To be fair, the kids loved it, but nowhere near as much as the adults did. Four o’clock on a warm November Saturday saw twelve grown-ups being accompanied into Heavenly Glaze in East Peckham by twelve children. The chattering pack were soon seated around various tables in the well-lit studio whilst the poor kids were left to grab whatever spare seats there were available. With paint-brushes poised, no sooner had the door closed then the painting commenced in earnest: a huge fish finished up being given a lemon hue, something that marked a sharp contrast to the red dorsal fin and the jet-black eyes.
Others were less adventurous: a number of trinket pots – in the form of iced tea-cakes – and spoon rests were plucked from the groaning shelving that lined one wall. Milk jugs, Christmas-tree decorations, snowmen and bisque cats were soon being daubed with a rash of multi-coloured spots and stripes – and one adult [who-shall-not-be-named] was rather heavy-handed with the very expensive red paint: to use the surplus that was slopping around in the palette the rest of the table decided to step in and help. Red cats, Red dogs and red snowmen became the order of the day…. It was decided to put her exuberance down to the replacement hip she received a month or so ago: she still needs to acclimatise to her renewed status of being a mobile biped.
An hour into the session it was time to distribute the Liquorice Allsorts; something well received by those under-tens but not a patch on the flavour of those manufactured by Bassetts fifty years ago. Lemonade? Boring. We decided to supply our guests with a constant supply of Cream Soda but forgot the straws.
Fortunately, we didn’t forget the ice-cream cones and towards the end of the session we slipped out to the local shop to buy a litre. Cogitating, we decided that a litre might be a tad mean, so we picked up another. At the till we discovered it was a bargain at around £1:25 a litre so we went back for a third…. In the small kitchen area at the back of the studio we discovered that Ice Cream cones aren’t what they used to be either! Wafer-thin, it was difficult to extract a cone from the ‘tube’ without making a hole in it. Once extracted, the heavy, stainless-steel ice-cream scoop needed dextrous handling to get the vanilla-flavoured delicacy into the cone without further damage, something that got much easier the more we did – in part on account of learning the knack but, more truthfully, because the ice-cream was melting at a rate of knots…
It was then that we discovered that we’d massively over-estimated the amount of ice-cream we’d need to feed a dozen ravenous kids: a litre tub would have been more than enough, so we left a litre behind for the shop’s owner to use and brought another litre home for the freezer. With the session drawing to a close, the final spot and stripe was hurriedly applied to the pottery. It was time for our final treat: bags of that old Christmas stand-by, chocolate coins, were given to the kids as they left the building. Most went home smiling, but for some the evening wasn’t quite over.
We finished up supplying a fish-and-chip supper for twelve – kids and adults alike could be found sitting cross-legged on the floor stuffing huge chips and chunks of battered fish all splattered with a generous dollop of tomato ketchup.
A great evening that will no doubt be repeated. Thanks to the generosity of Heavenly Glaze we managed to add the healthy sum of £125 to the coffers: the fish & chips were our treat! It’s been a long time since the rooms in our house rang to the sound of kid’s chatter!