The seven things you're donating to the school summer fayre so they can be sold back to you

A RUTHLESS commercial enterprise masquerading as fun for children, the school summer fayre is screaming for your goods. What will you toss into its jaws? 

One: a bottle

Asked for any bottle, you scan the house for unwanted bubble bath sets or dusty three-packs of Toilet Duck. Eventually, grim-faced, you give up a precious bottle of wine. In three weeks you will buy it back with a raffle ticket taped to it.

Two: Item for class hamper

The theme is ‘Treat time!’ which isn’t really a theme so much as a demand. Nonetheless, you did your best to honour it by throwing in a vibrator. What, whoever’s winning this raffle doesn’t enjoy a nice machine-assisted orgasm?

Three: A jolly jar

You’re instinctively opposed to filling a Kilner jar with gender-neutral, sugar-free, plastic-free items that will supposedly thrill a small child into paying for it. Especially as your own child is that gullible. Consider making your contribution unusable by filling it with drawing pins and peanuts.

Four: A tray bake

This is neither the 1950s nor Bake-Off so why you’re making rice krispie cakes for the PTA Gestapo when Mini Rolls are available in the shops you don’t know. Careful, distinctive icing means you can buy your own because you don’t trust the other contributors to wash their hands.

Five: Items for the uniform stall

Your child loses shit relentlessly. What makes the PTA think you can spare the few items of uniform which survive? Short-circuit the system by claiming half of lost property and sending that in. All funds go towards the new library, which they need because the kids lost all the books from the old one.

Six: A large, complex DIY project

You’ve been seen in the playground in paint-spattered overalls, so it’ll be no trouble at all for you to build a backdrop for the photo booth, oh, and fix Splat the Rat. Now you’ve got glitter paint under your nails, resentment burning behind your eyes, and you have to queue up for Lottie to have a rubbish £5 photo while kids slag off your work.

Seven: Time

Throwing stuff at the bastards only gets you so far. Now you’re signed up to man a stall, turning up at 10am, hard at work until 4pm, then two hours tidying while the teachers drink Pimms and count their money. Still, it meant you could nick all the good bottles and £80 cash.

How to hide that you're secretly madly in love with Vladimir Putin: a guide for right-wingers

FAR-RIGHT? Doing well with the patriots? They must never find out about your crush on the Prince Adam of the East, President Putin? Throw them off the scent: 

“Who?”

Struggle to bring the leader of Russia even to mind, such an unmemorable chap is he. Ukraine? Is that still going on? Isn’t it time to be sensible, stop the bloodshed and settle back to how it was before, specifically before its 1991 independence? That’s what Putin wants? Sounds like a reasonable guy.

Appear on Russia Today as a dissenting voice

The opportunity to speak to millions of Russians is a weighty one. So is the payment. You don’t have to be in sympathy with Putin to speak on it, but why would you offend the man at his own state-run broadcaster? That would be rude. Note this option also available to the hard left: see Galloway, G.

Enthuse at length about Salisbury Cathedral

‘If you’re at all into early English gothic architecture,’ you gush, ‘you must visit Salisbury Cathedral and its famous 123-metre spire. I was wowed and found it perfectly plausible that two men, not gay, would travel from Russia just to see it.’ Note this option also available to the hard left: see Corbyn, J.

Run through some of Hitler’s plus points

Distract from your list of positives about Putin, for example claiming he was ‘provoked’ into mobilising his army or how many kilos he can lift, by pulling out history’s greatest Nazi. A few inflammatory statements and 80 photos of you with oligarchs are forgotten. Note this option also available to the hard left: see Livingstone, K.

Try to get friendly with his mates

Waking up sweaty from vivid dreams when you were wrestling nude with Putin, each of you oiled, lips poised? Concerned it’s showing in your face? Cozy up to Viktor Orban, exchange billet-doux with Kim Jong-il, and soon you’ll be on such easy acquaintance it’s not embarrassing when he rebuffs the pass you make in the Oval Office, Donald.

Fall out of a window

Putin has a real relationship, if not a lifelong love affair, with the art of defenestration. So exuberantly does he desire those he knows and loves to fall out of windows, they do so frequently and gladly. If you were to take a tumble maybe he’d notice you. That’s all you really want.