The great after school care caper...

Howdy folks. Sorry I don't have any cool cartoons this week. I've had such a busy couple of weeks I haven't had time to put pen to paper. But I do have a funny story to tell - so I hope this will tide you over...

Last week we had an assessor come out from the National Childcare Accreditation Council to check up on us. We worked our butts off trying to get the place up and running like a well-oiled machine.

Unfortunately the children were like gremlins sabotaging the cogs and wheels that made it turn...

On the first day our assessor attended the centre we had some of the more... uummm... creative children voice how great a time they were having during our roll call. Instead of the usual "here" or "yes" we had comments such as, "Delighted to be here!" and "Here and having a jolly good time, thank you very much!". Heh heh. I wonder if she thought we had bribed these children.

On the second day I had a very hard time trying to prevent us from looking like an episode of "Farty Towels" (Fawlty Towers), when a child was stuck in one of our cubicles. The children were doing karaoke down at the hall when the incident occurred and the noise from the music (and DREADFUL singing) was so loud the leaders could not hear her cries for help. Fortunately the child was able to let herself out - but not before she had alerted a passing pedestrian who happened to hear her and made a call to the local police. Several minutes later, three burly policemen armed to the teeth burst in on us. After taking some names and being convinced that we were caring for children and not imprisoning them with a view to baking them into pies, they left us shaken but not stirred.

The third day was getting better and the only incident to report was the fact that our oval leader hurt his back and I bravely took the children to the oval. As I had not been to the oval for years, many of the children stood in awe. One of the little angels asked me a barrage of questions, like "How fast can you run?","Can you run?", "I bet I can run faster than you", blah, blah, blah. This was all I needed, given that the 30 metre walk (down hill) to the oval had me completely stuffed. Lucky we were only doing "classic catches" once we got there.

And that was that. Several questions later from our assessor and it was all over. I have to admit the worst part was the actual anticipation, the waiting for it all to happen. But now it is all over I can concentrate on the several other "fun" projects I have going.