So my son has a school trip today to a castle that is stuck in a time warp of Tudor Times – some rich Toff has worked out that to keep his giant gaff running he needs to charge schools huge piles of moolah to watch people in skirts make stuff like mead and salted meat. And good luck to him/her/them: free enterprise is a good thing and bringing history alive is wicked; I still recall visiting a real working monstery as a child and nicking bits of the mosaic floor when my teacher wasn’t looking. Still have that bit of mosaic too in my jewellery box, think it might be the toe of Jesus Christ.
But anyway. Why you’re really reading: I am a bad mother because my son was supposed to go in Tudor costume on this trip. I forgot all about it. This morning I constructed a makeshift Tudor costume consisting of his school shirt, a pair of ragged jogging bottoms, a large eighties-style belt, one of his stepfather’s ties cut and frayed at the edges and a frilly waistcoat of mine, complete with a cardboard sign reading WILL WORK FOR FOOD so he could go as a Tudor urchin.
Oh dear. Why do I get the feeling he’ll be telling this to a psychiatrist in twenty years or worse, selling an autobiography about being horribly neglected as a child?
aw bless him i hope he had a good time.
Join the club – the bad mother’s club that is. I bet you he had a whale of a time and got given salted meat and mead by said guilt-stricken toff.
ah, parenting: no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you’re going burn in hell.
I can’t help but think of some post-modern signs for him to hold.
WILL HOLD SIGN FOR FOOD.
WILL LOOK MISERABLE FOR FOOD.
WILL EAT FOOD FOR FOOD.
Though, had it been me in your shoes, I would have found a way around the rules. Normal everyday clothes plus zany goggles and say that he’s a time traveler from the 21st century. And that he’s come to enjoy the famous Tudor-era salted human meat.
PD: he had a lovely time thanks tho he was rather disgusted by how much lard the Tudors used, apparently. He said, and I quote, “Gordon Ramsay would have been well-mad!”
Elinor and DF – yes apparently I am doomed. Bring it on I say!
Elver – time travel! Of course. All he needed was a fake American accent too and he’d have been well away.