Mumble’s Blog

The October Haddington Infants newsletter has just arrived. Should I? Dare I? Can I bear to? Read it? I’m still on parole from the September’s Newsletter, or, Known Crimes Committed by Parents This Month Which Should Never Have been Allowed to Happen. These included Failure to Arrive on Time, Bringing your Car down Victoria Park, Nuts, Allowing Things to be Brought to School in Hair which do NOT need an Education, and one other … was it Obscuring the Line of Sight Between a Child and its Parent at Home Time? Lack of Naming of Clothes? Improper Parking of Bicycles? Anyway, guilty as charged on pretty much everything except Bringing the Car.

Will this one, I wonder, contain anything that is actually…well…news? There are things I would like to know. Might it have some information about - I know this is a bit embarrassing… how their education is coming along? At the end of P3, my middly boy got a note saying he had passed his Level B Maths. Ah, well done, I say. That sounds better than not passing your Level B. Well done you. But does this mean they have basic mathematical ability I wonder? Because you do need that.

Take last Friday. A combination of factors had already produced a very stressful morning, and I had with me an unexpected Tiddler and the dog, hence, Crime 1, Late. The dog was attached to the buggy handle as we charged into school, scorching up to catch a member of staff to try and sneak in behind her. Ten steps in, she pointed out Dogs are Not Allowed in the Playground. I apologised, did know this, forgot she was there.

“A child” she continued with an icy glare “was bitten last term”. Looking around the deserted playground it did occur to me that this would require both a dog AND a child. But back I go to tie the dog up at the gate where any passing dinners can take their chances.

“Go with Mrs X” I urge the Middly Girl, and, sotto voce “and don’t let her get more than two paces in front”. But she is not fast enough. Now we really are stuck, because the dog is on heat, so shouldn’t really be left, while the entrance to the office is firmly in the playground. When we do eventually get a member of staff to let us in, she punches in the code several times. “It is not catching!” she says. “Ahem, LOOK, it is not catching!”. Later I did wonder if she actually meant me - was I supposed to remember the number to save us all the pain of constantly letting me in? Sadly lack of mathematical ability makes this very unlikely.

You never know when you are going to need maths. Later on that same Friday, my friend phoned to ask if I could pick up two of her children. I see the morning spread out calmly in front of me. Take Tiddler to Tesco’s, amble round, get some lunch, take the car to the Aubigny, amble up to the school, collect them all, have a spot of lunch, happy children playing…Not only can I do it, I can enjoy it.

But then the school phones to say one of mine is bleeding and I have to come now to stem the flow. Which of course you can’t argue with, so off I go. By this time the amble round Tesco is looking more like a trot, but still possible. Worse, when we get to Tesco’s the car park is packed, the whole of East Lothian attracted no doubt by its Buy One Get One Free kitkats. As we enter the store, the call predictably goes out “Relief operators to the checkouts please”. It is chokka. By the time we reach the rolls it’s “All available staff to the checkouts NOW please”. We pick up the bare minimum for lunch. I check the trolley - oh dear. 11 items. By this time the queues at the monthly shop checkouts are of communist proportions, while the shoppers seem to have stocked up for Armageddon. The announcer is begging anyone in the store who has ever worked for Tesco’s or even a rival supermarket to go immediately to the checkouts. I’m a law abiding citizen, but it’s now 11:45 and if we don’t get through soon I can’t see any way of avoiding Crime 3; Bringing the Car down Victoria Park. I can’t, I just can’t. For them, hanging really is too good. And it’s the only September crime I’ve not committed. I decide to chance it on the 10 items or less.

(..the tension mounts..! Will they get through… it’s touch and go for Mumble, Tiddler and Bleeding Child…not to mention those who only sit and wait…)

The operative that patrols the area lets us get right to the front before pouncing. (No! So close!)

