We recall serving crepes at a birthday party near Winchester, Hampshire during lastsummer and for a while, we thought that for once our pancakes weren’t going to be the centre of attention. We were nearly upstaged by a large rubber mat, tightly stretched across a sturdy metallic frame.
It was a nice summer’s day and the party was held in a large garden where the owners of the house had recently taken delivery of an enormous trampoline. It wasn’t just a large trampoline – it was massive. Think in terms of the largest trampoline that physics would dictate could work as a trampoline and you’d be on the right lines. It probably took two vans to deliver and four men to assemble.
The girl who’s birthday it was (and all her friends and relations of a similar age) were totally obsessed with bouncing their heads off, and didn’t even notice us setting up our pancake stand for the birthday party food. It was very noisy, very rowdy and, to be fair, it looked like a lot of fun. The selection of assembled mums were enjoying the summer sun and drinking a glass or two of wine whilst we were putting the finishing touches to our crepe cart and the kids bounced higher and higher.
At some point the mums began trying to coax the kids from the trampoline, telling them the food was ready but the kids just didn’t seem interested. All we could see was a sea of heads bouncing around in what resembled a kindergarten mosh-pit. We started to have vague concerns that our crepes had been upstaged by a trampoline!
However, our fears were unfounded. After a short time, a couple of the kids (sorry, guests) realised that huge chocolate pancakes were being made right there in the garden, so all of a sudden, the trampoline cleared – quicker than you could say “unlimited milky bar pancakes” – and we were at once working as fast as we possibly could to keep up with demand. And of course after a while the mums joined in with the pancake frenzy (though they tended to opt for the Bailey’s based options, for some reason). The trampoline looked awfully lonely by this time.
As adults we would have enjoyed a period of calmness and inactivity after eating as many pancakes as we possibly could, but of course with children, things work slightly differently, so in what seemed like no time at all, the trampoline was once again the centre of attention with loads of kids, full to the brim of pancake party food merily bouncing away just as before.
We didn’t fancy waiting around to witness the results, so rapidly loaded our pancake stand into the van, said our goodbyes and left.
