Stumbling in Flats

Well, the trauma of last week is fading.

One email sent to school, one passport sent in for half-term trip, one mea culpa parent. Sorted.

Me and The Teenager had A Talk. I explained (again) that my brain has taken early retirement and sometimes doesn’t want to play ball, but he’s also got a responsibility to be on top of school stuff too, i.e. don’t remind me five minutes before a meeting. I guess he’s just used to me remembering everything and it was a shock to his system. Bless him.

Anyway, he has now gone off for the weekend on a mentoring break in West Wales with the school, to support him through his exams.

We packed his bag last night, he charged up his phone (‘I am nuffink without it’), and laid out his clothes ready for his early start – 6 am this morning, lol.

I don’t have a megaphone, so I just yelled in his ear at the set time. He grunted, turned over and went back to sleep. Repeated five minutes later and he lumbered to the bathroom, complaining loudly and slamming the door.

So far, so good. Drove him to drop-off at appointed early hour (don’t get out the car with me, s’embarrassing and do not hug me’), then heard nothing by text. No news is good news?

A text a couple of hours later, ‘food is grim here’.

Then another, ‘beds are too small’.

And another, ‘wanna come home’.

In the meantime, I have been catching up with the laundry, catching up with food shopping and most importantly, getting out into the real world and catching up with a good friend over coffee, where I boasted, ‘oh, he’s fine, I haven’t heard anything’.

So now I am at home, pacing, waiting for a phone call from one of the teachers. Something along the lines of, ‘please drive fifty miles to West Wales and pick up your son. Now‘.

Probably just as well I had planned nothing more exciting this evening than highlighting programmes I want to watch in next week’s Radio Times. And sorting through The Teenager’s growing collection of odd socks.

Life goes on. I now have even more post-it notes cluttering my table, reminding me of every single tiny thing, just in case I forget again:

• Petrol – buy some.
• Saturday Guardian newspaper – buy and read the Blind Date article.
• Call tax office – next week.
• Teenager goes to New York for school trip in two weeks – check weather forecast.
• Take library books back – overdue?

Another text from The Teenager, ‘I feel sick’.