Diary of a Primary School Mum: 'Good idea? Thirty kids in our living room?'

Hip, hip hooray, the twins will soon turn five. This should be cause for celebration, but each time I think of it, my jaw clenches tighter than Jordan's buttocks. So far, the battle not to throw major birthday bashes has been hard fought, and won. We've even made a stand against party bags, considering them an unnecessary and ostentatious indulgence.

Now that Claire and Oliver have started "big" school though, a quiet, family affair is no longer an option. "Who do you want to invite to your party?" I ask, imagining they'd each offer a few names. "I've got a good idea," said Oliver. "Let's invite the whole class!"

Good idea? Thirty kids, our living room? Then again, by the time Claire's picked ten girls and Oliver ten boys, perhaps it would be politic not to leave anyone out.

The deal is sealed and phase two (how to keep 30 children amused for two hours) kicks in. "The best entertainer I've ever seen," my husband recalls, "was this bloke called 'Wolligog'." I wasn't present at the Wolligog party because I'd just given birth to baby number three, but I remember the name (hard not to).

"What was so good about Wolligog?" I ask.

"Well," admits my husband, "he was outrageously un-PC, but he was very funny and kept pulling little animals out of hats."

My husband's judgement is normally impeccable, but the twins' primary school is so PC that the PTA has been re-branded the PSA (parent staff association) so as not to offend the teaching assistants. Fear that Wolligog might not go down well draws a halt to this avenue of exploration. I seek advice from a friend who's more knowledgeable in this department. "Forget entertainers," she tells me. "What you want is a themed interactive experience, with catchy songs and funky dances." A gamble, but time is ticking fast. I take the number and book it up.

The twins give the funky dance concept the thumbs up, but their minds are elsewhere. It's "show and tell" day at school – children who so choose can take in an object to show to their classmates and talk about it. Placed the night before in their schoolbags are models of their favourite characters from Lazytown, an Icelandic children's show so popular that it's now the country's biggest export. Oliver's got Sportacus, complete with superhero skateboard. Claire's chosen Stephanie with trademark pink wig and matching bag.

The week has been building up to this moment. Oliver's been practising his speech about this fruit eating, back-flipping superhero who he believes he uncannily resembles.

Claire, whilst reticent about what it is she will actually say, has been getting excited about sharing Stephanie with the class.

Thoughts about how the twins' first go at public speaking have gone dips in and out of my consciousness all day. By 3.30pm I've gone hopping mad. The question blurts out.

"How was show and tell?"

Oliver shrugs. Claire's head hangs low.

"I didn't like it," she says.

"Why?"

Brief silence gives way to verbal diarrhoea.

"We didn't do it properly because too many people brought things in, so we sat playing with our toys at the tables and it was scary because this other boy bought in this horrid robot with a big mask and red eyes and told me that Stephanie was stupid."

Their combined body language breathes "anticlimax". Despite my abhorrence of party bags and their disposable tat contents, that night I search online for the very best in range, just in case the "catchy songs" and "funky dances" don't deliver.