Not About Elton John

I have resolved in this entry not to mention Elton John at all.

Clearly it is not a topic that supports making life more cheerful. However, you will be pleased to hear that it is amazing the difference in general cheerfulness, with or without Elton John, that a good night’s sleep can make.

Viewed through the eyes of a person who is not feeling an overwhelming need to close their eyes and just have a few minutes quiet snooze somewhere, I was surprised to note this morning that actually life is not so bad at all.

I don’t know why the observation that actually I was short of sleep didn’t occur to me yesterday, but it didn’t, and you will be pleased and relieved to hear that my life has undergone a dramatic improvement overnight, which is just as well, because today has been completely action packed with adventures of one sort or another and I have not had anything like enough time to indulge in the sort of morose musings that coloured yesterday.

After the school runs this morning we had to do some fairly hasty organising and tidying and boy polishing, because Oliver was due back at school this evening but had been invited to attend a party en route.

He was very excited about the party, because it was a joint birthday event for two of the boys in his class, and the whole class had been invited to go paintballing in Harrogate.

I was less excited about the party, because it occurred to me when I was halfway round my school run that parties involve organising cards and presents, etc, which I had neglected to do yesterday on account of being fully occupied wallowing in self-pity: so when I got back home I had to go belting round to Smith’s to see if there was anything suitable to give as a birthday present to unknown boys.

I consulted Oliver on the subject, who helpfully suggested Lego, and to my astonished joy when I got to Smith’s there was a special Reduced Bargain Special Offer on for anybody who improbably wanted to buy two identical Lego sets, for which I imagine there had been very few takers. Actually, judging by the puzzlement of the girl on the till when I showed her the stickers, I might have been the first, but I didn’t mind at all, and bounced back home with my faith in a benevolent Universe well on the road to recovery.

In the end we decided that we would all go, because there was a meeting for parents on at school once we had deposited Oliver, and also given the mildly crumbly state of both taxis at the moment we thought that we would take the camper van. This pleased Oliver very much, who likes being able to have a Playstation on long journeys, and pleased me as well, because once we got Oliver safely deposited at the party, albeit a bit late, we drove round the corner into a layby and instantly went to sleep again.

The downside of doing this sort of thing is that when I wake up these days my face looks as though it could do with ironing, and some of Oliver’s friends have got very smoothly glamorous mothers, none of whom ever seem to arrive at school having slept in their clothes.

Fortunately they are all too polite and charming to mention the degenerate scruff in their midst, and so I don’t always realise until I have been around for some time that I have spilled coffee down my shirt and my hair is standing up on end, because unlike taxi drivers who alert you to this sort of faux pas by pointing and laughing, everyone at school carries on smiling courteously and is lovely and sometimes I feel a brief longing for a burqa.

Oliver was glowing with post-party exhilaration having had a marvellous time, and didn’t stop talking about it all the way up to school, although that sort of thing is always a bit wasted because you can’t ever hear anything over the noise of the engine: but his eyes were bright and he had a huge bruise that he was very proud of indeed, and which I had to admire twice. We managed to get him re-polished and changed into his uniform in between stories on the way back, and he bounded off into school happily enough, we left him at the bottom of the stairs and Matron called after him to hurry up, because tea was going to be a barbecue.

We went into the library, which is designed to make you remember that you are in an august seat of learning, with the walls covered in names of glorious Old Boys who won scholarships to public schools. Some of them seem to have been called The Honourable, which I think sounds like a rather wonderful sort of title, although I haven’t got the faintest idea how you might go about getting it: it sounds as if the Queen should bestow it upon you once you achieve renown for being a fine and reliable Man Of Your Word, the sort you might want around when the everything goes wrong: which is an unlikely description of a thirteen year old.

There were several teachers there, all jolly good rugged sorts of chaps with an assortment of sporting injuries and clipped ex-Army accents and looking as though they had stepped directly out of Central Casting’s Goodbye Mr. Chips department, much to my satisfaction, and The Talk was the usual terrifying stuff about the sort of things expected of our small rascally sons now that they are about to enter the hallowed chambers of Form Two.

I listened with despair, the thought that Oliver might be able to find books, pencils and different classrooms all on the same day, as well as understand new rules for rugby and get a decent school report seemed all too improbable for words. What is more, as a mark of their newly-attained seniority, it will be the Headmaster, not his wife, who reads their bedtime story, which seems even to me as impossibly grown up.

We stopped on the way back in the middle of the glorious Yorkshire countryside, and had dinner by the roadside and watched a fox weaving its way around a wheat field. I told Mark all about my horrible day yesterday, and he said that he was sorry he had not realised that when I said I didn’t want to go to the cinema that I meant I wanted to go an awful lot, and that it had been stupid of him, and he picked me some wild flowers when he took the dog for a walk: and I felt better.

I do feel a lot happier.

I don’t care about Elton John at all.