Children's parties = the 10th circle of hell

There are lots of things in the world that are horrible.

Stubbing your toe, finding out you’ve run out of Creme Eggs and anything with Fearne Cotton are just a few examples. But there is something, far, far worse. I discovered it last weekend, and I’m still in shock.

I had an enjoyable few days staying with my brother, which involved laughing a lot, drinking at unusual times, and agreeing to go to my niece’s son’s 3rd birthday party. It turned out that this was a very, very, bad idea for my sanity.

This was no ordinary party, but one held at what can only be describes as a kids birthday warehouse. And they were fully stocked with screeching nippers too. On entering the gigantic building, we were met by myriad tables with names on – a kind of green room, where the little darlings could assemble, before being led off to the main event.

If 100+ kids in one space isn’t terrifying enough for you, factor in one of those indoor play areas on an industrial scale, then boost the noise level with a dose of sweeties and fizzy drinks, and you’ll still not even be close. Shell-shocked adults surveyed the scene in wide-eyed terror, wondering if they might be able to escape unnoticed, or at least without permanent hearing loss.

Youthful staff dressed as tigers and pirates walked despondently round trying to clear up and maintain order, all shades of dignity shredded, along with their eardrums. Like a badly injured pheasant on a road, they looked at us with ‘kill me now’ eyes. Imagine what it must be like to work there with a hangover – maybe the only way is to stay inebriated. It would explain the sensibly dressed chap with fairy wings on. Maybe.

Party time arrived, at which point your group is ushered upstairs, to walk past a dozen other parties taking place in themed cubicles. We entered a nautical world, where they’d thoughtfully provided us with benches so low, I wasn’t even eye-level with a 3 year old. The kids were distracted by the other parties taking place, small amounts of unhealthy looking party food were eaten, spilt, pushed up noses and mashed into hair, and then the nippers got theirs too.

The kiddies-Hades staff were soon clearing up the barely touched piles of fries and mini-burgers, and hoovering up ready for the next round of child-based bedlam, whilst I pondered how we’ve reached a stage where the shocking waste of food seems trivial.

Somewhere in the world, a starving child is crying themselves to sleep with hunger – here, they’re probably a bit miffed at having to fork out for another skip to shovel all the unwanted goodies in.

And then we were outside, gulping lungfuls of air, our ears ringing like we’d just exited the front row of a Who gig circa 1976.

Whatever happened to jelly and ice cream, with half a dozen mates, in your living room? My therapy sessions start next week.

Have a party-free weekend.

If you can.

This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday 2nd November 2012. This is the unedited version - you can view the printed/online version here The paper retitled this one as "Discover horrors of a child's party". I thought mine was better...

97 words were edited out by the paper, including my one-man crusade against Fearne Cotton. Again. I promise I won't give up though.

(Soothing Mike Oldield on today whilst I struggle with a nasty cold - Tubular Bells, but the version from the 'Boxed' collection. Extended mad Sailor's Hornpipe section!)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

The Schaf Shuffle

The weather – source of endless fascination, conversation, irritation and (just recently) excess irrigation. And a fidgety weather presenter on the BBC... I’m endlessly fascinated with the weather, and will confess to making sure I catch the BBC’s updates whenever possible. Not the local ones, where half the presenters look like they got dressed in the dark, or ITV, where they seem to know very little about actual weather, but the national forecasts. Delivered by actual Met Office personnel, their job entails a tricky mix of waving your hands about a bit, explaining about warm fronts without smirking, and trying not to look too pleased whilst mentioning gales force winds and torrential rain. Or stand in front of Cornwall. Each has their own presenting style, but there is one who intrigues me above all the others. Step forward, Tomasz Schafernaker, the 37 year old man from the Met who breezed onto our screens in 2001, as the youngest male ever to point out that it was going to r...

RIP Jenwis Hamilbutton

We are gathered here in this... (looks round a bit) um... blog, to mourn the passing of Jenwis Hamilbutton. His life may have been short and largely irrelevant, but he touched the lives of so many people that... sorry? Oh. Apparently that was someone else... Jenwis Hamilbutton rose briefly to fame on twitter during 2010, when he was retweeted by BBC F1 presenter Jake Humphrey, having criticised his shirt. A similarly unspectacular claim to fame occurred when a tweet he crafted at 1am on a windy night appeared in F1 Racing magazine. An amalgam of bits of Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (mostly the hopeless bits), he came into existence via 3 pints of cider, a Creme Egg and the Electric Light Orchestra’s mournful 1986 farewell album “Balance Of Power”, played loudly over headphones. In his short existence, he was followed on twitter by Paul Hardcastle of “19” fame, and a bunch of slightly odd but jolly nice people, whom he was never entirely sure actually exist...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog