Here are a few things happening between 9.30am and 3.15 (my working hours) which I’m under pressure to attend over the next two weeks: a school museum visit, two sports days, two meetings with teachers, a dance performance, a prize giving, and a production of Bugsy Malone. All that’s before the kids are off school for about two months for the summer. I’ve also just learned that one of them breaks up at midday on the last day of term.
I never understand how parents are supposed to deal with all this and work too. I suppose the easiest answer is that one parent doesn’t, although whenever we’re not being told about the importance of parental involvement for children’s success at school and beyond, we’re being told how important it is to help mothers back into work. The two demands don’t add up, unless my parents were somehow not involved enough in my own schooling for me to develop adequate maths skills.
One mum told me the other day that she was thinking of sending her kid to a private school because, as she worked, she felt she couldn’t put in the time needed to support her children through a state one. I understood what she meant, although there seems something a bit daft about working in order to pay school fees because you can’t afford the extra time needed by children at a non-fee-paying school because you are working. If only the working world was set up so that everyone just worked a bit less.
Which is exactly what I seem to be doing at the moment. As I work from home and don’t have any direct boss to clear it with first, I’m free to attend every nearing-the-end-of-term event. The only snag is, I don’t earn anything if I do.
While I’ve always found it pretty easy to resist the temptation to dust or put the washing out when I’m supposed to be working, I find it much harder to say no to school stuff. The kids’ faces always light up when they hear you’re going to be there and teachers always seem to have a disapproving curl to their lip (although maybe that’s my imagination) if you say you can’t. And then there’s always the worry that when the girls fail their history A level in years to come it’ll be because I never made it to that museum trip demonstration of ancient washing practices. So I’ll be going to everything, in between attending to Dynorod when they come to clear the blocked drain. Sometimes when you work from home the being at home bit is most of the work.
Mind you, thanks to all these activities, not only am I not going to be working much, I’m not going to be at home much either for the foreseeable future, which is ironic because my growing cabin fever was one reason for finally getting round to arranging an overnight trip as a couple without the kids – our first for seven years. So with a granny booked as babysitter, a fridge full of stuff for them all to eat, and a frantic clean-up operation so that said Granny doesn’t realise quite how much dust has accumulated since her last visit, it’s Paris here we come. Unfortunately, we might not be as romantically a deux as we first intended -- I’ve just discovered a major outbreak of nits.
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