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Anyone who knows me, and many who don’t, will understand that the lure of chocolate is STRONG. And I mean STRONG. I eat it more or less incessantly, I often wear the colour and, for goodness sake, I’ve written a novel about it. So when Cadbury’s offered to send me a little gift, it was more or less as though the gods themselves had popped down from Mount Olympus to give me a pressie. There was just one problem. When I opened the mysterious, purple-ribboned box, most of what I saw was tiny elastic bands. Yes, there was some chocolate, some lovely, lovely Cadbury’s chocolate, but it was definitely mostly elastic.
Cadbury’s had, in fact, invited me to take part in a challenge. It was a competition to recreate their rather adorable froggy mascot, Freddo, in loom bands. There is even a YouTube film of one doughty fellow doing exactly this.
Normally, I would swing into action immediately and get the thing done asap. I don’t mean I would actually do it myself, of course. I would force a nearby child to do it instead, while I sat by and watched admiringly, probably with a cup of tea. But, most unfortunately, the Cadbury’s parcel arrived at an unprecedented moment in DD Towers. Child One is now officially an adult, not a child, and is about to go to university just as soon as she’s spent all my money on industrial quantities of teabags, toiletries, mugs, duvet covers, Egyptian cotton towels and luxury bathmats. She certainly does not have time to weave me a frog.
Child Two, on the other hand, has never been much into artsy crafts stuff and has just been swallowed up whole by a new school and her ASs. I literally only see her for about fifteen minutes a day now – five minutes in the early morning, when I’m half asleep, five minutes in the afternoon, when she’s half asleep, and five minutes during supper, which she wolfs down so she can devote more time to her voracious studies. She isn’t hanging around to make frogs out of elastic, either.
I would usually now turn to Children 3 and 4, my dear TL’s little ones. At 9 and nearly 8, they are at a perfect looming age, and even have the infrastructure already in the shape of various looms, poky little sticks and eleventy-bazillion loom bands, which are great fun to pick out of the innards of the vacuum cleaner (not). But alas, TL is off in Australia on a business trip. Yes, he’s on the other side of the world. So I can’t borrow his children and set them to work give them a lovely, fun activity to do.
Ok then, so it’s just me and you now, alone with the loom bands, the pictures of Freddo to copy and the strange poky sticks. So I’ll just send the whole lot over to you to finish, then, shall I? Sorry, what’s that? The chocolate? Oh. Er, well, that’s gone. I had to have something to munch on while pondering the logistics of all this, didn’t I? Thanks, Cadbury’s, the Freddo choccie frogs were scrummy. And you’ll have the finished Freddo in loom bands …. soon. Just as soon as all my nice readers have finished it.