Friday 20 March 2009

Update on Previous

Things have perked up a bit since Gemmill's return - albeit briefly. Sister has managed to wake up enough to take the dogs and Tertius for a walk, while I've been able to have an hour and a half's hiatus with a couple of episodes of 24 and some ibuprofen. This woke me up enough to be able to help Gemmill entertain himself, making his own biscuits, which he wanted to cut into bat shapes. Why? Because he was having a 'spooky party'. This involves bat biscuits, mummies (or mumees, as he would have it), a spooky mummy game, and hunt the mummy. 

He was recently bought a book on Tutankhamun. Can you tell?

He wanted to make the bat biscuits himself. This is his recipe:

Oats (indeterminate amount)
Water (enough to make the oats swim)
Fresh strawberries (2)
Dried apricots (1, mangled)
Flour (enough to make it sticky)
Honey (a good gloop)
Castor sugar (as much as you'd imagine)

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, gas mark 7. More sensibly, throw out of the window as soon as the wean is looking in the other direction. 

After the 20 minutes we removed a pale golden cowpat from the oven, and I began attempting to carve a bat out of the middle. Gemmill was very impressed, despite the fact my Batman-symbol bat looked like a massacred turd - and when I started trying to remove it from the baking tray it stuck firmly to the paper, which didn't improve matters. Bits of cowpat were flying everywhere, which Gemmill hoovered up with great relish. It's astonishing what that boy will eat when he's made it himself. Last night he made noodle soup (with my help) which was appalling - but he and Wrecker sucked it up like it was ambrosia, then had seconds. Gemmill had thirds. 

So he was very happy munching away on the cowpat, which I had to taste out of curiosity. Astonishingly - it was utterly revolting. 

Having completed the bat biscuit, we then turned our attention to mumees. Gemmill wanted to make edible mumees, but I managed to persuade him that it would be much funnier to wrap teddies in loo roll and have them holding biscuits. He agreed to this, dubiously, but as I started wrapping one of his favourite teds he became delighted, and commented:

"This was a good idea of yours, Auntie Sesh. I didn't think you'd have good ideas."

Nice. 

We propped the mumeefied teddies with hobnobs in their hands and Gemmill ominously demanded we now begin the 'hunt the mumee' game. This was going to involve wrapping 10 more teddies, at great risk to Sister's loo-roll supply, and the invention of an elaborate set of rules. I suggested we just draw a map to find the teddies we'd already done, but he was having none of it. Luckily, he became distracted by Power Rangers on the TV.

However, he's now sitting on the sofa wearing a helmet and a gold chest guard, staring blearily at the telly and waiting for the fun to start so he can leap into action as a Space Knight. 

It's all rather surreal. Now I'm off to try and make heads and tails of the Power Rangers story. I'm pretty sure Einstein's theory of relativity is slightly easier to unravel.

2 comments:

Ruth said...

You reward awaits you in heaven - sounds like you're doing sterling work! Dinner when you get back?

Fiona Lochhead said...

That would be pleasant.