It was the sort of phone call you hope you never have to make during a play date.

“Hello, we’re just calling to say your daughter is blue, navy blue to be precise.”

Earlier I’d been congratulating myself for my arty household.

My daughter and her friend were using spray bottles of dye left over from a kit, to create spray paintings. Then my daughter filled a pizza pan with water and dye and soaked her picture directly in it. Then she began kneading the picture into mush. Her friend joined her.

“Look at my hands,” the friend said.

“You look like a Smurf,” my daughter said.

“No you do,” the other child said. There was giggling all around.

“Maybe you should wash that off,” I suggested.

A little while later a little voice call out: “It’s not coming off!”

Then, and only then, did I think of the plastic gloves that came with the tie dye kit. We spent the next ten minutes rubbing her hands with liquid soap.

My husband made the dreaded phone call. The parents seemed okay with the whole blue thing, possibly because they couldn’t see just how blue she was at that moment. I hoped they were St George’s fans at Cup Match.

Google suggested a mixture of lemon juice and baking soda, but we had no baking soda and no lemons.

So, I said conversationally: “How do you think your parents will feel about you having pretty, blue hands?”

“I don’t think they’ll like it very much,” she said.

My daughter: “Mummy, my hands are blue too!”

“I know that, but I think getting the colour off your friend’s hands is a little more important right now if you want her parents to let her come over again.”

My daughter went into the whole, you don’t love me anymore routine, but honestly I had my hands too full to deal with her blues.

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one. Rubbing the blue hands gently with a washcloth seemed to do better than anything else and reduced the colour from navy blue to a gentle teal.

“Okay,” I said, “I think we’ll have to stop before your hands start to hurt from the scrubbing.”

Our little friend said brightly: “Do you have any other colours?”

Incredulously, I asked: “Wasn’t blue enough?”

She said: “I thought if you had white maybe we could dye my hands that colour and no one would notice.”