Dickens of a time on World Book Day
THOSE in possession of teenagers will vouch that there’s not much to be joyous about.
You might, of course, be that rare parent who produced an absolute treasure: a post-13-year-old who actually speaks to you, smiles with you and is inordinately grateful for your impeccable parenting. Well done you!
The rest of us, meanwhile, are counting down the years until the fridge door remains closed for more than five minutes, while simultaneously thanking whoever it is we need to be grateful to for the rather wonderful realisation that receiving daily grunts from spotty youths does at least mean the annual horror of rustling up a favourite literary character costume for World Book Day is forever consigned to history.
It’s Over. Dead. Buried
Simple solution proved to be genius
– never to inflict its lastminute stress, palpitations, urges-to-slap-smug-mumswith-kids-in-handmade costumes hell ever again. YES! YES! YES! As mum to two teenage boys (15 and 18) I’m celebrating NO World Book Day Day, as if there’s no tomorrow. Surly, spotty, ungrateful, adultloathing youths who mistake the floor for storage, versus angelic primary school darlings who think your every utterance, meal, World Bloody Book Day costume is the BEST? Give me the teens any day. Well, maybe not the teens themselves, just the fact that their school life requires less parent participation and fewer demands on our already demanding schedules. Now when I say “our”, of course I mean me. It is mostly mums, after all, who despite working full-time take on the lion’s share of domestic business and kids.
Yes, I know there are dads who do it too, but the majority don’t. Anyway, mum, dad, whoever, if you’ve still got kids young enough for you to have to go through the yearly nightmare of the WBD costume palaver, may I introduce my simple solution. It’s a one-off desperate measure that proved to be long-lasting genius, if you don’t mind me saying.
So when my youngest was nine, I had a WBD meltdown which resulted in me grabbing his school shirt, an old donkey jacket of mine, his black jeans and a baker boy cap I hadn’t worn for ages, told him to put it all on as he was “a character from a Charles Dickens novel”. “Who?” he asked. “It doesn’t matter, they’re all mostly poor and wear clothes that don’t fit them anyway.”
So off ‘Oliver’ went. He wore cast-offs and was a ‘poor’ Dickens character for the remaining WBDs until he left primary school. In fact, I’m sure I once heard him saying “Please, sir, I want some more.” Ha!