“There are” she points out, with what looks suspicioulsy like smug satisfaction “11 items in that trolley”. I don’t have to count them, I’ve already done that. Caught! Bang to rights. I look down with fake surprise only to buy some time. Two options spring to mind. One, argue the toss about the Kitkats. As they are Buy-one-get-one free, I’m technically only buying one item as the other is free ergo, 10 items. Unfortunately, I go for the more mathematically challenging option 2, which is:

“Ah. 11 items, but THREE customers! And 11 divided by 3 is….” Although I don’t know before starting the sentence what the answer is, I’m sure it’s less than 10. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment I can’t work it out. So, due to lack of basic mathematical ability, I am staring at her, raising my eyebrows in a way she must have interpreted as expecting an answer. Which she didn’t seem to know, either. So the effect is to make the Tesco expert in charge of counting to 10 look innumerate in front of most of the town. Cringe. I leave, dripping with embarrassment. I can only blame PMT, the strain of keeping in the comment about the dog, and apologise profusely. ASDA, here I come.

So what I’d like to know is, if you pass a Level B maths test, can you a) remember a sequence of 5 numbers so you can get your children in to school to get an education and b) do 11 divided by three in times of crisis. And if the newsletter could tell us how many of our children have managed that this month, I for one would like to know.

Its the start of a new term. I’m sure you’ve noticed. You can tell by the way your alarm clock goes off alarmingly early, and that the instrument for surgically removing the children from the darker reaches of their beds has had to be brought out again.

It is that time of year when it is normal for your children to be asked to give an account of what they have been up to while out from under the beady eye. The introduction of your child to its new teacher. The sorting of the sweet from the chav. It is the piece of work to be entitled ‘What I did on my holidays’, or ‘How good are your parents’. AAAAARGH!

There is of course, the mini version of this, the News Book. To give you some idea of what we are up against in WIDOMH, let me give you some selected excerpts from last years News Book.

3.9.07. In the weekend I played starwars episode 3 with my brother. We had a few versus. He won most of them (not surprising).
10.9.07 At the weekend I played Starwars 3 with my big brother (again). He won most (again) not surprising (again).
8.10.07 At the weekend I played on PS2 (Playstation 2). The game was Battlefront 2. It was fun.
[Teacher's comment; I'm sure you did more than just play on your PS2]
5.11.07 At the weekend I lost the remote control (my brother was mad at me for losing it cause we couldn’t play the PS2). I looked for the remote control.
[Teacher's comment. I'm glad you lost the remote!]
1, 2, skip a few in very, very much the same vein.

Cut to Christmas.
The child had moaned mightily about these news books. At the end of term he cracked and asked crossly “Why do the teachers have to be so nosy? Why do they always want to know what we did?”.
I put on my wise parent hat - usually lost somewhere in the darker reaches of the cupboard. (If I’d seen his news book by this point I’d have left it in there). “Well Child.” I said “It is like this. The teachers don’t actually care what you did. What they care about is that you can write it in sentences and spell it properly. They ask what you did because a. they think you children will be interested in it and b. you all know the answer so instead of sitting staring into space thinking what you could put you can spend the time putting it into sentences and spelling it right. If it bothers you that they’re being nosy, you can make something up”.
“What?” says he “you mean I can like…lie?”
“Well yes. Within reason. As long as you do it in sentences. And spelt right. That’ll probably be fine.” His face lit up, and I have to say, I felt good.

It was that conversation which, apparently, explains the following:
21.01.08 At the weekend I played PS2 on Jak 3. Now I’ve got far energy to get back into Haven city and have all the dark eco powers plus three of the light eco powers. I also have a jetboard, full blue gun set and full yellow gun set.

“I didn’t!” says he with an evil grin, when he is showing me his news book at the end of the year “I’ve only got TWO of the dark eco powers! And I don’t have the full blue gun set either. That was a lie!”

I’ve had trouble with these news books before. A previous child, on a weekend where we had not only taken them to the beach, not only had two of the favourite friends over for the night, but also taken said friends to the zoo, put what? “I had a shower and my mummy made me wash my hair, which I did NOT like”. Alongside a dark and angry picture of said child in the shower. Which I have to say, I did NOT like.

So this summer, let me tell you what we did. We did not bathe our toes in the shiny briny, take in any shows at the Festival or invite anyone round at all. We did not explore any caves, visit any grandparents or dip in any ponds whatsoever. We did not trouble the swimming pool, parks, and certainly did not try any of the activities in the ELC brochure. Oh no. We hit the lights, pulled shut the curtains, ordered in the chocolate, red bull and pizza, and played the playstation. All day all night all summer. And no-one will tell you any different.

