thursday morning he woke up and I told him he’d be going to school dressed as Harry Potter.

“But Mammy, “ he puzzled. “Harry Potter isn’t from a book, he’s from a film and a video game. Can I go as the Hungry Caterpillar instead?”

Er, no. I had to get the book out and show it to him before he’d believe me and he still wasn’t keen. This loaned itself to an irritated reluctance (in the form of a near wrestling match) to let me draw a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead with my eyebrow pencil which was luckily dissipated by the shameless bribe of including a chocolate biscuit in his packed lunch... (exhale!) ... and off he went to school. I watched as he zipped his way into the classroom to take his place amongst the rest of the kids in fancy dress and stopped to admire some of the other costumes.

But wait, what’s this I see? How did I miss the TRANSFORMERS in the collected works of Enid Blyton? Was ‘Ben10’ a protagonist in one of Aesop’s Fables? Did Roald Dahl invent Spongebob Squarepants?

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME I COULD HAVE SENT HIM TO SCHOOL IN LAST YEAR’S WALL-e HALLOWE’EN COSTUME AND SAVED MYSELF THE TURMOIL?

(sigh)  Where's my corkscrew?