D is for dens

And not as in a fox’s den. Although, I did have an interesting dream about living in a fox den the other day. It was full of wagon wheel wrappers, leaves, and hundreds of tiny doors that led to individual steam generators for ant hills. And full of foxes, too, presumably, although I don’t recall them being in the dream.

Anyway, I digress.

The dens I’m talking about are of the small child creation variety. You know the ones – they involve stripping the sofa, armchairs and general furniture of every blanket or cushion like contraption, and reassembling them in the middle of the room to create a warren of crawlable dark corridors and shady corners to curl up in.

Something that I have to say, I’d pretty much forgotten about doing as a child.

But with the Wee Man gaily dragging the seat cushions off the sofa, depriving me of a place to sit and forcing me to join in, all my memories came flooding back.

The time and effort of planning the perfect interwoven network of blankets, chairs and cushions to maximise the den-ness of the final finished work.

The negotiation between siblings as to who got which bit of the den, and who got to be ‘THE GROWLER’ lurking outside. (that went along with a song – ‘no growlers today, hip hip hooooraaayyy’ which was then followed by THE GROWLER leaping out and growling, sending everyone else scurrying into the den before THE GROWLER could grab their legs. Hours of fun…).

And of course, the pain of seeing your perfectly constructed den ruthlessly felled in the name of ‘I need a place to sit down’ by some uncaring adult.

Which is why I allowed the Wee Man to continue with his sofa cushion robbing, and decided I’d be better off pitching in with the construction instead.

(Nothing to do with enjoying building dens, oh no. It’s not like I have this dream of one day designing and building my own perfect dream house, and den building being kind of one tiny step on the ladder towards that, no definitely not. And as a ‘grown up’ of course I hate the idea of wriggling under an assortment of snuggly blankets, pretending to be scared of imaginary monsters and squealing with delight when the littlest monster tries to eat my toes. It’s just simply FAR TOO CHILDISH for a proper early thirties adult to be proactively encouraging…).

Fifteen minutes later and we were proudly standing in front of the den of all dens, a multicoloured patchwork of cave-like delight.

‘Mummy’ proclaimed the Wee Man. ‘This is the den of the ice cream monsters’.

‘Really?’ I mused, still lost in thoughts of days gone by ‘I thought perhaps they were growlers’.

‘NO, mummy’ the Wee Man forcibly declared. ‘It’s definitely ice cream monsters and we must pay them ice lollies not to attack us otherwise our den will be DESTROYED’.

Hmm, I see where this is going.

Well, I remember the pain of den destroyal…so…bring on the ice lollies, why not 🙂