Let’s do this together
COMMUNITY CORNER
World Book Day 2014: the Dark Lordette is six years old and is looking forward to dressing up as her favourite book, Father Christmas Goes on Holiday, for the best day in the whole school year.
She’s not yet been brainwashed by the Great Pink Princess Plastic Scam and is happy to go in a DIY costume.
I gave her my old beret, and one of her striped T-shirts and a pair of shorts. I made the beard from cotton wool and stuck a baguette under her arm.
“It’s brilliant,” I told her. “A costume you can wear and snack on at the same time.”
TDL was delighted and went round getting into character.
“Blooming cat, blooming cloud, blooming sky.” “Off you go,” I said, packing her off to school. “And try not to swear at everyone like Father Christmas.”
When I picked her up that afternoon, she was despondent. “All the girls were in pretty princess dresses, Mummy. I looked silly.” Still, it wasn’t all the bad news. “The boys played with me and we shared my baguette during breaktime,” she told me.
World Book Day 2015: Disney princesses had taken over our lives – Ariel, Cinderella, Belle, Aurora (or “Awowa” as TDL couldn’t say her Rs), Tiana and her favourite, Elsa from Frozen.
TDL had a cupboard full of barely flame-retardant plastic princess dresses – everything was pink or Elsa blue. And if she moved too fast while wearing them, sparks would fly.
All the girls in her school grew their hair long like princesses, difficult for TDL as she had curly hair which grew out not down.
Everything in our house had to be princess-themed – even Elsa soap, which was so nasty, it took the outer layer of your dermis off. Sadly I was never again allowed to make a homemade costume again – and instead TDL was dressed by Amazon every year.
World Book Day 2024: This year some schools have emailed parents saying that because of the cost of living they are having a Get Comfy and Read Day!
Finally somebody has called a halt to the expensive, wasteful, straight-to-landfill plastic fancy dress costume monster that has hijacked a perfectly good celebration of reading.
It’s come too late for us, but then again, we’ve reached peak What’s A Book Day?
■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.
Please note, if you send us photos of your grandchildren, we’ll also need permission of one of their parents to print them... Thanks!