At my seventh birthday party, my mother – dreading, I imagine, the prospect of another formless afternoon of children rampaging, buttercream-smeared and high on Sunset Yellow and musical chairs, through our small house – hired an entertainer. This was the early 1980s, long before these things were common, so I remember it with all the wonder of uncynical childhood: there was a rabbit, and also a cake, conjured from a hat, but somehow more magical still, because we were allowed to keep them, balloon sculptures. I mean that in the most basic sense: sausage dogs and swords, mainly. Mine, though, as birthday girl, was a red rocking horse and I was enraptured. I recall taking a bath that night with it sitting on the side, and putting it by my bed. Its slow wrinkling and demise, after one rocker popped, caused me real grief.
But now my rocking horse and its ilk are looking a bit saggy and wrinkled: our beloved blow-ups have had a glow-up. Animal sculptures are Old Balloon, along with the traditional packet of primary-coloured ovals, effortfully inflated and tied by apprehensive parents, pre-party, and just sort of tossed on the floor, perhaps rubbing one against a jumper to perform the never-not-funny static hair trick on a nearby child or tying a couple to the door knocker with string. Also Old Balloon: a single, or small bunch of foil “birthday girl”, “18 today” or L-plate helium-filled ones, dragged round streets and into bars, bobbing chaotically in the wake of a group of lairy revellers, eventually abandoned in a club queue, floating up, up and away.