I’ve just been to the P3 leaving show, about the rainforest. They had them dressed up as various rainforest creatures - well mine was. One of my friends children was in the percussion, and though they sounded really good - surprisingly so actually - you couldn’t see him at all. But then I suppose as rainforests go that’s probably more realistic than the four jaguars in full view at once…

It was nice to see the children doing the show, as usual. But I found myself watching it through increasingly gritted teeth (with that eye at the back of my tongue. You know what I mean!). The gist of the show was that the lovely rainforest is being trashed by greedy bad men a long way a way who should realise what they are doing is wrong and stop it.

My P3 happens to love the rainforest - he’s always been keen on creatures of most sorts, and it does have an abundant supply. So he is quite upset at hearing about this wanton destruction, about which he can do apparently nothing. Part of my job is involved with raising awareness of climate change, and it’s a big consideration that you should try to avoid giving the impression that doom is coming without giving people the agency to do anything about it, as it’s bad for people’s mental health, and so not a particularly kind thing to do.

I’m not banging on about my delicate child’s frame of mind here, I think he’ll cope. I’m just cross about the exploitation of the topic I suppose. Call ourselves, who chopped down the great Caledonian forest, our own equivalent of the rainforest, years ago and have benefited from the land ever since, the goodies. Call people who are doing this to feed their families greedy baddies. Where were the connections here? Does the school stand up and say we will only source wood products that are Forestry Stewardship Council Certified? No. Does it say it won’t accept school dinner ingredients which include palm oil? No. Does it say the PTA won’t raise money by having a barbeque the very same evening using beef, fuelling global demand for beef that leads ranchers to cut down the forest? Pardon? Does it ask parents not to drive to school to reduce the need for fuel - and so the production of alternative fuel to CO2 emitting petrol, the biofuels which are wrecking the rainforest? Come on, its far easier to blame the bad men far away.

If we are going to educate children to care about the environment - at least let them know that they can make a difference. And how.

Well I haven’t been with you for a while. I don’t expect anyone has noticed particularly, other than my mum. I don’t feel like I can say anything, anything at all even slightly bad about school, due to our continuous and intractable lateness. Since whinging is my normal mode of communication….silence. It’s not that we are very late, we are just consistently a little bit late, missing the line-up by a whisker. I know this is hugely inconvenient for the teachers, it is painful, it is massively embarrassing saying hello hello hello to everyone else going in the opposite direction but somehow I seem to be incapable of stopping it happening. Sometimes we are foiled by my younger boy, who doesn’t always necessarily want to go at all, and has to be physically dragged; slow, horrible, and hard to achieve while pushing the tiddler. But as often its my fault. Whatever approach I take, we seem to end up 2 minutes adrift. How is this possible? The stuff is ready the night before. All I’ve got to do is get them up, feed them, get them in it, do the dog, do the teeth, load the lunches, school bags, baby bag; on a good day, we can do this in half an hour. But generally, even if I get everyone up before they’ve actually gone to bed, we’re still somehow 2 minutes late.

On one of these late occasions, Middly Girl was wheeling around the playground on her bike, adding insult to injury. I called her in; ignored. It was a glorious morning, and the playground with no-one in it is a glorious place to cycle; you’re five, you know you can outpace your mother no problem - in that moment, why would you stop cycling and go in? A random woman going into the school called her in too - also ignored. I don’t really want to start chasing her (my lass, not the random woman who is waiting rather than moving) but she’s now not only late but rude…I gibber something to the random about how we’re late so often she knows the procedure by now, and she’ll come in in a minute or two I expect. Which I don’t, actually, since you ask.

Anyway, what has led me to stick my nose out of the burrow again was the consultation on the aims of the school. Apparently the staff had spent some time bending their brains on this one, and were now asking parents what they thought. It’s the sort of thing that must be a nightmare to consult on, as it’s practically impossible to comment on. The aims are all fine things to aspire to. One of these was - I can’t remember the exact words - that children reach their full potential. Oh yes, I thought, very good, yes, we do want that. But later on you start thinking - their full potential what?

Parents night notes (potentially):
Bombo, doing OK. Surreptitiously pinched a chewed up pencil from one of his friends; clearly enjoyed this; excellent forward planning and skillful execution - thieving potential (discussed last time). By the time he’s finished here we intend that he should not just be capable of petty theft but a criminal mastermind.

