MotherSoup

Have you ever had to pick up a child from school in order to rush somewhere else?

Not the gentle meander home chattering about the day just past, but a swift grab and go.

Getting to school on time at the start if the day may be fraught, but getting out again in the afternoon has its own pressures. At least in a morning you’ve a chance of keeping the child focussed…

You arrive to do the pick-up in plenty of time (as if that’s going to make any difference) and hop up and down checking your watch, although the sounds coming from the classrooms sound nothing like packing-up-time. Surely that bell should have gone by now? Everybody else hanging around looks really chilled - do they know something you don’t?

Relief when the bell finally goes… but nothing happens. Where’s the tide of children streaming out of the door? Come on… come on… oh for goodness’ sake is the some sort of mass detention going on?

That morning, you have drilled your child about the urgency of this afternoon’s errand, and you’ve extracted a promise that they will be first out of that door, and raring to go. Of course, they’re not in the early birds, nor in the main van, nor in the ensuing trickle. They eventually appear in the last few, walking backwards to chat to someone, and dragging a disorganised trail of coats and bags. They react with shock and indignant surprise as you rush at them: what do you mean, ‘hurry up’? You never told them there was an appountment elsewhere…

Now you’re caught up in contradicting them, grabbing bags, chivvying them along, while other parents give you the “get her - pushy mum” - look. Yes you told them, yes it’s urgent, now thcan they get a move on? You hoped to be well on the way by now… and you turn a corner of the school and run slap-bang into that elusive neighbour/member of the school council/key teacher that you’ve been needing to have a word with for ages.

Now the child is hopping around and rolling their eyes - thought you said we had to rush? duh…

Child in car, bags in car, coats in car, bag straps caught in car door, seatbelts tangled, normally quiet child trying to tell you complex story as you scurry from car door to boot to door again… Trying to cope with other parents who obviously do the car-thing outside the school everyday and are waltzing through three-point-turns behind you whenever you try to reverse, till you’re finally, finally on the road and - being East Lothian at this time of year - stuck behind a combine harvester…

I think I preferred commuting.