I hate this time of year as the school term approaches and I prepare for Youngest Son’s return to boarding school. Name tapes to be sewed in, shoes to be bought, hair to be cut, cases to be packed……..this is when I really know that summer is over. I cannot believe that my ‘little boy’ is going into the sixth form when it was only yesterday that I was dressing him in shorts, blazer and cap and he was off for his first day at school with his two sisters as his chaperones. He is now nearly six foot and is the one chaperoning me. I feel a little bit like the mother from the A.A. Milne poem, Disobedience:


James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he;
“You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don’t go down with me.”

Yesterday I went with all of them shopping, (obeying all of the lines of the poem!) and we laughed until we cried at stuff that only we could possibly find funny. My children are such good company and they keep me young and amused and they make me so very proud, not because they have done anything spectacular, but just because they love life, are so happy and they want everyone else around them to do the same. You can’t buy that or pass an exam in it!
We were not buying sensible shoes for school or grey uniform socks as my son has gone into that zone where he is not keen to conform entirely with school rules, the few that still remain for VIth formers, and we therefore hit Top Shop, Urban Outfitters, H & M, shops that you would not normally associate with school uniform and he purchased extraordinarily loud socks, black shoes that are a cross between a trainer and a ‘winkle-picker’. Luckily the fashion for men’s hair is short so he is conforming to the rule “hair not below the collar”. The rest I will leave for him to sort out with his housemaster who, unlike me, will not fall for his charm and allow him to bend the rules too far!!