The best days of your life....

Darling Daughter goes back to school today.

As i write, several things are happening;



There is a hairdryer whining in a bedroom above me.

Added to that is the sound of some obscure radio station (it could be Radio 1...haven't listened to it for years as i don't know who any of the bands are any more).

There is also the sound of new, heeled shoes clopping about, and the odd bout of swearing at, i can only presume, the hair straighteners not doing their job.



Sy is, and always has been, able to sleep through all this, even though it is happening in the room next to ours.

While living in London, he tells me he slept through a bomb blast.



Can't have been under the bed then.



The only things that will wake him is me giving him a gentle call up the stairs, yanking the bed clothes off of him, whispering in his ear that there is an e-mail from his agent (that's the best one) or the smell of a cooked breakfast (minus the bacon) wafting up the stairs.

I might throw a spanner in the works this morning and maybe tell him it's Christmas....



Darling Daughter has just let her mates in who live next door.

One of them is starting high school this time. Interesting exchange going on;



'Untuck your shirt'

Why?'

'Because no one tucks their shirt in'.

'But it's my first day, and i'll get told off'.

'No you won't. The teachers never say anything'.



Oh yes they do, but their threats are about as effective as mine.



I gave up telling Darling Daughter to tuck her shirt in, do her top button up and make her skirt a respectable length several terms ago.



Still, parents evening is always something to look forward to.

A great evening out.

For a start, three of us go- Sy is Darling Daughters step-dad, and her real dad is very prominant in her life.

Which means the school never has enough chairs for us when we appear (they always expect two parents, never an extended family) and with three of us firing questions the teachers' look like they are under attack from a Mafia family.

I always, always ask why Darling Daughter's work isn't marked on a regular basis (sometimes not for two months at a time!)

Sy wants to know why the the history teacher doesn't teach real history, and why the English teacher doesn't take his comments about Shakespeare in Darling Daughter's homework diary into account and her dad wants to know when the school is going to start a kickboxing club.

These have been regular questions over the last couple of years, an i'm half expecting the school to ask us this time, why, with my obsession with marking, Sy's humungus knowledge on all subjects and her dad's interest in sports, we don't home school her.

Mind you, my grasp on anything to do with what they teach in schools is so limited, Sy would end up doing the marking too.



I tell Darling Daughter on a regular basis, the only reason i married Sy was so that she would have someone to help her with her homework.



So i'm not sure what i will do with him when she leaves school.



Till next time,



Shakespeare's Housekeeper xx