Mirth and Woe: Take a Break

Take a Break

One of those 'Scary's Family' posts I promised I would never post. Still, sleeping on the sofa's not that bad.

If you're not a breeder, you'll never understand how magazines like Take A Break and their ilk manage to fill page after stinking letters page with cute little sayings from their readers' offspring. What lovely, lovely little darlings they must have.

Our children, on the other hand, I class as "normal", and therefore feel obliged to send little snippets of the things they say to "Take a Mank" magazine, if it exists, at all.

So, when Scaryduckling was a lovely little two-year-old, she ran into the kitchen in a state of child-like excitement. Hardly surprising, what with her being a child an' everything.

"Look mum" said my two year old daughter, clutching something long, pink and thin, "A Barbie leg!"

It wasn't a Barbie leg at all. Rather an ill-advised present I had purchased from a certain shop on the outskirts of Oxford. The type that doesn't have any windows, and charges a fortune for magazines featuring ladies with hardly any clothes on.

It was a good thing, in retrospect, that it didn't have any batteries in it.

I wrote the letter. We never got ten quid from Take a Break, the bastards.

Of course, that couldn't be the end of it. We bred again, and now we had two little darlings providing us with Take a Break ammo.

"Look mummy, it's an airplane!" said Scaryduck Jr.

It wasn't an airplane.

It was a certain brand of sanitary product with wings on.

All the way down the front hall.

All the way up the stairs.

All over the front windows, giving a lovely miniature airshow for the passengers on the number 17 bus.

Take a Break still didn't send us a tenner, and I even sent them a series of humourous photographs into the bargain.

"And Daddy, you've run out of balloons," said Scaryduckling, "Can you tie a knot in this one?"

"They aren't balloons. They're chewing gum."

Asking for it...

"I didn't like them. They tasted funny."

And:

"Daddy, why have the ladies in your book got no clothes on? They'll get cold and then they won't feel very well. Tell them to get dressed."

And:

I have promised not to mention "Oh No! Mummy's painting her bum!" as the circumstances are far too embarrassing for all concerned. Work it out for yourselves.

Take a Break must have a file on me at least six inches thick. I still never got a tenner.


Blatant plug for Duck News: HERE