Blondette: Charming and eager to please, ought to scrub up reasonably by teenage years. If she applies herself she has the potential to marry into the aristocracy.

Bungo: Already half a head above his classmates and with our Healthy School policies should reach 6 foot five if he’s an inch.

Mumble: occasionally late. With focussed effort and application, this one really does have the potential to be absolutely everywhere 2 - or maybe even up to 10 - minutes after she should have arrived. SEE! they don’t mean it, do they?

What bothers me with this encouraging everyone to reach their potential - which obviously you can’t really knock as a concept - is two things. No, three things. What about children that don’t want to be s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out to their full potential? Who decides what that is and which children need stretched and which are doing fine? And also - what happens at the end? If society doesn’t actually need all these people who have reached their full potential? If they are all capable of and expect a decent job being company directors or creatives or whatever, and what there is at the end of all this is mainly jobs that don’t require their full potential? Are we educating them for disappointment?

While I was ruminating on this, and the other aims of the school and what, if anything, could possibly be said about them for the consultation, out pops that random woman again.

“HELLO!” she announces, with brisk enthusiasm “Pleased to meet you. I’m Shirley Swinton, the new Head, and I really would encourage you to respond to this, even if it’s only to say Yes! I agree!”

NOOOO! Back to the burrow!

Today was the Knoxies turn to do their Christmas show - the eldest plays the violin, and this year was my year to go and watch him. Yippee! Squeals of delight as I race out of the house handing over the squabbling middlies and wailing baby - aah! Peace at last thinks I, settling down to enjoy a quiet rendition of Green Hills and Highland Cathedral by the Knox Pipe band. “That’ll toughen up your ears for the rest of the concert!” whispers my neighbour.

Our boy was in the orchestra (they’re good!) - I did ask him afterwards why his bow went down when everyone else’s went up - which isn’t too visible - and up when everyone elses went down, which is. “That” says he “was a conscious decision.” To stick out like a windmill? No; that is apparently a side effect - why change strings when you have four fingers? But then why tax your finger when you have four strings?

It is lovely to see them all playing though. Also really good to get to go to an event at the Knox - with the middlies you seem to get more of an idea of what it’s like at school, I end up popping in a fair bit about something or other, and they tell you a bit too. You also get to talk to the other parents most days dropping them off. And you generally get all the notes, so you find out about the things you can get involved with; at the slightest whiff of us being invited to approach the school our eldest will generally eat the evidence. So the Knox is more of a mystery box - in he goes at one end of the day, out he comes at the other. The only times I usually get to find out anything about what is going on is when it involves money. The bill this week has been something like:

Folk Music - boy can’t remember what it is but would like to go £6.00
Trip to ITALY!! - to play basketball - £staggering.
Ian Rankin - he won a prize to go and see the author (I’m not boasting here - he said everyone that entered won). Did he tell us there was a competition? No. That he’d entered it? No. That he’d won it? No. We only hear about it because he needs £2.50 for the bus.

What else has he been doing in there? Who knows?

Oh, and of course, Christmas Concert, £4. Well worth it.

Anti-bullying week has now been and gone.

Am I alone in feeling nervous in seeing posters up with ‘Hands are for helping not hitting’ and ‘Teeth are for smiling not biting’ - do they need telling in our school? Blimey, maybe they do. Maybe without those posters to remind them the playground would descend into biting hitting frenzy. This anti-bullying week was notable as the first time my younger boy has evidenced any sign of being the possible target of an incident (admittedly minor!) though he wasn’t sure if it was intended or not. He came home with his hair full of blu-tak, which he said was put in there by a classmate. He said it was easy to see when he hit you but not so obvious if he took the blu-tak tack.

