OF THE deluge of extra-curricular events marking the end of term, our school concert is an evening like no other.

School policy dictates that all children who learn an instrument take a turn to delight the audience, even if they only picked up the spoons yesterday and haven’t yet worked out which end to hold them.

I don’t suffer the daily battle in which other parents complain over the practice of shrieking-cat violins or harp arpeggios because unlike the Rolling Stones, who gather no moss, we accumulate dust instrumentally and have been beached in a musical backwater.

However, the Youngest took part in a mass choral number after which the ‘entertainment’ stretched long into the evening like the drip of water torture. I’ve learned from experience to sit at the back to keep my ear-defenders and silent shoulder-shaking laughter hidden from headteacher’s stare of doom.

I’m more at home at the summer fair, a place where the Parent Teacher Association gatekeeper should remove £40 per family on the way in and save everyone from the trouble of the tombola: swopping hard-earned cash for total tat; choosing a name for an oversized teddy which would usurp a child from a bedroom by sheer size; and ‘throwing wet sponges at a sporting teacher’ which, given the monsoon, seems pointless, and who, if they were less game but more sporting, would be running away at high speed.

Last year, when a friend bemoaned the shocking waste of money on goal shooting and coconuts, I suggested brightly that she looked upon it with good grace as the price of a fun family afternoon. This was before the Youngest spent his entire cash allocation on 100 5p lollies, at which my cheer faltered slightly.

This year, clearly told that he was not to spend it all on sweets, he chose instead a chocolate cake, playing a merry tune (Papa, Don’t Preach) on the spoons as he tucked in.

Maybe the Teddy Bear Usurper would be a good idea after all...