The Chocolate Fountain and The Paintball Gun

It's a bit of a minefield when you go to buy presents for other people's kids. It's a good idea to play it safe and buy books for children and adults alike. They are aesthetic and easy to store and dispose. Lego is also a fairly inoffensive present if you know the child likes it.

Recently one of my children got two presents. A Homer Simpson chocolate fountain and a gun that shoots paintballs.

The gun is an environmentally unfriendly piece of plastic that would bring an architect out in a rash and cause you to forfeit your membership of the Green Party.

Guns are now considered really dangerous by some parents because playing with one might turn your child into a serial killer. Then again maybe NOT allowing your boy to play with guns might turn him into a killer because he won't get a chance to express his aggression.

The gun has lots of small plastic balls with it that you're supposed to fire at a target and then they explode in a splatter of colourful paint. The little balls are hard to load and sometimes fall out the top of the gun instead of shooting out. When the kids do manage to shoot the balls out of the gun they tend to bounce off the target. They then pick up the paint balls and throw them at each other or against the wall.

According to its instructions the chocolate fountain requires 750 grams of chocolate plus 200 ml of vegetable oil to work properly. This is the equivalent of about 20 ordinary size bars of chocolate.

I managed to melt the massive amount of chocolate required in the microwave and added some cream and olive oil to make it viscous. I turned on the machine and a little Homer man started to spin around the top of the fountain. At this stage the kids had marshmallows on sticks ready and were beside themselves with excitement.

I felt under pressure so I quickly poured the chocolate onto the top of the fountain and it splattered all over me and the kitchen. Had a quick read of the instructions which were quite clear about pouring the chocolate into the base of the fountain.

I ate far too many marshmallows covered in falling gooey chocolate sauce and felt slightly sick. The kids got sick of the marshmallows and went at the fountain with spoons. I stopped them before they went into a chocolate induced frenzy.

This evening the gun lies discarded in the playroom. The garden wall is covered in multi-coloured paint splatters and there are lots of tiny, empty paint balls scattered around the garden.

All the uneaten chocolate sauce that was scraped out of the fountain is in a tempting container in the fridge. All the chocolate splattered clothes are in the laundry basket.

It might take a while to eat all the sauce but we will try to manage it.