At 7:20 on Sunday night Alfie was lying face down on the landing carpet in his brown hoodie while I pinned purple felt triangles to the back of it, with the expression of a boy who has been told this is for his own good.
Thursday is World Book Day, and our house has two costumes to find. The school doesn't insist on one, and plenty of children go in as themselves with a favourite book under their arm, which is a perfectly good way to do it. But Alfie asked in January, and Isla has wanted to be Matilda since she read it in Year 2, so here we are. My own rule is never more than £3 on an outfit that gets worn for one day. This year both costumes together came to £4.
Alfie the Gruffalo
The Gruffalo is a gift of a costume if you already own a brown hoodie, and Alfie does. It's an old Matalan one, size 5 to 6, gone soft from washing, and it already wears a layer of Mabel's tabby fur, which gives it a more convincing coat than anything I could have bought. On top of that I added:
- Two orange felt circles with black felt middles, glued to the front of the hood for the eyes
- Two white felt tusks, one each side of the hood
- A strip of twenty-two purple felt prickles, cut as triangles, glued to a strip of old brown pillowcase and safety-pinned down the back of the hoodie from the neck to the waist
The first version used glue alone, and three of the prickles came off when Alfie hugged his dad. So I sat up on Sunday night after bedtime with a needle and put a few stitches in each one. It finished at 9:50. I would like the Gruffalo's prickles to survive a whole school day, and I can't promise it, but they've survived a hug now, and a lap of the landing at full speed.
I did try giving him claws. White card triangles, taped to his fingers with masking tape. They lasted ninety seconds before he took them off to eat a biscuit, and I've let the claws go.
Isla as Matilda
Isla's costume is the easiest thing I've ever put together. A blue dress from the dressing-up box (an old Dorothy outfit with the basket removed), a white long-sleeved top underneath, and a red ribbon from the sewing tin. That's it. The only thing she needed was the books, because Matilda is never without a stack of them.
On Saturday we went to the library and came out with three fat ones to carry: a children's Oliver Twist, an atlas the size of a paving slab, and a book of Greek myths. They're free on Isla's library card, and they go back on Friday, well before they're due. Isla has made it very clear that she is not reading the Oliver Twist, only carrying it. "Matilda doesn't read it on the way to school," she said. "She reads it at the table with a cup of cocoa." Fair.
Where the £4 went
A pack of assorted felt sheets was £2.40 and a tube of fabric glue was £1.60. Everything else was already in the house: the hoodie, the dress, the ribbon, the pillowcase, the pins, the masking tape, the thread, and the needle that I last used to sew on name tapes in September. Two costumes for £4 is £2 each, which is under my £3 rule and leaves me £2 to spend on something else (I will spend it on more felt).
The school also sends home a £1 book token with each child, which they can swap in a bookshop for a book or put towards a bigger one. Last year Isla spent hers on a pad of stickers. This year she's promised to read what she buys, which I'm treating as a legal document.
I'll find out on Thursday whether the prickles last until 3:15. Rob does the pick-up, and has promised to take a photograph. He has also promised not to say "terrible tusks" at the school gate in front of other parents, and I give that about thirty seconds.
