London - My son wants to know what will happen if aliens attack Earth. The seven-year-old is lying in bed asking me earnestly about a possible extra-terrestrial war, which he seems to think I’m in on. Despite my reassurances, he’s still worried about imaginary space invaders when I turn out the lamp and leave.
“Nothing will survive, you won’t feel a thing,” I mutter on my way downstairs. Actually there is one thing that would be left if aliens invaded during the summer of 2014. There’s only one thing strong enough to survive an intergalactic battle of epic proportions: loom bands.
There will be no humans “to experiment on” as he fears, just a bizarre legacy of billions of piles of multicoloured miniature elastic bands woven into ridiculous neon jewellery.
The captain’s log of the invading ship will record that humans were a weird race of accessory-obsessed simpletons. And that the bigger ones put the smaller ones to work making all manner of multicoloured whatnots for their own sartorial pleasure.
The opposite of which is true, of course. This week I risked ridicule at work wearing three fluorescent Rainbow Loom bracelets just to please my offspring (the purple one is grape-scented, they said, “because we know you like wine”).
These tiny bands are everywhere. There was one in my cereal bowl this morning, the tumble dryer is full of them and the dog has taken to eating them. Which is nice.
And when we went swimming this weekend I noticed them lying all over the bottom of the pool.
This epidemic has caught us by surprise, spreading through my four children, aged three to 11, as fast a virulent tummy bug. They’re all at it, even ‘baby Mabel’ who has taken to looping elastic bands over her toes until they turn red and get “hurty”.
It’s worse than the addictive computer game Minecraft that absorbed them last year, worse than the obsessive collecting of the small plastic Moshi Monster moshlings I kept treading on.
They start “looming” first thing and are still at it when I get in from the office, comparing their different styles. Gracie, ten, has started to make her dad a loom bobble hat which I am really looking forward to him wearing.
When not actually looming, they watch YouTube videos of other people doing it, marvelling at the nitwits who have made loom bikinis (further evidence of our inferior intelligence for alien invaders).
They take pictures of their jewellery efforts to send to friends, who are also busy looming away. I don’t remember the Rubik’s cube or Cabbage Patch dolls ever being this popular.
The sensible-mom side of me is thinking of staging an intervention. They’ve got to go out at some point during the school holidays, haven’t they? Plus, where on earth will I store all this tat when they’ve outgrown it?
But the “little-bit-lazy-glad-it’s-not-the-TV-occupying-them” side of me is secretly relieved and loving the loom. Besides, the ever-increasing school holidays are costly when you’ve got four children to occupy.
After our annual family break in Cornwall we have four weeks to fill, which for urban kids is a financial and creative conundrum (especially when there’s an eight-year age gap in play).
I grew up in a Cornish village on the edge of Bodmin Moor and as a child my younger sister and I would just “go outside” to play.
This isn’t an option for city youngsters, so the end of term heralds the start of my role as chief events organiser.
This year I’ve been saved by the unexpected sunshine and the proliferation of London’s “city seasides”.
“To the beach,” I command over breakfast. They grip their bag of bands tightly and look at each other nervously for support.
“I suppose we can loom in the sand,” remarks Gracie as they head off for another trip to the fake coast. - Daily Mail
Lorraine Candy is the editor of ELLE magazine.