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If tinkering were the be-all and end-all, in my daughter's eyes I would more or less command parity with the Almighty himself, in so far as she fully appreciates what that means. It was, however, her sociability, or possibly her unacknowledged desire to stand out, that inspired her decision to dress up as a witch rather than a fairy for the school fete. Three wishes were placed in my hand: a genuine witch's nose, a broomstick for transport and long locks of greasy hair with a hat attached. I instantly pictured the broom as I recalled the good old days before the city was cut up into constituent council districts. In the pre-fragmentation era road sweeping was the responsibility of the Municipal Waste Disposal Department, and whether or not they succeeded in achieving their goal, it was in any event clear what their intentions were, which is more than I can say for the current system of Urban Management, as they call it these days, which without you being aware implies that they decide at your expense how much rubbish they'll allow to pile up until further notice. It had to be one of those early brooms from the good old days, I decided, and so I embarked on a twig cutting session at my allotment. I then tied the harvested twigs around a sturdy pole taken from a dredging bucket. This yielded a disproportionate object which had my daughter and me falling about laughing for several minutes. I next embarked upon the nose, or in any event spent considerable time in deep thought, then tried to convince her that a professional creation would be better than an unwearable design knocked up by my own fair hand. As she would not take the bait, I had no choice but to knuckle down. My first attempt involved a piece of paper towel which I soaked in diluted joiner's glue, then moulded around my own nose over a piece of shrink-wrap for protection, after which I applied a blow-drier followed by the microwave in a feeble attempt to get the droopy structure to dry, in the hope that the resultant rigidity of the cured material would do the trick. I'll spare you the details of all my messy efforts - suffice it to say that they didn't pan out. I decided that it was time to go back to the drawing board. Having folded a sheet of paper into a three-dimensional triangle, I snipped off one of the tips, stuck a cork in the cavity and moulded paper soaked in joiner's glue around it. Having removed the cork just in time, to my own amazement I succeeded after a few dry runs to sculpt some curves into the structure and lo and behold, a witch's nose emerged - just imagine how God must have felt after a full working week - for my daughter to put the finishing touch to, by topping it off with the pimple she had made from shreds of paper rolled into a ball and painted bright red. |