In Our Grandmothers' Footsteps: Virago Guide to London

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It's easy to get carried away when planning a kids' party and end up spending a fortune. Before you start, it's a good idea to set a budget. Remember to include everything! If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Spencer wants to take the nursery children to visit their buddies at the primary school, but who will tell him where to go? To make it more challenging, put some hats, wigs, scarves, shoes, handbags or other items of Grandma costume on the floor. Make it a rule that you have to put on a hat or an item of clothing before you tap Grandma on the shoulder. Edie is helping a friend fit a new toilet in the bathroom of her friend's house. The problem is that she only knows a little about toilets.

PC Plum is in a muddle, and will he be able to complete his jobs in time before he goes out sailing with Miss Hoolie? Whoever manages to tap her on the shoulder becomes Grandma (male or female) and the game starts again. It’s a good activity for cultivating concentration and patience – not to mention lots of cheating! Penny uses the hats in Edie's lost and found box to tell the children a story about different people who might wear them. It is snowing, and PC Plum is worried about one of his friends who doesn't get out much. He wants to find a way to bring the winter magic to her house. Suzie has a new hobby – juggling and stilt walking, and is causing trouble in the shop. Who can stop the chaos?PC Plum wants to bring in Sandy the Sheepdog in to show the children, but she is too busy with work on the farm. What can PC Plum do? In The Railway Series story Percy and the Trousers, Percy tries to play Grandmother's Footsteps with the coaches, but hits a trolley of trousers.

A loud booming voice is keeping Balamory residents awake, including Miss Hoolie. PC Plum is on the case, and finds out it is coming from Archie's newest invention – a noisy music machine. PC Plum must find a way to put it to good use. With a theme you can plan your games, food, entertainment, invitations, party bags and cake around it and ask your guests to come dressed to match the theme or give them an accessory or paint their face to match the theme when they arrive. Party food You can make ordinary food look special with just a few simple touches like pirate flags in sausages or glittery sprinkles on cupcakes. See our guide to organising party food for more tips. The Flemish version of the game is called "1, 2, 3 Piano", in which the Caller shouts "één, twee, drie, piano!" (translating to one, two, three, piano in English) before turning around to the other players. Only during the time this sentence is being shouted, the participants are allowed to move.PC Plum's office is cluttered with stuff he wants to throw away but Miss Hoolie tells him to take them to a car boot sale and use them as items for anyone to buy them. Everyone is unhappy at Spencer for messing things up, to which he finds out that he has forgotten to wash his hands and is covering everything he touches in green paint.

Josie promises to tell the children stories about exciting ways to travel – but she has only ever been on the ferry. The elegant female authors of the rococo fairy tale, Madame D'Aulnoy, Madame de Murat and the Mesdemoiselles L'Héritier de Villandon, Bernard, and de la Force would all have been horrified to be called old wives. They were youngish ladies, whose versions of old themes are encrusted with rococo artifice. The spectre of the old wife was still close enough for Charles Perrault to issue Histoires et Contes du Temps Passé, Avec des Moralités or Contes de ma Mere l'Oye in 1697 under his son's name rather than his own.Little Red Riding Hood is an outgrowth of the motif of the woman coupled with a carnivorous beast, which is what we would expect of a culture in which women married young and husbands were more likely than wives to survive. Every child attending a parish church would have witnessed the burial of women who had died in childbirth, some with their newborns in their arms, others with babies not yet born. The fact that nobody discussed such matters with children would have made the events all the more frightening. Evidence of the terror of virgins marrying men who had buried several wives can be found only rarely, and then in devotional literature. The only other place it could be expressed was in encoded form in fantastic fables. Charles Perrault is credited with the invention of the story of Bluebeard, which is clearly indebted to folk tales. If we consider that a nobleman was more likely to have married very young wives than a peasant (who needed a grown woman with her full complement of skills) and that these women endured their first pregnancies at the ages of 14 and 15, we can see at once that marriage to a nobleman was a high-risk business. Rumours ossify into legends. In some versions of the tale, as in the tale of Conomor the Accursed, the Bluebeard figure kills his wives when they become pregnant. Home parties are great for toddler birthday parties and smaller groups, but if you're inviting everyone in the class, you might want to hire a venue instead. Hiring a venue means there's more room for kids to run around and you don't need to worry about cake being trodden into your carpet.