Confessions of a Once Fashionable Mum by Georgia Madden

Author:Georgia Madden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.

16

#craft #prostitots #sausagesizzle #shutupandsmile

‘You haven’t put yourself down for a duty,’ barked Drill Sergeant Nikki the minute I arrived at playgroup the following week, thrusting a dog-eared clipboard into my hands.

‘A duty?’

‘Just check the roster and choose something.’

I scanned the bit of paper clipped to the board, which ran top to bottom with a list of playgroup jobs. All the easy ones had already been taken: Harriet had put her name down for laying out the refreshment table; Sharron had swiped clean-up duty; and Bree had nominated herself as today’s official fruit chopper-upper. Well, at least we could all rest assured it would be done in the most hygienic way possible. Slim pickings remained: Sing Song, an experience I didn’t think any of us cared to revisit, and Craft. Now, while some mothers’ hearts might leap at the prospect of a little macramé or papier-mâché with the kids, I wasn’t one of them. I’d been crap at art at school, and over the years my feelings about any sort of hands-on activity that started out with a whole lot of mess and ended up with a public viewing (aka judgement) had developed into something verging on the phobic.

The clipboard, the expectations, the dreaded craft cupboard I’d managed to avoid all these weeks … they were pushing every panic button I had.

I raced back to Nikki, who was now in the kitchen tallying up the number of cartons of long-life milk still left in the fridge.

‘I don’t think I can,’ I squeaked in a tiny voice.

She turned around. ‘Sure you can. What have you got?’ she asked, grabbing the clipboard from my trembling hands.

‘Craft, easy.’

Yeah, maybe for some.

‘That only comes round every three weeks. Actually, Craft’s today.’

At this point she must have taken note of the globs of sweat dripping down my face and the look of abject terror in my eyes, because she suddenly dropped the drill-sergeant mask, stood up and put a kindly arm around my shoulders.

‘Look,’ she said, guiding me ever-so-gently towards the craft cupboard, ‘the kids don’t even know what they’re doing. Just choose a bit of a theme, and go with the flow. As long as it’s messy and gets in every bit of their hair and clothes, they’ll have a blast.’ She opened the doors of the great crafting cupboard and shoved me inside. ‘Trust me,’ she said, shutting the doors with a bang.

It was like a bomb had gone off at Mardi Gras. There were feathers, glue, crayons, glitter, paint and sequins as far as the eye could see. Just looking at it made my head hurt. A theme? How the hell was I supposed to make a theme out of this hot load of crap?

As I mentally ran through my options, my throat began to constrict and it became harder and harder to breathe.

Somewhere outside I heard Nikki give the kids their marching orders: ‘Hurry up with that morning tea, everyone! Craft’s next!’

Hell, hell. Think, think!

Then, in a blinding flash, it came to

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