Clementine really pushed the envelope with her party plans. It must have been the burst of confidence she’d found after the success of the forest concert. And suddenly everyone wanted to be her friend again. Mine too. It’s amazing how popular you become when you get your photo in the paper with an out-of-tune tree!
When Clementine showed me the invitations for her Bad Manners Slumber Party I really thought they would push Mum over the edge. But I was wrong. Ever since getting back from her TED Talk in Sydney, Mum was a different person. Or maybe it was the couples therapy? Or Dad coming back? Or Tammy Bracken’s Guide to Modern Manners being made into a TV series? Or maybe it was all these things happening at once?
Fact was, on the day of Clementine’s Bad Manners Slumber Party, Mum just let it all flow … just like tomato sauce down a mashed potato hedgehog’s back!
Dad had scooped hot mash onto a huge white platter and put it on the middle of the table. He used a spatula to sculpt the mash into the shape of a large round hedgehog’s body. Then he splodged on a smaller pile of mash for the head while Clementine and her friends watched on in awe.
‘Now for his eyes!’ Clementine said. Mum passed her the bowl of green peas she’d prepared and Clementine poked two of the largest ones onto each side of the hedgehog’s face.
‘The nose!’ everyone said at once. ‘Dad? What did you do with the burnt toast?’ Clementine asked. ‘Something I prepared earlier,’ she explained to her captive audience.
‘Right here,’ said Dad. Dad used the spatula to make the hedgehog’s nose area slightly more pointed, then Harriet pressed a round of burnt toast onto the end for a nose. Clementine squealed with delight.
Mum opened the oven where a forty-pack of fish fingers were heating on a tray. She prodded one with a fork. ‘These are done,’ she said.
‘Ooooh!’ Clementine’s friends gasped as Mum put the oven tray onto a wooden board on the table in front of them.
‘Now we can all help make spikes!’ Clementine cried gleefully. ‘Like this!’
She picked up one of the fish fingers and pushed it half into the mash, angling it carefully toward the back. Daisy put hers in next, close to Clementine’s.
‘Everyone can have a turn!’ Clementine said, poking in another, and another. Soon all the girls were reaching and poking and licking their fingers, covering the hedgehog’s back with fish finger spines in no time.
‘Who wants to do the sauce?’ Clementine asked.
‘Me!’ I said. Clementine looked slightly annoyed, like I wasn’t an actual friend so I shouldn’t be snapping up her party jobs. Really? After making her local marketing coordinator for a whole forest concert? She and I both knew that I had earned Queen of Sauce.
‘Here, love,’ Dad said, passing me a new squeezy bottle of tomato sauce.
I oozed the tomato sauce all over the hedgehog’s back, trying to distribute it as evenly as I could.
‘That’ll do, Berts,’ said Clementine. She stood back to assess the scene.
‘He’s perfect!’ Clementine whispered.
The fish finger hedgehog really looked a treat, even though it was also quite disgusting.
‘Quick, someone get a photo!’ Harriet shrieked.
‘He is quite cute,’ Mum said, sparking up her phone.
‘Ready, guys?’ Clementine said, clapping her hands. ‘Tuck in!’
Watching Clementine’s friends devour a mashed potato hedgehog with fish fingers for spikes, peas for eyes, a burnt toast nose and all smothered in tomato sauce was quite something. They took to it like vultures, scooping up the mash with the fish fingers, stuffing it in their mouths, licking the sauce off their hands.
And nothing made Clementine happier than when they all sang happy birthday with their mouths full, spitting morsels of fish fingers across the table. They were in bad-manners heaven!
Mum got an absolute winner photo of Clementine, grinning from ear to ear with her mouth full, a saucy fish finger in one hand, in the other, a greasy-fingered glass of lemonade. It was literally only a matter of minutes before it turned up on Mum’s Instagram, right next to all her photos from Sydney. And then there was the caption … When it comes to modern manners, it’s important to have the odd exception to the rules!
Tammy’s Tips
#18 manners are not everything
While good manners are necessary and desirable, they are not the be-all and end-all of social interactions. Always judge a person by the love they have in their hearts, and not by the manners they may or may not have had the privilege to learn.
All those days riding to the forest on the back of Mikki’s electric bike, I’d also imagined myself gliding to the beach with my boogie board. And suddenly, there I was, with my newly-healed (still pale and hairy) arm doing just that. To the sound of the familiar hum of the motor, I literally buzzed straight past the place where I had fallen all those weeks ago. But seeing Sylvie and Georgette’s bikes locked to each other in the bike shed (and Seth’s bike thrown on the ground), it felt like no time had passed at all. I stood at the top of the stairs with my boogie board and everything I’d need for a bumper day at the beach with my friends. The salty north wind whipped hair across my face. I could see Bella in the water, out the back, waiting for the perfect set to roll in. Harrison and Seth were there too. The sun, visibly climbing a cloudless sky promised a scorching day ahead. I thought about the forest and the remembered cool shade of the pine grove. But not for too long. It was time for me to take a break in my conversation with trees. I was ready for a long overdue talk … with the ocean.