Playgroup

I could get used to this, to working one day a week. That's it, my working week was over in a flash.

This morning, as is the routine on a Tuesday, I was in charge of running the playgroup at work. At first I dreaded it but I'm getting into my stride now and turning up to work with an hour to plan a playgroup around a theme of somebody else's choosing no longer fazes me. Well, unless the theme is "space" and then all I can come up with is making rockets out of Fairy Liquid bottles in the manner of a 1970's TV commercial, which seems a bit desperate.

Today's theme was "winter" so I googled "winter songs for children" and came up with all sorts of songs about snow and frost and christmas; all highly irrelevant given the blue skies and the six months remaining until santa comes down, well, the air conditioning I suppose. Anyway, I had an hour to choose some and learn them and type the lyrics out for the parents before they all pitched up and it was showtime. Then it was craft and we chalked snowmen onto black card and stuck on googly eyes and cotton wool for snow and glitter for frost. If I can do battle with flying cockroaches, I'm not going to be fazed by a bunch of kids and some pipe cleaners.

"Sure Liam's never seen snow" lamented his mother as she admired his picture. The snowman was blue and his head was bigger than his body but when your child produces an original piece of art, to you it's a masterpiece. Siobhan is redheaded and Irish and speaks with the sort of gorgeous thick Irish lilt you could listen to all day, the sort that quickens pace and treads softly on the /t/ sound. It makes me think of Terry Wogan on radio two in the morning, not that anyone around these parts would have the foggiest who Terry Wogan was.

"We have the yulefest in the Blue Mountains this month" she continued. "It was started years ago by some Europeans who missed the cold Christmassy weather so they asked the owner of one of the hotels to whip them up a hearty Christmas dinner. I miss the weather at Christmas you know; it never feels like Christmas. It never, ever feels like Christmas again when you live in Australia and it's bad enough with missing the family like, but the hot weather makes it all doubly difficult at that time of year".

"But what a great life for the children" I replied. It's a reply I use a lot. I mean it; it's the most marvellous, priviledged and sunny upbringing you could ever imagine.

"And it's only hard for me" she continued. "Liam was born here - he never got to know his family in Ireland. We thought about it long and hard before deciding not to go back and we decided what he never knew he can't miss".