Blue Fringe Benefits

As Chickie happily watched two bunnies getting jiggy with it at Haskins Garden Centre, a cunning plan was hatching between two mummies, one of whom was me.

It had all begun when something blue and tassely was kindly popped into a party bag with Chickie’s name on it the day before. He’d had a lovely time at his friend’s birthday party until daddy had whipped out the fringed noisemaker and tooted it in his face. A terror-struck Chick fastened himself to Mummy sobbing. It took half an hour to lever him off.

When I rediscovered the noisemaker the next day, I gave it a whirl, not thinking that the child engrossed in Thomas the Tank Engine Episode 3452 –“The One Where Thomas Cops Another Strop” would be phased by distant gazooing. “CUGGLE, CUGGLE” he shrieked, springing into my arms where he clung, shaking. When he spotted the blue tassels on the worktop, glimmering in the sunlight, he began climbing up my body, hysterical.

When I retold events to my friend ‘M’ later that day she happened to joke what a handy tool such a device would be for disciplinary purposes. “Why, yes it would!” I realised, stroking my double chin menacingly, wondering how best to sterilise it after it had sat stewing in the bin all afternoon.

Recalling the sound of Chickie’s mocking laughter as he’d sat on the naughty step and flashbacking to the time he rammed stones into his mouth defiantly, biting me as I tried to scoop them out, I was spurred on. Yes, this plan was excellent, I liked it a lot.

As soon as I got home, Operation ‘Naughty Noisemaker’ got underway. As I retrieved, scrubbed and buffed my hope for a brighter future, Chickie wandered in to see what all the smug chuckling was about. Eyeing me suspiciously, he caught a glimpse of metallic blue fringe. And that was all it took.

After Chickie had laid on my lap in the foetal position for a good 45 minutes, his small body racked by the occasional sob, I decided we couldn’t afford the counselling fees and the ‘Naughty Noisemaker’, along with all it's promise, was thrown into the bin once more. Chickie watched it go and now drives round the house on his little red car using the recently developed bin-bypass.

Unrelated but, as I can now upload video: take 4 new parents, some babysitters and ....