According to The Pixie, the Mermaid – of whom she speaks frequently and most fondly – is also the Birthday Fairy. She is (apparently) responsible for magicking birthday parties for little girls, no doubt full of pretty pink presents, pink lemonade and delicate little fairy cakes decorated with pink cream and sparkles.
Great, I said. The Mermaid can help me out with your [4th birthday] party.
But alas, I was on my own. The Mermaid, as The Pixie went on to explain to me with great consternation, “died in the hot lava” because Mr Justice “wanted to kill her”. So it was entirely left up to me to plan and execute The Pixie’s annual Pink Fairy Princess Ballerina Birthday Party. And, as I do with all of my children’s parties, an essential part of this process included me being up until midnight the night beforehand, slavishly trying to recreate a cake from The Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book, up to my neck in mini-marshmallows, M&Ms and those little silver balls which apparently are banned in the state of California and now I know why. And all the while, all I could think was “Stupid Dead Mermaid”.
But, let’s face it, no amount of Mermaid Magic could have helped us the following night after the party – though I hasten to add, the party itself was all very pleasant and probably worthy of its own post, untainted by what is about to follow…
After the kids had wound down enough from their record sugar high, we duly took them off to bed. Mr Justice- also known as the Boy Who Cried Sick – began his usual mantra of “I feel sick” and “I feel scared” and “I want to go to the toilet”, all the while leaping about his bed like a mermaid in hot lava. So, when at about 8:30pm, he was actually sick – and everywhere at that – it came as a huge surprise to us all (him included). And me being me, as someone who always blames herself the moment anything goes wrong, immediately thought “Oh God, it was the sausage rolls”.
As my husband cleaned up the bathroom, Mr J stood behind him and cheerfully listed off all the food he’d scoffed at the party and that my husband was now scraping out of the plug hole (albeit in a slightly altered form). So when I expressed my fears about the sausage rolls, my husband reassured me that I hadn’t given our guests food poisoning, that Mr Justice was entirely responsible for poisoning himself with an excess of sugar and food colouring (obviously lack of parental supervision or guidance was not a factor in this at all) and the worst of it was surely over. Phew!
CUT TO: Tiddles McGee waking up at 11pm with a bad case of “Ants Pants” – that well-known childhood condition where the afflicted child, for reasons mostly unknown even to themselves, wriggle and squirm and do 360 degree turns around the bed for hours at a time. Well, this time Tiddles had a very good reason: shortly after midnight he rapidly emptied the contents of his stomach all over my pyjamas. And this time, I knew in my heart that it *just had to be* the sausage rolls. As I cleaned him, myself and the bed up, I started to compile a list of people who had eaten them at the party who could potentially be worshiping at the Great Porcelain Shrine right at that very moment.
So when 4am came and it was The Pixie’s turn to throw up, I actually did a little air-punch because there was no way in hell that The Pixie would ever even look at a sausage roll let alone eat one: I could no longer be held personally accountable for making all our friends chuck. But before I went as far as doing a little Victory Dance on the spot, I realised that here was my precious little girl throwing up on her actual birthday. And the Lord knows that I know how *that* feels – but of course my own birthday voms were entirely caused by an excess of vodka shooters and not quite so deserving of the same kind of sympathy.
Poor Pixie. She always gets tummy bugs worse than anyone else (having been cursed with her father’s weak stomach). She managed to get up in the morning, open all her (mostly pink) presents with great enthusiasm, and then promptly be sick big time, but in a way that neatly avoided the new fairy dresses. That’s my girl. And then the poor thing went on to be sick her entire birthday, while the boys literally ran circles around her, both miraculously recovered after their one and only chuck in the night. Where’s the justice in that?
I’ve since heard of two other guests (both grown-ups) who were sick in the night – and who knows with these things, there may be more to come, but then again there may not. When I told my friend KT that I felt a bit bad this had happened on my watch, she reminded me of her own Gastro Party. At the big 1st birthday bash she held for her daughter, Little Miss E, she’d had a much bigger vom count during the night after the afternoon before – including one friend who made his wife call him an ambulance because he couldn’t get out of bed. And all those people were still her friends and still came to her parties, albeit some with a sick bag for the journey home.
So with a little luck, my friends will still want to know me, too. And with a bit more luck, The Pixie soon won’t remember her birthday illness at all, just the lovely little party we threw for her the day before. Happy 4th Birthday, Pixie.
Mr Justice would like it stated for the record that he did not kill the Mermaid. He has never met the Mermaid and most certainly has never harboured any ill-will towards her or her kind, “even though mermaids don’t even exist”.
Oh well since Mr Justice has denied the killing I’ll give up my hypothesis on the source of the gastro vomit fest. I *was* going to suggest that it was the work of the Mermaid come back from the dead (or a coma – Kill Bill style) to avenge her murder – only she didn’t mean to make quite so many people vomit. Anyway Mr Justice – poor mis-accused Mr Justice – is quite innocent so it is not his fault in any way whatsoever.
I did actually eat a lot of sausage rolls….
I’m with Fee S on her hypothesis about this being Mermaid-vengeance – and this still holds regardless of Mr Justice’s innocence. After all, regardless of perpetrator, our half-fish friend is still going to be pretty bloody annoyed about her untimely and somewhat heated end. As they say, hell hath no fury like a mermaid toasted.
That said, I am assuming of course that you gave thanks to the all-powerful (and somewhat unpredictable) Sausage Roll Deity before the feast. If you didn’t, I am afraid you only have yourselves to blame – he makes our late friend the Mermaid (and a yellow-jumpsuited Uma) look like amateurs in comparison….
PS Very conflicted about this post. Found it utterly hilarious. Then realised I had been guffawing about several small children being violently sick. What are you doing to me NDM???
from family folf lore part 16: the mother of the groom served home made fried fish cakes (with minced fish that had been left out a little too long) at my parents’ engagement party… many of the guests (including the father of the bride) ended up in hospital…
but no fear… they all turned up for the wedding and remained friends for many years to come
I once held a BBQ for a large group of new friends, all with newborn babies as we had met at our hospital antenatal clinic. The following day I was violently ill and over the course of the following week I discovered that all bar 2 adult attendees were also very sick. Fortunately none of the children was yet on solids and so they were all fine – reassuring, but giving probable cause to the food poisoning theory. I have been mortified ever since, but thanks to you NDM tonight I will go to bed knowing that I am not alone. Thank you! (Kind of makes up for making me get to bed late as I keep staying up reading your blog……..just one more…….just one more……..just one more………!!)