Also, he says, the clampdown on fighting has indeed come. It is so comprehensive that even pretend weaponry has been banned. Though not, he hastens to add, all pretend weaponry. Not allowed are; pretend swords, pretend daggers, pretend halberds, pretend axes (if handheld). You are still allowed pretend guns, pretend spears, pretend bows and arrows, and pretend axes (thrown). He thinks you should be allowed pretend halberds as long as you throw them. But you aren’t. How the playground superviser can tell what sort of weapon you are pretending to be holding I don’t know. But then she is very experienced. I wouldn’t put it past her. Apparently one of the boys was going in right to the hilt, as it were, with a pretend sword, having obviously not see Poster No. 1. Hence the ban. Without thinking I asked our boy, what about pretend pretend swords? It took him a while to work it out, but I could see a bad light in his eye when he did. I think he may be armed and dangerous tomorrow. I just hope the Blu-tak Attacker has got his wits about him.

I’ve just hot-footed it back from the Infants Christmas show - Whoops-a-daisy Angel. My friend had sat behind a small lady in the third row, and luckily kept me a seat as I was pretty much the last in having had a last minute dash home. Then just as it started, the small lady got up and swapped seats with a HUGE bloke, who was not only, as I said, HUGE, but also sporting a jacket with kind of - well what it reminded me of is this gecko thing in The Future is Wild which runs along in the desert catching flies in a very well developed ruff. After a bit of a whispered discussion, we decided one of us should ask him to take it off - me. I think I did manage this without being rude, though not without my friend starting to giggle. Which only got worse when it turned out what he had underneath his jacket was a very large floppy hoody - you can’t, can you. I mean he’d probably got a ruff on under that.

My girl was Narrator No. 3. She said she had been an angel but something had happened and she was not one any more. I suspected this myself about 3 years ago. The show went well as far as I could tell. The costumes were good, the dancing snowflakes were lovely, the singing hearty. I’m not sure if the microphone had been brought in for a particularly quiet Narrator No 1 or if it might have been expected to work for the rest of them, but they all piped up well without it (Narrator Number 3, of course, was especially excellent I thought). Certainly it was less embarrassing than the show my younger boy was in, when he kept asking me if his shepherd’s cloak was brown or purple. I didn’t want to answer in case I chose the wrong colour and he threw a wobbler. Eventually though it became apparent a ruling was needed. “Purple” I hissed in a loud stage whisper. Which satisfied him, luckily.

From a school point of view, it must have been better than a Christmas show my eldest was in when we lived down south, where one bright spark suddenly realised he had been given an unmissable opportunity to swear in school in public. Whenever a slightly dodgy word came up - Jesus, Christ, sod, Lord; come, even - he yelled it out at the top of his voice. His teacher attempted to shush him, but by this point it was too late; the rest of the children had cottoned on, perked up, and were now actually positively enjoying the show. They muttered their way through most of the words, but every time a possible swear word came up - and believe me there are a lot in some carols - they gave it full voice. It was quite funny actually.

The eyebrows of my friend did rise once, though, at the casting of the Whoops a Daisy Angel - daughter of one of the class teachers. But I’m on the side of the Angel, because at work, a window seat has recently become vacant. Usually these are allocated according to how long you’ve been there. So you sit in the dark for so long, and eventually, you get to see out. According to this it should be me next, but as I only work 3/5 days there is some question about whether I get it, or my full-time colleague. I can see that he is there more to appreciate it. On the other hand, if I concede the point I won’t just spend 3/5 of my working life in the dark but the whole lot. Likewise it’s not very fair if the teacher’s kids never get the chance to shine. And shine she certainly did, she was lovely.

I do like these Christmas shows, more I think the older I get. Is it heresy to wonder if the kids really enjoy them? There is a lot of sitting about for them, and not much performing. One poor sausage near us definitely didn’t like it, and cried on and off throughout. Mine have usually had low level moans about doing them. I wonder if it might be better to do them a class at a time rather than all 100 P1’s at once? But then you don’t get all the parents together - hmm. Inconclusive post!

It’s great when the children get taken out. They seem to enjoy trips more with the school than they do with us. I don’t know how the teachers do it. They seem to be able to make them enthusiastic about going places that if I suggested them would be met with groans of, oh do we HAVE to?

The eldest headed off skiing recently (Hillend, not actual snow) and insisted I drop him some way off.

