Zombie Shepherd? That's the Christmas play attire sorted...

My kids love Halloween. The love it because they’re handed a full licence to eat sweets and the air is full of frights and fireworks. And surprises for the Mums and Dads.
We went for a great Halloween spooky walking tour with City Tours in Derry (www.derrycitytours.co.uk). There was howling winds, gothic Cathedrals, our ancient city walls, ghost stories, gravediggers, ghouls, banshees, scary monks and zombies. It was superb. We arrived home cold, wet and well and truly spooked before 10pm.
At 10.15pm my middle son told me that his class were having a costume party the next day and he needed an outfit. Being a competitive character, like myself, he insisted the standard was exceptionally high, better than everyone else in the class, nay the school, nay the universe. I was not to pull together just any old rubbish, he wanted one of award-winning standard as there was a bar of chocolate and a 50 pence piece up for grabs and he wasn’t going to lose out on that kind of cash to no cowboy or fairy princess. I, of course, hadn’t bought him a costume yet since Halloween was three whole days away and it was far too soon to be bothering with stuff like that.
This type of scenario normally unfolds the night before a school Christmas play when Caolan, after swearing blind for weeks that the school will provide all costuming needs, wakes screaming at midnight to inform me that he in fact needs full shepherding regalia and paraphernalia for the next morning as he has a speaking part and he will be ‘stage front’ for an hour, and therefore in all the parent’s photographs and camcorder footage. Hence the reason why my son has appeared, for the past three years, in a fleece sofa throw, with a pillowcase tied around his head by one of his father’s belts and holding a yard brush to act as a shepherding staff.
In those moments on Thursday night, when images of me sewing and snipping until the small hours loomed in my horizon, I contemplated sending that child into school in his DIY soft furnishing combo/shepherd’s uniform. But no, the boy wanted to be a zombie mummy. How about a zombie shepherd, I enquired, thinking with a little white face paint and perhaps a few dark circles under the eyes I might just pull this together. No, an Egyptian mummy zombie with no links to the shepherding profession whatsoever was requested. Nothing more, nothing less would be accepted.
And so began a night that saw me hunt out my baby boys babygros from last year, raid the first aid box for bandages, and dig out my sewing kits and scissors for my grand costume scheme. I got creating, soaked the bandages in tea for that aged effect, dried them with a hairdryer and began the laborious and lengthy task of sewing them indivually onto an old babygro that I wasn’t even sure would fit my boy.
At 4am I hung my masterpiece on the kitchen door and summoned the husband, who had spent the hours following midnight sewing dreadlocks onto Daniel’s pirate hat, into the room so he could express his awe and show his amazement at my creativity.
He laughed. He winced. He spoke. It looks like a gigantic baby grow, he said. A gigantic babygro that someone went mad with the scissors with and stuck (badly) a handful of browny-coloured bandages to. What’s it supposed to be, he enquired?
The thing was deposited into the kitchen bin.
Our Caolan was the best zombie shepherd at school that day, no questions asked.