The weather has taken an autumnal turn this week just as the children have gone back to school. One of my patients sent them each a brown egg from her hens to start the term. I was unsure whether to give Finch his, still feeling cross at him over near disaster with a tin of putty. Have you seen this stuff? Everyone is making slime or playing with putty and I don’t understand it. Why would you want to play with ‘slime’ for goodness sake? I had previously banned all such substances from the house, seeing it as yet another short cut to ruined carpets, but then a friend gave Finch a tin of magnetic putty, and I had to concede, it was quite cool the way it moved around if you waved a magnet near it. Finch was to keep it in in his top drawer and always put the lid back on, but I should have listened to my instincts.
In the middle of the night he got up, had a play with the putty and fell asleep. In the morning he was caked in the stuff and it had dried hard. Dry magnetic putty looks a lot like a spatula you’ve accidentally put in the oven, melted and left to cool. It was solid plastic, and it was stuck to everything. We soaked Finch in the bath for an hour and a half to try and get it out of his hair but to no avail. The sheets had to be thrown away. Big Dreamer had one shoe on, ready to take Finch to the Barbers, when we thought to Google for advice. Funnily enough, we are not the first people this has happened to. Amidst wailing and screaming from Finch we managed to comb out the putty using cooking oil. I did give him his egg, and I think we have firmly established that we prefer egg gifts to putty gifts in this house.