Me: And why is that, child?
Him: You are embarassing.
Me: Everybody has parents, it is not just you, you know.
Him: I know that. But not everybody has one like you.
Me: Well of course. If we are all the same it would be boring.
Him:Yes. But. It’s…
Me: Yes?
Him: …
Me: It’s?
Him: It’s. It’s. You give me last minute safety advice! When me and R went cycling you told me to remember to put my helmet on. Last time we went to Hillend you told me to do what the instructor said. And when I went to school last week you told me to look both ways before I crossed the road. I KNOW THESE THINGS!
Me: Right. Hmm. I see. I’d better stay in the car then.
Him: You’d better. And don’t forget to put the handbrake on.

That is it, then. Of all the myriad ways in which I could embarass my children (and there are many) it is the last minute safety advice that puts me beyond the pale. He has a point.

Today saw the middlies heading off to panto land. The PTA subsidised the trip (thank you, PTA) and the entire school were bussed off to the Brunton Theatre to see Cinderella. Our boy had somehow got the idea that the panto was girlie, and showed huge resistance to going. He said it wouldn’t have enough boy things in it, like fighting. He compensated for this by putting up an enormous struggle on the way in.

My wee girl was looking forward to it hugely, and thanks to her brother’s battling, she was spared a last minute injunction to listen to what the teachers tell her and on no account to miss the bus. Both of them were both full of the panto when I picked them up, having surprisingly, without prompting, managed to catch the bus.

Haddington Infants are pretty brave at taking them on trips - the P2’s have an overnight stay, last year at Alison Cargill house, which my wee boy loved. They must have a lot of commitment from the staff to be able to do this. I don’t remember much about my primary school trips, other than one where we went to Vane Farm and the teachers kept telling this girl to stop going on and on about her sore stomach. It was only when she finally passed out that they conceded she maybe had a point. It turned out she had appendicitis and had to get ambulanced off. It was apparently pretty lucky that was not her final journey. Educational, even though we did miss the visit to the hide.

Secondary school trips were another matter entirely. In S2, the staff put us to bed then headed off for the pub, whereupon we promptly got up, snuck out and started setting things on fire (old planks, cigarettes, vodka). The deal seemed to be the teachers wouldn’t tell on us if we didn’t tell on them.

On the same trip, we were walking round the top of a large valley with the intention of climbing a hill on the far side then going down. Part way round, my friend and I, thinking that looked quite a long way and with unsuitable shoes and thin jackets, asked if we couldn’t dip into the valley, climb the hill and meet them on the top. The teacher okayed this, and we set off, climbing up the alloted hill to what seemed to be the top, despite a sleety drizzle coming on and off. Once there, we thought all we had to do was wait for the rest of the party. But they didn’t come and they didn’t come.
At last, below, we saw a straggly band plodding along at the bottom of the valley. Not our lot, obviously, as we were meeting them here. Other hikers. “Do you think that is them?” asks my friend, enentually. How could we tell? They must have been over 1000ft below us. We sat some more. The hikers disappeared down the valley. She looked at me and I looked at her. We decided on balance even if it wasn’t them and we got into trouble for not waiting, we were going down. About halfway down the hill it started getting dark, slippy already. We found a stream and followed that, figuring it probably knew where it was going. There was a loch past the end of the valley which you had to cross the road to get to (we’d had a while to survey the terrain, sitting on top of the hill) and we reckoned it was making for that.

When we finally got back, we were in trouble, though not for not waiting, but for not coming down when they came past.

This trip pretty much set the tone for the rest. I do wonder how much of it the teachers knew was going on. I don’t recall anyone ever being dangerously drunk - the only time anyone was actually unconscious that I remember was the result of leaping onto the minibus a tad too enthusiastically (i.e before the door was open). Maybe they knew it always happened and it was always fine.

So against this background, it is with some trepidation I went to a presentation on the Knox 28 day trip to Zambia. No, make that considerable alarm. No, make that barely suppressed panic. On the one hand: what an opportunity. To get to see life ‘behind the scenes’ somewhere so completely different from here - it must stay with them for the rest of their lives. I’ve never been anywhere like this. To get to see that when you’re just starting out, it must be fantastic. On the other hand, as the picture of person looking over the edge of the Victoria Falls comes on screen with the caption “Imagine your child here” I can feel it coming over me… “For heavens sake STAND BACK A BIT!”

