“Victoria!” My neighbours are waving at me from over the fence in the back garden, and I hurry down to see what they want.
We’re blessed with a lovely, elderly (childless) couple next door who are kind, generous and quiet. They adore my children, and my children feel the same. My neighbours buy them birthday and Christmas presents, and make trips to Hobbycraft to choose pots of glitter and blow-pens (arguably well out of their comfort zone, seeing as they’re in their 70s).
My daughter regularly pops next door to see them when she gets home from school, and if she wakes up early, she’ll spend hours making them a card or picture to post through their door – just to say she loves them.
But everybody gets it wrong, sometimes. And never have my considerate and caring neighbours got it more wrong, than when they handed me a 5ft 6 inch cuddly carrot “for the kids”.
A 5FT 6 INCH CUDDLY CARROT. Just let that sink in, for a moment.
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I tweeted about it – and parents came forward in droves to offer sympathy and understanding.
Such as this mum, who gifted this... no, we don’t know what it is, either.
And another mum, who is now a parent with two dogs.
It’s hard, isn’t it? You don’t want to appear ungrateful, but at the same time, if you’re a parent of under-10s, your house is already stuffed with crap.
It’s true. Plastic cars, dolls houses, trampolines – we’ve got it all. There’s simply no room for a huge stuffed carrot, even if that carrot (called ‘Kevin’, as it turns out) is one of Britain’s most wanted toys.
How do you break it to well-meaning grandparents, friends or neighbours that you’d really rather not have an adult-sized vegetable taking up so much space?
The answer is: you don’t. You smile, grit your teeth and make the kids write ‘thank you’ cards. Then you wait until they’ve momentarily forgotten about it and off it goes, quietly away to the charity shop, perhaps; on a trip around the world (it may well send postcards); or as a ‘gift’ to another parent (I’m joking, I wouldn’t be that cruel).
That won’t be happening for a while, though, because predictably, my kids adore the bleeding thing. My daughter had it tucked up in bed with her last night, and my toddler son keeps dragging it around, saying simply: “I love him.”
Sigh. We’ve got it for life, haven’t we?
