For the past three weeks my son, who is five, has been bringing special homework assignments home which involve plenty of paper, glue, pencils, paints, cotton wool, odd bits of cloth…and me. His class are making their own xmas decorations as part of their preparations for the festive season.

Let me make this perfectly clear; I am not, never have been and never will be, remotely talented with anything to do with arts and crafts. I was crap doing this sort of thing at school and I remain so to this day, so when John’s teacher sent home a detailed list of ‘ingredients’ to make a ‘hanging angel’ I broke out in a cold sweat. The week before we had to make a musical shaker – being a musician you would assume this would be a piece of cake to me – but not if you saw my effort…an empty cocoa container filled with pasta shells and garnished with tinsel. Well at least it makes a nice sound! but it was the efforts of the other mums that made me wonder just how seriously some of those women take these things, as though they are a challenge to be met head-on and your kid is going to hand in the most intricately designed and hand-crafted item this side of the Tate Gallery.

The angel though was almost the death of me. John gave up trying to be a part of his own assignment and left Mummy to curse on her own; two and a half hours later I was sitting on the floor surrounded by a small mountain of screwed up wads of white paper, one empty sellotape reel, varying bits and pieces of shredded cotton wool and finger tips coated in glue – at this point I had to rmind myself what I was doing in this situation and vaguely recalled that all this paraphernalia was supposed to have resulted in a snowy white paper angel to hang on a xmas tree in John’s classroom. Not a chance.

I am going to relaunch my assault tomorrow with a whole new strategy – I am going to buy one!