Peter Pan and Dalek

This is the eleventh installment in the Dalek Game and is for J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy.

My sister had a Peter Pan party when she was 7 and we were living in Brisbane. There were little pirates and Tinkerbells all over the place, and I *think* that was when we played “pin the hair on the mermaid”. I don’t remember what the pinata was of, but my mother always made the papier mache so thick that you had to break the string and tear the pinata apart on the ground with your bare hands. I had to go as Peter Pan, but at least I got a sword and a green tunic out of the deal.

My father made the sword out of aluminium strips with rounded edges, a rivet and packing tape, and both sword and tunic came in handy for later games of Robin Hood in the tunnels of yellow jasmine, lantana, mango and loquat behind the house. Since the best part of Robin Hood was when Marion showed up dressed as a pageboy and Robin didn’t recognise her, there was no stigma attached to wearing any particular clothes in that game, although obviously Lincoln green was preferred. We made the bows and arrows out of papyrus stems, twigs and palm bark.

The only Peter Pan game we played was one which involved putting on the Disney soundtrack, dancing around the living room singing “we can fly” and throwing handfuls of glitter into the air, to watch it spiral beautifully down to lodge eternally in the maroon shag-pile carpet.

My father still can’t stand glitter.

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