What I want, really, is a school full of small children following him round going “It’s behind you!” anytime anything dangerous pops up. Wait a minute. I think I might know where you could get one of those actually…

It is good to see your children take steps, however small, to becoming competent adults. Today, my younger boy volunteered to do the packed lunches. I’m not sure what inspired this - not the leaflet we recently got home about how to make your lunches healthy anyway. The middlies are fairly conservative about their lunches. They do not want bagels and cream cheese. They do not like mangetout and celery sticks and dip. And they most certainly would never ever eat cold rice and chicken drumstick.

They will however eat nutella, and unfortunately this is what the boy decided to put on the sandwiches. As I was dressing the tiddler at the time I didn’t notice till he’d used all the bread. Peanuts I know are not to be taken into school (allergies), but I thought the hazelnuts they use in the nutella might be OK. Last of the bread v. child with anaphalaptic shock; hmm. I called the school. “There are” said the secretary confidently “no nuts in our school” (well p’raps not by 8:30 in the morning, right enough…). So that’s the nutella out then, along with the last of the bread.

He did do a fine job with the rest of the packed lunch, though. Juice in. Apple, in. Cheesestring, in. Even carrot batons, in, and wrapped. Do I remember to take it with us? Yes! Hooray!

Which leaves only: emergency dash round Tesco’s on the way in to fill up with rolls, and now, the boy is fully equipped with packed lunch. Hooray!

Do I remember to give it to him to take in? Yes. Hooray!

Does he remember to eat it?

Does he remember what?

To eat it?

No.

He gets a school dinner, and I get a slip saying I owe Elite Catering £1.50. Again.

The second last time this happened, I slightly complained about having to pay for it as I had supplied him with a perfectly good packed lunch (albeit wholemeal bread and not nutella). How were they, the school argued, to know that he had a packed lunch? Good point. I arranged to inform the teacher if he had a packed lunch. He did it again - lured by jelly? Forgot? Badness? Who knows? I put it to the school that I might not have to pay for the school dinner this time. They looked me in the eye and asked who brought him up. Seeing no-one else in the immediate vicinity that could be blamed for this, I was forced to admit it was me. And (killer blow) if you refuse to pay for this we will have to take it out of the school funds. You know, the money the poor old parents have worked their fingers to the bone raising so the dear children can have books. Those school funds. But we can do that, reluctantly, if you insist on not paying.

I shelled out. I expect I shall have to do the same tomorrow. What am I supposed to do though? Staple it to his nose?

“I say I say I say, what is black, weighs 16 lbs and would be illegal in Austria?”
- I don’t know, what is black, weighs….
Wait a minute, wait a minute. It’s not a joke. It is my eldest’s school bag. I picked it up the other day - and picked is not really the word - to discover (Gripe 1) it was heavier than the tiddler. My first instincts were that there must be something in there that was not school work. The child was duly summoned. I was half-expecting a rock collection, though he is a bit past that sort of thing, finally. But no. It was all his weighty learning. (Almost all. It did also contain my response to the travel survey, pored over and commented on at great length and NOT handed in last term so I did NOT win a day at the McDonald Marine Hotel which I would have had a good chance at as the School Travel coordinator said there were only 10 responses presumably as they are ALL still in the school bags but that’s enough of that!).

Apparently in Austria school bags are only allowed to be a tenth of your body weight. While this does raise slightly disturbing visions of school children becoming anorexic in an attempt to weigh less than 10 x their homework so they can’t bring it home, it does seem to have a bit of sense to it. If they were at work, I would’ve thought they would be covered by manual handling regulations. As it is, (Gripe 2) they all seem to have these hugely heavy bags dangling round their bums. This is definitely not the style suggested by the leaflet I was given when seeing about back problems probably caused by carting the tiddler. I did show him the leaflet. I have to say it hasn’t made much difference. I don’t know if the school has had no better luck or if they don’t try.

And finally, Gripe 3. We had an amendment to the dress code last term saying that the school bag should be black. Where do we live? Scotland. What do they walk home in? The dark. I can see the point of a dark school uniform, I can see that formal colours might give a more formal attitude. But I’ve always found it slightly comforting that as he mucks about with his mates on the way home, flopping on and off the pavement as they seem to do at that age, wearing his invisibility cloak er I mean his school jacket, that his school bag was not only bright orange but also reflective. No more.