dispatches from the school run

March 17

There was to be a cake stall in the main hall after school.
Funds would be raised for sprucing up the school garden.
Undercoverdad decided it would be a good idea to show what a great guy he is by baking a cake to contribute to the stall.
He chose to make a date and banana loaf.
Nothing could go wrong with a date and banana loaf.
Undercoverdad followed instructions and weights and measures to the letter.
When he checked how the loaf was doing, it was doing fine.
When he went back ten minutes later to take the loaf out of the oven it was burnt to a cinder.
It was an unmitigated disaster.
There was no way the loaf could be presented in public without inducing waves of laughter and ridicule accompanied by mass finger-pointing.
Undercoverdad decided to take the offending article along to prove his commitment, then give a donation before humanely disposing of the loaf so nobody would have their evening ruined by trying to eat it. Or their teeth.
Perhaps the date and banana loaf would sit nicely as a centrepiece in the school garden itself.
As part of the rockery for example.

March 12

A mystery has come to light which would befuddle Ellery Queen and Inch High Private Eye - even if they were working together in a detective dream team.
Superkid came home from school with someone else's shoes on (a child's, not an adult's).
The shoes were a different size to his own and had the name Geoffrey Corbishley written in them.
There is nobody of that name in Superkid's class.
Superkid has never been formally introduced to anyone called Geoffrey Corbishley in his life and has never spent any time in the company of anyone from the Corbishley family.
Undercoverdad and Superkid took the offending shoes into class the following morning and presented Teech with the footwear puzzle.
Teech did not know how it could have happened and Teech knows everything. In the entire world.
After she had finished laughing, Teech promised to get to the bottom of this intriguing state of affairs.
Sure enough, by collection time she had solved the matter. Of couse she had, she is Teech.
Anyway, Geoffrey Corbishley does exist. He is a student of some promise in the year above Superkid.
And now he has his own shoes back.
What's more, he had taken Superkid's shoes home and they are also now back in the possession of their original owner.
Teech said she had no idea how the mix-up had happened. There had been no interaction between the two classes and no P.E. lesson or other activity involving the removal of footwear.
It appears Superkid may well be keeping something to himself, which is something his father never did during childhood.

March 6

‘A triumph’ - Baz Bamigboye, Daily Mail
‘Utterly stunning, who was that boy in the tiger outfit?’ - Andrew Lloyd Webber, a large country pile somewhere in the home counties
‘Superkid clearly has natural rhythm and an innate feel for the choreography’ - Undercoverdad, at his computer

The annual Festival of Dance has come and gone in a blaze of glory and without any major mishaps whatsoever.
Okay, so some parents had ignored the warning that tickets were limited and taken up valuable space by applying to bring toddlers along. The toddlers became bored – that’s what toddlers do. Other mothers had missed out on a ticket altogether and were in danger of missing their loved ones perform.
That didn’t seem right, fair or just but it can happen when touts start selling blocks of seating on Ebay and the like.
Anyway, forget the ticket allocation scandal.
Each primary school in the town had put together its own dance sequence and the entire collection was to be premiered at the leisure centre on not one, but two nights of heady showbiz.
There was a 200 strong sell-out crowd, tiered grandstand seating, a lighting rig and everything.
If we’re going to be overly critical, perhaps a couple too many troupes had elected to work on a jungle/Lion King/Disney theme for the true dance purist to be totally at ease but, hey, you can’t have enough homemade giraffe suits.
Being a seasoned professional, Superkid had an elephant suit for opening night and a lion suit for closing night.
That, my friends, is how you keep your demanding public happy.
Just remember how many times Madonna has changed her image over the years and she’s still moving plenty of product. And Kylie. And Christopher Biggins.

March 2

Superkid was spruced up, combed, brushed, scrubbed and arranged as only a mother can spruce up, comb, brush, scrub and arrange her child.
Why?
For an appearance on local radio, of course.
As a father, I knew it was not my place to question the strange logic behind this pressing requirement to look good for radio.
'He's representing his school,' was Superkid's mother's catch-all explanation - delivered with such cold-eyed steel that it invited no argument.
Superkid's class would be performing 'She'll be coming round the mountain' in the school hall and the virtuoso effort would be going out on the airwaves for anyone living in the environs to enjoy at their leisure.
Of course there was a chance that some grudging killjoys would turn their radios off immediately but, hey, that's the chance you take when you pursue a life in the entertainment business.
Superkid knew the stakes were high and was quite happy to roll his dice.
Anyway, he was on a mission.
'I'm going to have a word with Steve after the performance,' he informed me as we made our way into school.
'Who's Steve?' I replied.
'He's an important man on the radio,' Superkid expanded. 'And I'm going to have a word with him after the performance.'
At picking up time, Superkid proclaimed himself content with the class's display but disappointed with his first public singing performance in one respect.
'Steve didn't turn up,' he told me sadly. 'So I couldn't have a word with him after all.'
'Never mind,' I said and, being middle aged, turned on Radio Two for the drive home.
'No wonder he didn't turn up,' said Superkid. 'He was busy. Listen . . . Steve Wright in the afternoon.'
Wasn't being a kid great.