Trouble in the Dragons' Den

Things are hotting up for Small Boy and his mates as the deadline for pitching to the Dragons approaches.

“It’s a disaster!” he wails, running out of school, pain etched on his small pale features. “Molly’s hamster has died so we are one pet down for the Petting Zoo!”

“Oh dear,” I say. I cannot say I am surprised. That hamster had it coming. Molly’s mum was forever telling us how she did not think the creature would survive another night, and that she only hoped it would hang on in there for the Dragons’ Den challenge.

“Yes, it is ‘oh dear’,” huffs Small Boy. “Cos now I have to beg James to let us have his rabbit, Graham, and James is not even in our group. He is saying that he will rent Graham to me but when I told him that we had already spent our budget on renting the guinea pigs from Ollie and on all the bottles of hand gel we need, he just laughed and said, ‘No money, no bunny.’”

I stifle a laugh of my own. “Well, it doesn’t matter that much if you are one animal down, darling. A hamster is only a very small pet. People will be much more excited about the chickens and the lambs.”
“Yeah, s’pose,” says Small Boy, sniffing.

“And calling a rabbit Graham is a bit – odd,” I add.

Small Boy grins reluctantly. “I know – that’s Grandpa’s name! Imagine Grandpa as a rabbit!”

I would rather not. I have met this rabbit and it is decidedly cute. Indeed I had enjoyed having a lovely snuggle with it until I discovered it had the same name as my father-in-law. I had handed it back pretty swiftly after that.

“So you see? You’ll be better off without Graham,” I say firmly.
“But the other problem is that now Molly does not have a pet to bring in but she is still in our team, and our thing is the Petting Zoo, so now that she is without a pet we have had to think of another job for her to do,” Small Boy says.

“I see.”

“So she has come up with this idea that we will take photos of people holding the pets and then sell those photos to make more money,” he continues.

“Very enterprising,” I say, impressed.

“But it’s not a good idea AT ALL!” he wails.

“Oh?”
“NO! Because while she is going off printing the photos, who will be there to take even more photos of the people who are waiting? She has not thought about Supply and Demand,” he cries.

“Well I think these are the lessons school is hoping you will learn from doing this exercise,” I say.

“But I don’t want to learn any lessons from it. I just want it to be FUN!” he complains. “I bet the real Dragons’ Den people, or Apprentice people or whatever, don’t have these kinds of problems,” he adds.

An image pops into my mind of Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones arguing over whether or not someone should be allowed to rent a rabbit called Graham. “Not these exact kinds of problems, no,” I agree.

“I hate team work,” says Small Boy with feeling.

Poor Small Boy. It is slowly beginning to dawn on him that life is not as uncomplicated as he had thus far believed it to be. Sadly I feel it is all downhill from here on in.