GATE PA PRIMARY BANS GLITTER AFTER INCIDENT STAFF DESCRIBE AS "BIBLICAL"

A Gate Pa primary school has banned glitter outright after what the principal's newsletter called "a biblical event" during a Year 3 craft session. The caretaker, reached on Friday, called it "the end of me, personally".

The trouble began when a 500-gram tub of Warehouse craft glitter was left within reach of eight children for what the school estimates was four unsupervised minutes. By 2.20pm the glitter had reached the library, the sick bay and the staff microwave. One account has it in a Corolla parked on the far side of Cameron Road with the windows up.

Parent Lorraine Petherick, 44, said her son came home "shimmering like a bloody bauble" and has since been banned from the couch. "It's in the dog. It's in the dishwasher. I opened a new jar of Marmite this morning and there was some in that. Sealed jar. Explain that to me."

The 3pm pickup lane has made matters worse. A grandmother on collection duties, one of the many recently arrived from Auckland, is already known to staff for her approach to the give-way. She said her grandson "left a trail from the gate to the Honda like something out of Hansel and Gretel". She added that she "did not retire to the Bay for this". This reporter's late husband Gerald never allowed glitter in the house, and the house was better for it. My son's new girlfriend puts it on her face on purpose, which tells you everything.

The principal's newsletter said the school would move to "sustainable, glitter-free creative alternatives", listing leaves, wool and "found objects". Nobody has explained what a found object is, or who is supposed to have lost it. The board of trustees has called the ban "proportionate", which is what people say when they have not been near the microwave.

The school's vacuum cleaner has been declared a write-off. The caretaker said the remaining glitter is now "in the ducting", where it is expected to stay "until the building comes down or Christ returns, whichever's first".