World Book Day number eleventy-million

Hi all. Remember me? (waves madly). I know, I know. I’ve been absent for a while. But there was something about World Book Day that made me want to put fingers to keyboard. Maybe it was all those pictures on my social media feeds of mums with littluns dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2. It stirred the memory banks of all those desperate World Book Days past.

My kids are older now. DD is practically an adult and DS is deep enough into secondary school for me to be able to relax my hold a little. Suffice to say, World Book Day didn’t even cross my radar this year.

And then we got an email from DS’s school: the entire school – from kids still in nappies to 18-year-olds – was to dress up.

I can only deduce that the schoolteachers hate us. Really hate us.

I have a theory about dress-up days. I think mums come preloaded with only so many they can do before they give up. Ten years’ worth, maybe. And my bank is exhausted (not just my bank that’s exhausted, but that’s another blog). I just don’t have it in me anymore. I also think that, at 12 years old, DS needs to take some responsibility for this type of thing himself because, let’s face it, if it was up to me I’d dress him up as Angelina Ballerina and be done with it (I’ve just realised that was 10 years ago – see? It’s 10 years, I’m telling you).

So I asked DS who he wanted to go as and he said it was next week not this week, and disappeared back upstairs to play Fortnite.

            Last night I realised from the flurry of #worldbookday posts by better-organised mothers who’d already produced brilliant costumes (where do you find the enthusiasm, ladies? Is it HRT?) that it was in fact this week. DS was duly summoned.

            ‘I’ll go as myself, from the school yearbook,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I love that book.’

And I sat there thinking: why the hell didn’t I think of that all those years ago?

DS starring as himself in his favourite book.
Pic for illustrative purposes only. If only DS ever looked this tidy.