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!)

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog