Friday, December 02, 2005

230 - My Kinda Party


Oh yes. "Pink wafers" and "bendy straws". This, for those of you who missed the magic of birthday parties in the 1980s, is where it was at.

You'd turn up at someone's birthday party to find a long line of trestle tables covered in cheap crumpled paper. In the middle would be selections of sandwiches (meat paste and Dairylea, but not usually mixed) and plates full of pink wafers. Your drink would be cheap lemonade, drunk for a limp plastic cup through a striped bendy straw.

I'm guessing it must be a very Brit-specific thing, pink wafers and bendy straws, if the confused comment on this post is anything to go by, so I guess I should elaborate:

  • Pink wafers are...well...wafers that are pink, and sandwiched together with a vanilla flavour cream.
  • Pass the parcel is apparently of Nigerian origin, and is a children's party game where you pass a multi-layered wrapped parcel in a circle, and remove a layer at a time when the music stops.
  • Musical chairs, meanwhile, is a game where you walk in a circle round a set of chairs of which there is one chair less than the number of people playing. When the music stops, everyone goes to sit down...leaving one person chairless and, usually, in tears.
  • According to a report written by the Education Minister in 2000, Margaret Hodge, musical chairs is "too violent" for children.

Anyway, it's good to see the tradition of pink wafers and bendy straws keeps going. Now, where's my invitation?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that sound so dumb i don't get it? {im a little slo}