First children's book - Goody bag filler

We hosted a party for Loki at the nearby church in January and ended up with around 50 people on site. He loved it.

I'm still traumatised by the experience. Three year olds are at the crossroads of toddler level enthusiasm but unteachable to engaged young kid eager to play games. So you get a staggering mix of capability - it's like having a room full of people with advanced senile dementia but who are full of energy and highly mobile. Plus their parents are watching your every move. It's just awful.

Anyhow, at the end of the gig, we gave away in goody bags a little booklet that partially summarised what happened . . .

On the inside cover we gave a short explanation of the Church. Very short. The kids are three.

I wanted to add that 'Emmanuelle' is also the name of a lady who used to star in films of the same name where her clothes fell off a lot. Loki's daddy has seen those films several times. Several means more than three times. Quite a lot more.

Iulia wouldn't let me.

The first set piece was the dinner. We based it on the last supper.

Iu and I are the bear and the kangaroo. Loki is the Christ-like figure in the middle.

Not sure any of the parents really got that.

We were left with a hell of a lot of carrots at the end of the party because Iulia and my helpers (my daughter and her boyfriend) kind of gave up with handing prizes out.

We also ended up with a fuck-tonne of masks because I forgot to give them to the kids during the activities. And another tonne of disco glasses which were in the same bag. So we had to drag large bags filled with carrots, animal masks and disco glasses back home.

We lost the engagement of quite a few parents when it came to this game. They're not bum shufflers.

After a while it became very obvious that playing games was a random affair as to participation, comprehension and enthusiasm. And that was just me as the compere.

It was the greatest relief of all when we just let the kids dance and play with the balloons.

Quite a few of the kids just wandered off declaring 'we want something to eat'.

Don't think we killed any of the kids with the cake. But if we did, then that's a favour for the next people hosting a birthday party. One less demented dwarf to worry about.

And then they all went home.

Thank God it's over.