Just a short entry because I am writing in a hurry before going to work.
I still do not have a flat thing for writing at work. Nights on the taxi rank are becoming havens of knitting tranquillity and reading my book. I quite like this. I am out of communication with the world, with the result that I have not read a single upsetting thing either on Facebook or in the newspaper for some time. Unfortunately this meant some momentary anxiety this morning when I awoke to the discovery that I had completely forgotten about Mother’s Day.
The realisation was triggered by a text from Number Two Daughter explaining that she had not telephoned me for the occasion because of being in Accident And Emergency with a bashed up knee. This knee is somewhat bashed anyway, and she is working herself up for an operation. With any luck the operation will be hurried along now.
Bashed-up knees are an occupational hazard of teaching skiing for a living. She is trying to get it fixed quickly because she is running in a marathon in October. This will make her the second of my children to run a marathon, Number One Daughter having run one a couple of years ago.
I am obliged to consider the possibility that it may be genetic after all, perhaps I am the oddity.
Once I had realised my daughterly inadequacies I telephoned my own mother with a hastily-compiled list of excuses to explain my neglect and to apologise. She conceded, kindly, that she had not expected me to remember in any case. I could just about hear her above the noise of my siblings bellowing triumphantly in the background that they had all remembered and were having a lovely time celebrating in a Perfect Children sort of way.
Mark rang his mother but it turned out that she had forgotten as well.
There was not very much day left then, because we had not woken up until one in the afternoon, and we are supposed to be at work by six. We are not actually supposed to be at work, because nobody cares if we are there at any particular time, or indeed at all, except that it is good to have a target arrival time otherwise I would not get around to it before midnight. If I aim for six I can usually manage it by seven.
I have got no idea how people manage to get themselves to work for nine o’clock in the morning. Even when Mark is working on rural broadband things he does not bother to show up before half past nine, because Ted can’t get his act together any earlier than that either, having got four children, and several hours of the sort of conversation that goes: have-you-got-your-PE-kit-well-what-have-you-done-with-it? to organise first.
It is now the end of the night, and I did not manage to get this finished before work after all. This was a nuisance, but we were hardly late at all, which was unusual and a jolly good thing, not that it made much difference to the night’s takings. It is still very quiet, but not long to go until Easter now..
I am pleased to announce that during the course of the day, Lucy sent a Happy Mother’s Day message, and Number One Daughter rang me up. She did not get round to calling until ten o’clock, because she has been very busy. Today has also been Ritalin Boy’s birthday.
In fact it seemed to me to have been a perfect illustration of motherhood. She has spent her day off work trying to be sanguine about having a giant motorised goldfish flying around the living room, and the manufacture of fifty cup cakes.
How lovely it is to be a mother.
