Fun at the soft play area was like doing hard time writes Steve Canavan

I went to a third birthday party at the weekend.
It can awkward for a grown man to crawl around on all fours in a ball pitIt can awkward for a grown man to crawl around on all fours in a ball pit
It can awkward for a grown man to crawl around on all fours in a ball pit

Let me be clear here: I don’t hang around with three-year-olds. That would be weird, and might ring alarm bells with the authorities.

I went because the birthday girl is one of my daughter’s friends.

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Actually, that’s not true. Three-year-olds don’t have friends.

What happens is they have acquaintances forced upon them, because when a woman is about to give birth she goes to various things – such as antenatal classes, aquanatal, hypnobirthing, pregnancy yoga (amazingly I’ve not made that last one up; what next? Pregnancy lap-dancing?) - makes friends with a load of other women also about to give birth, and then, as a result, all their children, once born, are labelled ‘friends’ whether they like it or not … when the truth is the mums just want to continue to knock about with one another and meet for coffee.

Anyway, the party was at a soft play centre.

Now I don’t know how many of you have been to a soft-play centre but, for those who haven’t, they are like dying and ending up in hell.

They are essentially large buildings filled with toys and slides and ball pools and netting and inflatable things where around 100 hyper children shriek at the top of their lungs and throw themselves around in suicidal fashion for several hours. These places are to adult enjoyment what myxomatosis is to rabbits.

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In fact I often think we could crack crime if, as punishments for serious offences, criminals were sentenced to three years in soft play rather than prison. I daresay no one would ever commit an illegal act ever again (‘No, your honour, have mercy, I can cope with E wing and 14 months in isolation but don’t, for the love of god, make me go to the bouncy castle at Playtastic’).

For kids, of course, they are the most wonderful joyful places, but for anyone above the age of eight, it’s purgatory.

However, being a slightly miserable anti-social type, give me a choice between playing with my child on the soft play or standing on the sidelines making awkward conversation with other parents, I’d take the former any day of the week.

And so it was that I found myself on Sunday standing at the bottom of a slide surrounded by 12 children chanting ‘Steve, Steve, Steve!’

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What I didn’t realise, you see, is that any adult who ventures onto the soft play, immediately, whether they want to or not, becomes a guardian for all the other children.

So while all the other adults bought themselves cappuccinos and lattes (because obviously normal coffee doesn’t exist any more – I mean, come on, what’s wrong with a nice cup of Mellow Birds?) and sat with their feet up relaxing, I found myself taking on the role of an unpaid children’s entertainer.

This is kind of awkward because as you’re crawling about on all fours in a ball pool with a dozen three-year-olds you do wonder if the other parents are looking at you questioning your intentions (‘Doreen, keep your eye on that bearded fella there – there’s something odd about him. He’s been playing with Felicity for half an hour now’).

It can also go wrong so very easily, as I discovered when I chased three toddlers through a tunnel while making loud noises and shouting ‘I’m a monster – WATCH OUT’. One of the children, possibly of a nervous disposition, took me literally and began screaming hysterically in fear.

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She emerged from the tunnel shaking and with tears streaming down her face. I emerged behind to find her parents staring at their daughter in concerned fashion, then transferring their gaze to me and presumably wondering what the hell had happened in the tunnel.

“Erm, I pretended to be a monster,” I ventured, weakly.

‘She’s scared of monsters,’ said the dad brusquely, picking up his daughter and whisking her away, presumably to give her a lengthy talk about why she should stay away from the strange man who’d just made her cry.

Still, most of the others were undaunted and I continued to be the centre of attention.

The game which seemed to go down best involved me getting all the kids to stand at the bottom of the slides and throw balls we’d nicked from the ball pool at the children coming down.

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It was going well until – trying to demonstrate how to throw a ball properly – I hurled mine in the direction of a quite delicate-looking child on the slide. I’d meant to deliberately miss him but my aim clearly isn’t as good as I thought, for it hit the kid smack in the face. He immediately began crying and a trickle of blood emerged from his nose.

Like any responsible adult, the first thing I did was turn around and check if any parents were watching. They didn’t seem to be.

“Oh no,” I cried in mock anger.

“Who threw that ball?” I demanded, ignoring the 12 toddler voices shouting in unison ‘you did’.

(I’m happy to report, by the way, the bloodied child is OK and expected to make a full recovery, and that emergency surgery to re-set his nose was a success).

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It was at this point I decided it was probably best to retire from my role as child entertainer before anyone suffered a broken bone or, possibly, death.

But they don’t let you go these kids – once an adult gets on their soft play patch they snare you like a spider and a fly – so I had to resort to pretending to need the toilet to get rid of them.

There’s another third birthday coming up soon; note to self, making awkward conversation with other parents while drinking a latte might be the better option.