"Oh Mum" says the 10 year old tonight at about 7 o'clock, "we've got to decorate our classroom tomorrow. Our theme is desert. Can we make a cactus please?"
"Of course my lovely. When do you need it? Next week?"
"No Mum, tomorrow"...
OK, time to improvise. Lots of scrap paper, an old flower pot, a long stick and some flour and water. The stick is placed in an empty bottle inside the flower pot and we secure the whole thing with cardboard and some poly filler I have in the shed. How to make it fatter? 10 year old comes up with brilliant idea to glue toy filling on the branch using a mix of flour and water. Works a treat and we wrap it around with strips of paper. We both work at it until her bedtime and she becomes upset as we have no green paint. No food colouring either. Hmm. So we find some old felt pens, snap them in half, use scissors to chop up the inky innards into a bowl of flour and water. Do you know it actually works!
We use wholemeal flour (how healthy are we!) which gives a lovely gritty texture and the thing starts to look fierce and ugly like all the best cacti. 10 year old goes to bed but shortly returns downstairs, worried that the thing won't be ready to take to school. OK. That's my cue to finish the thing rather than put together some of the research I've been doing into milk and milk substitutes. Never mind. It's after 11pm but cactus is finished although wet and stands at an impressive 2 and a half feet. 10 year old will be happy and right now that's all that really matters isn't it?
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