Tough political hack Kevin Maguire steps away from the day job at Parliament and reveals another side to him as Granda Kev. This week Kev swaps his wardrobe of black suits and pale blue shirts for a pink dress to keep his dressing-up loving granddaughter happy
“Granda,” my granddaughter ordered rather than asked with saucer eyes and irresitible smile, “put on my dress.”
Two initial points. Firstly, it was much too small for a 6ft bloke. Secondly, I’m not the gown sort of guy. Neither wisecrack dared pass my lips.
Because an additional third point was I knew Canny C, holding the dress in an outstretched hand, wouldn’t appreciate another granda bad joke. She wanted to play dressing up free of messing from yours truly.
So together we put the pink nylon garment, which she excitedly told me was a witches outfit worn to go trick or treating on Halloween, over her clothes before she toddled off to bring into the kitchen a pointy hat, wand and a mini-broomstick to complete the outfit.
Pink, the new colour of the occult? Her mam’s having a laugh or three Barbies double, double, toil and trouble next time the Royal Shakespeare Company updates Macbeth.
I’d earlier picked up brother Little L from school and parked him in front of my laptop to watch Octonauts, polar bear Captain Barnacles rescuing stranded Emperor penguins in an educational cartoon, while knackered granda snoozed on the settee, before strolling over to collect Canny C from childminder Carol.
You’d only need to hold the fort for an hour tops, said the parents who had a hospital appointment to sort delivery of a brother or sister next month. Yeah, right.
Three frazzled hours later a key in the door was the sound of the cavalry rescuing me from a siege.
Dressing up isn’t my thing. It’s outside the comfort zone. I’m more a train set, football, going to the swings or sitting in a cafe sipping forbidden hot chocolate granda.
Canny C ruthlessly exploiting the uncomfortableness. She wanted more costume changes than a catwalk model at London Fashion Week.
The lowest mo was clipping a Rapunzel long plait to the back of her hair and attaching a single plastic dangly thing to an earlobe, the other presumably lost. Earring, not the lobe. But I was losing my mind.
Canny C inquired if I had a dressing up box at home. A twinge of defiant sarcasm wanted to answer yes, it’s full of black suits and pale blue shirts for work.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. The will to live had drained away. Granda was beaten, subservient, worn down by a costume drama. Teenage tantrums ahead, hers not mine, hold no fears after surviving dressing up.