In order to be at school in time for Oliver’s concert this morning we set the alarm for half past six.
Number Two Daughter volunteered to get up along with us and walk the dogs, but actually when the moment arrived it turned out that she had changed her mind and preferred not to emerge from her bed after all, even with the inducement of coffee.
I had some sympathy with this position, as after last night’s merrymaking I would probably have changed my mind as well if it hadn’t been such an exciting event.
The programme for the day was the Form Two concert at quarter past ten, followed by coffee and then the sort of occasion where you go and talk to all of your child’s teachers, this to be followed by lunch, ingeniously included at the end in order to discourage overly-talkative parents from outstaying their welcome, before taking your boy home.
It turned out that Oliver was performing in the concert, having extended his repertoire of notes on the flute to what sounded to me to be at least six. He played them all very slowly and carefully in order to make sure he got them in the exact order in which they appeared on his sheet of music, at which he was determinedly frowning with intense concentration.
This made me laugh, although not as much as the grinning boy who made vaguely indigestion-sounding noises on his trombone, and at the end they all lined up and sang a jazz piece with great enthusiasm. I enjoyed it very much, although Oliver told me afterwards that it had gone wrong.
It is interesting to note that whatever you do to twenty five ten year old boys, however much you polish them, teach them to play the flute and make them wear ties and scrub their fingernails, get them all together in a large group and the overall effect is of a villainous rabble. I am glad I am not a teacher, the tousled collection of freckles and grins and crumpled shirts bounding energetically on to the stage would have sent me straight to the staff room gin bottle, how anybody manages to instil the principles of Latin grammar and long division into boys is absolutely beyond me.
We had coffee and then wandered back into the hall to discover what the teachers thought about our rabble. It would appear that either private school teachers are paid to be positive or actually Oliver is not doing too badly. It seems that he has managed to attain reasonably average marks, plays with determined grit on the rugger pitch, cycles down mountains like a jolly brave little chap, and on the whole is a Good Egg.
Despite such praise, it would appear that he has not yet learned his times tables thoroughly, can only spell sometimes and his enthusiasm for Latin waxes and wanes according to whether they are discussing Roman military strategies or parts of the verb. Talking to other parents afterwards I discovered that he is not alone in any of these traits, and that he shares with virtually the entire class a preference for cricket over French dictation as well as a disregard for personal cleanliness.
It was nice to talk to other parents, and nicer still to perch at the side of the room and watch them, which is always my favourite bit, more people are really scared of this sort of event than you might think, and there were a lot of admirably courageous attempts at beaming social smiles masking an inner terror of saying or doing the Wrong Thing.
I know I am rubbish at being social anyway, because I have no idea what is the Wrong Thing to say even after I have said it, and Mark is worse unless people are talking about engines, so watching suits me very well indeed, and the parents at Oliver’s school are such a beautifully sleek, well-groomed lot that they are a pleasure to watch anyway, elegant hands and expensive shoes and gleaming, silky hair.
We watched, and talked a bit to the parents that we knew, which was lovely, everyone is so very proud of their own boy and trying frantically not to show off. It left me with a happy warm feeling, how lovely to see so many glowing mother hens all together.
We had curry for lunch, which was gorgeous, the school chef is an Indian, and served fluffy rice and crisp beans and melting asparagus. I could have eaten more if I hadn’t been desparate to find Oliver, but quite a few fathers went back for second and third helpings, presumably remembering their schooldays. We left them to it, and sloped off to find Oliver, who we finally discovered buried in a book in the library.
He is only home for a few days, and we have got to work for a lot of the time, but all the same it is lovely.
Brilliant to have chicks in the nest.
