It’s not easy having a kid’s birthday party during lockdown

The dog attacks the homemade Peppa Pig cake, grandpa’s sink blocks and the dishwasher explodes in suds. Charlotte Cripps is relieved when the Zoom birthday party is finally over

(Illustration by Amara May)

I’ve been singing happy birthday to Liberty so often since coronavirus began that it’s completely taken the vroom out of the real thing. She’s two today and we’re on lockdown. It’s not much of a party – she can’t invite her friends and we have cancelled a trip to Peppa Pig World. Lola, who is four, understands what coronavirus is, but Liberty doesn’t. I’m hoping the fact that none of her friends turns up doesn’t reverberate with her for years to come.

I don’t want her growing up feeling rejected, unpopular even, or with a sense of abandonment as I did as a child. I have wrapped a few things – a dinosaur backpack, a toy lion and an Etch A Sketch – but once they are open, what else can we do?

Nanny Roseanna, trapped with us during lockdown, helps me set up the Zoom birthday party. Liberty wants “noodles, noodles, noodles” so Roseanna makes her snack from a Pot Noodle packet while I squirm in absolute horror at all the E numbers. Well if that’s what she wants, it’s her birthday!