Anything you can do

There are different party worlds, and we all have to play to our own strengths and budgets. I major on the entertainment and, to a lesser extent, the birthday cake. But however many weeks in advance I start the planning, it always ends with me in the kitchen at 2am the night before the party. I shall be there again for each birthday this year, trying to disguise a collapsed cake as some sort of recognisable vehicle.

Of course, no child will become psychotic if he or she blows out the candles on a Tesco birthday cake. So why I am threatened by Party Bag Woman? Do I think that children will prefer her bags to my poo-ing animals; that her children will grow up creative while mine will be simply materialistic?

No, my insecurity tells me that all that effort must make PBW — whisper it — a better mother. Somewhere in all our party-giving efforts is a competitive desire to impress the other parents. I have always imagined that my amateur attempts at Punch and Judy are child-centred. But, come to think of it, my children are equally enthusiastic about other entertainers. Perhaps I am hoping to hear the other mothers say: “I don’t know how she does it.”

I recall a party at which a Style Queen friend produced green jelly, topped with mice made of decorated pear halves. Did I interpret this as a charming little amusement for the children? Up to a point; although ready-made sugar mice would have done the job equally well. No, as I read it, this was her way of saying: “I have got recipe books, an eye for design and an au pair.”

Perhaps it is more to ourselves that we want to prove that we are “proper” parents. Working mothers (including one who spent more than 20 hours making piñatas for her five-year-old’s birthday party) may feel a strong need to proclaim this message by doing strange things with papier-mâché or icing sugar. The home-based mother may feel an equally insecure desire to prove her talents and organisational skills by creating a party that is the Talk of the Class.

So I have never yet been able to clear my conscience and take a few children on a birthday outing to a cinema and a restaurant. It feels like a cop-out. But maybe it is what many children would enjoy most. They don’t always appreciate hours of loving toil (the piñata boy cried when the bounty of falling sweets landed like bullets on his head). His mother has since resorted to hiring snakes to entertain her children.

Still, children inevitably want the opposite of what you provide. One couple who always buy everything, including the jam sandwiches, were floored by their child’s announcement: “Mummy, I want you and Daddy to do my next party!” Meanwhile, one of my sons, when only six, snubbed my home-made puppet shows, preferring a professional entertainer. Alas, not only tactless but conformist, he asked for Mr Rainbow “because everyone else has him”.

This came as a blow after the hours I had spent writing puppet shows, and the hundreds of pounds I had blown on amassing a vast puppet collection — all in pursuit of some romantic ideal that my family should be the kind that makes its own entertainment. I should have gone in for party-bag-weaving.

However, I console myself with the the thought that Party Bag Woman’s children would probably kill for a nice bit of cheap plastic.

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