Who pigged the choc spread?

Press, 14 September 1987, Page 6

Who pigged the choc spread?

The little glewiog-red digits en the bedside deck say it is sheet All ajn. There is ae reases fer the ksmaa race ta be awake at this hear, bat twe of its smallest members have decided this is a good time to declare the Third World War.

They have chosen as their battleground the lounge, hallway and their parents’ bedroom. They fight with conventional weapons, toys, pillows, high-pitched voices.

Do not acknowledge that you are awake, I tell myself. To do so will result in demands that you play Battleships, Top Zoo and other board games designed to be played when the sparrows are also awake. No games should be played before the newspaper is delivered. So pretend you are asleep. But a junior member of the kicks open the bedroom door, throws in a live cat, and leaps on to the bed. It lands on my head. Difficult to pretend you slept through that “Daddy, can we have a biscuit?” asks a tiny voice by my ear.

Wilsons Week...

Mumble, snore.

Two little fingers grasp my eyelid and force it open. I am staring at the eider of the pair, and I mark his deed for later retribution. “Was that a yes?” he asks sweetly. Yeh. “Oh goody,” he says, bounding off towards the pantry, leaving me with eyelids sticky from some brand of lolly. Thinks: where did they find lollies at C. 15 a.m.7

The train of thought is interupted by the sound of a pantry being methodically destroyed. Later I will encounter a scene of devastation, a packet of chocolate chippies reduced to crumbs and a spoon resting in a suddenly empty jar of chocolate nutty spread. It will take a great

deal of talking to persuade my wife that the nutty spread on my eyelids does not automatically mean I launched a. midnight raid on the pantry. “I was framed!” I plead, but find no confession forthcoming from the two little angels who have washed away the last shreds of incriminating evidence.

They are busily mapping out their day, which if they had their way would entail driving to each toy shop in Christchurch to buy everything they have seen dancing on television. I have to go to work but during the lunch break I visit one of these toy stores. Every aisle is filled with running, screaming children. It must be a vision of the Netherworld.

The toys that have won my children’s hearts coincidentally happen to be the most expensive in the land — an Alf doll, for example. The shop assistant maintains a poker face while delivering the $l2l price tag. I reel backwards from the credit card machine

“It talks,” the Mwp assistant says, pairing the Alf-Uke creature* which emits a “no problem” catch phrase from Its tetevMon series. '

“Is that ItT I ask her. “For 1121 I’ll put a fur coat over my head and say *No problem* to the kids to<”

“Oh it says other things,” the woman replies. “No offence, but for $l2l I expect it to sing and tap dance too,” I reply, my Scots ancestry reminding me to wait until the series is off the air and the toy hits the sale bins. All around me other children are progressively bankrupting their parents and the question is whether the nation’s gold reserves hold out until the children are back at school.

A toy shop is no place for a man with a nervous disposition. Neither can you hide from holidaying children in one of the city’s many coffee bars. They strike before noon like little spotty weevils, stripping the sandwich and cake shelves bare.

We who buy our lunch in town must make do with lettuce and mar-

mite sandwiches and cakes with little thumbprints in them. Now I know what it was like to endure wartime rationing. School holidays. After

two weeks parents are serioosly talking about vasectomies and other measures to safeguard future civilisations from this horror.

DAVE WILSON