The Tenth Circle of Hell

Dante’s Inferno described a decent into the circles of Hell in which he passed from Limbo through Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and finally to the lowest level of Treachery where the incumbents were trapped in ice for all eternity. Of course, in the Devine Comedy he didn’t dare to tread into the tenth circle of Hell: Children’s Parties.

My daughter had her sixth birthday party yesterday and I am hoping that it is the last. We have been through this with all three children now and even hosted our own party for Raymond when he was four. This was the only time we have ever put on a children’s party in our own house and anyone who has ever done this will never make the same mistake twice. In fact the party did go OK and the children that we invited seemed to quite enjoy themselves (well, much more than our cats did). Raymond himself seemed to be rather quiet on the day which seemed odd as he had been looking forward to it. We discovered why that evening when he came down with Chicken Pox and we had to phone up all the other children’s parents to tell them that they may have got more than they bargained for in their goody bags.

Since then, we have tried to use organised party facilities which have the advantage that someone else does all the organisation and at the end of the day one can relax at home without having to remove lipstick from the windows or household pets from the lavatory. For Sophia we chose a local pub which has a play area at the back and that arranges parties for less money than we could do ourselves. We just have to send out the invites and bring along a birthday cake. So what could possibly go wrong? Part of the package for these children’s parties is the inclusive Goody Bag which typically contains a few small items: plastic toys and games, maybe a balloon and so on. Unfortunately, the pub we had booked supplied a vuvuzela – the weapon of mass destruction from the last World Cup finals. When we arrived there were approximately 38,000 children blowing these things in unison. I can’t imagine who thought that this would have been a good idea – either someone who doesn’t have children of their own or hates those that do.

After the previous party’s guests were removed by their anxious and horrified parents Sophia’s party actually went quite well. Her classmates seemed like a nice bunch of kids and they were easily amused either chasing around the play area or playing with the bag of balloons which we had brought along from ASDA. At least they were happy until some big kids from another party thought it would be a wheeze to burst all the balloons. The party lunch of low quality fast food and ice cream went well as did the birthday cake. We seemed to survive the two hours and sent the children off with their goody bags. I did assure the parents that the vuvuzelas would sound better if exposed to extreme heat – I just hope they realise that they were not of my planning. Then again Jake once came home with a hand-grenade in his goody bag so anything is possible.