You can't get a man with a gun,

For the first time in my life I went to a costume shop and hired myself a proper costume for a dress-up party. Usually I cobble something together from my mass of left over tap costumes, but you know what? It usually looked pretty cobbled together, to be absolutely frank. Whereas look at me now:

I have never worn this much pink before, given as how (a) I'm a red-head and we're not supposed to, and (b) my mother does not care for the colour. It was actually so overwhelming with the hat and all, that the kitty backed nervously away from me when I emerged resplendent, and then ran away. My boys only had eyes for my guns. Talk about hard-wired. We don't have toy guns in our house, I'm anti-them. And yet, the boys grabbed one each with joy and proceeded to have a fully authentic shoot-out across the loungeroom. And as I bent to kiss them goodnight, Cherub looked up at me with hope in his big eyes and said Mummy can I have one more play with your guns please? Boys. But when they saw their father, magnificent in his Airline Pilot costume, they expressed only approval for how he looked. Although he did inspire a fairly energetic discussion on whether he was a train driver or not. Climber was so impressed that, on first seeing Fixit all dressed up, he threw his arms around him and said, almost shyly, I love you Daddy.

The occasion was my friend Anna's 40th, an "A" party. Astrid and I were talking about doing ABBA with our respective fellas but when we got to the costume shop the ABBA options were crappy. So we went to Plan B which turned out to be a good thing, given that 3 other sets of 2 couples had sashayed down the ABBA red carpet. As it turned out I was one of two Annie Oakleys at the party, but she was more Wild West Annie whereas I was definitely post-There's No Business Like Show Business Annie. And you probably don't need me to tell you that my costume was way cuter.

This is some of my Mother's Group posse hamming it up:
Agnetha from ABBA, Adam Ant, Airline Pilot, Annie Oakley, Alice Cooper and Aqua Woman.

We had a LOT of fun. But if you are going to drink champagne all night and not intersperse it with drinks of water you WILL wake up with a monster hangover. Ask Astrid and me. We'll tell you.