Girl Heaven

Another Friday afternoon, another birthday party for my seven year-old daughter and her classmates. Same venue as the last one, almost indistinguishable format. Like their parents they love reassuringly familiar social rituals. The form is for all the girls in the class to disappear into the loos at school when the bell goes at 3.30 and spend till 4pm getting changed into party dresses. The slutty ones wear stud earrings and heels too. They all want to wear stud earrings and heels. Once in their outfits they prance across the playground feigning indifference but thrilled by the exhibitionist novelty of not being in their grey tunics. They are then whisked to the party, sometimes via an unnecessary ice-cream or the swing park if the hosts have been inconsiderate enough to have an inconvenient hour and a half between school and party. And when they arrive at the party they launch into the compulsory sausage rolls, Mika singalongs, sweets, over-sexualised dancing, pass the parcel and more recently, the application of fake tattoos. Tiger face paint doesn’t cut it any more.

At four o’clock my car load still hadn’t emerged from their changing room so I went in to chase them. Apparently immune to the airless reek of a day’s worth of centrally heated poo and commercial soap they were lingering over the task in hand. My daughter had deviated from the party dress norm on this occasion and was arranging a layered look with flat pink tasselled boots a denim skirt and a fur gilet. She looked fantastic. One of the heels and earrings had her attention momentarily diverted from her study of her own appearance by the gilet. She looked my daughter up and down. “You look weird,” she lisped. And you look like a child prostitute, I thought murderously. My daughter gave her an almost indiscernible look of pity and carried on doing her hair. I was so proud.

I had to hang around at the party as I couldn’t get anywhere I would want to go and back again before the party finished so I took my laptop and a few good intentions. The party venue of the moment is a community centre so there was a table to sit at with internet access and a drinks machine. (No Viognier in it, sadly.) I cracked my laptop just as the karaoke struck up. Abba. Fantastic. Dancing Queen. Aware of the teen Goths using the internet at the side of the room I managed not to sway along to the intro and I sang only into myself. The little girlies couldn’t be expected to know the words of the first verse - some of them have only seen Mama Mia three times – but I was disappointed when they got to the chorus and were still neh, neh, neh-ing. I suppose I was glad my daughter wasn’t belting out ‘gimme, gimme gimme a man after midnight’. I’m sure I wasn’t the only over-30 there itching to take the mike. Maybe the words of Abba songs is something we can work on at half term along with lace tying, tie tying and the 3,4,6,7,8,9 and 12 times tables.

I managed not to disgrace myself with the present this time. No, I did better than that - not only did I get a present and wrapping paper, I remembered that it was a joint party and got two presents and two cards. Unfortunately I let myself down by playing a game of pool with a boy of whom my daughter disapproves who had fled the dancing. I thought he was a very nice boy, my daughter disagreed. Probably not the last time that will happen.