Expelliarmus

Just before the school holidays, my kids school announced they were going to start doing book week. Which meant I was going to have to start finding book week parade costumes. Sigh. Parent homework. The worst kind because you don’t even get to enjoy parading around after all that hard work.

Luckily my kids decided on Harry Potter. (Praise be to JK Rowling’s costume licensing division. Thank you. May your polyester wizards robes and plastic wands always be plentiful). So today I bought a Scabbers the Rat plush for one kid to carry as part of his Ron Weasley costume and a Time Turner necklace for another kid as part of her Hermione Grainger kit. And we watched the first two movies then my youngest listened Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone audio book. A very wizardy day.

I came to Harry Potter late. Partly because I’m a late adopter and I think also because I was/am a Terry Pratchett fan and he used to be very rude about Harry Potter and would huff and puff in his usenet group about people who accused him of copying wizard schools off JK Rowling. Shame. I love Harry Potter so much that I felt sad that it was over and that I hadn’t read it sooner. In its place I’ve started reading the Robert Galbraith Strike books and they’re fantastic as well although I struggle to remember big casts in books and sometimes I have to flap back and forth through the pages (“Who was she again? This bloke that’s just turned up, was he in that chapter at the beginning?”) so I read slower than usual. Mildly obsessed with Robin and Strike’s uncomfortable attraction to each other.

Also today: dusted off the sewing machine to mend one school dress, bring in the waistband of a pair of school sports pants because no one likes their pants falling down during netball, and mended the ripped sleeves of a princess dress. One day I will sew for me again. Maybe.