{Cheese and Beans}

In between various work requests and support calls from customers, I sat at work this morning watching the clock – watching for 11am to arrive; knowing it would mark the end of a little life in a vet’s surgery a few miles away.

I didn’t tell anybody at work until the time had passed. I worried about calling home – wondered if I should or not. Wondered if somebody would want to hear from me, or if they wanted to be left alone.

In the end I did call, and was surprised at the upbeat voice on the other end of the line. We didn’t talk much. I asked if it had gone okay. I got a despondent “yes”. I volunteered that I might be able to finish early and pick the children up from school.

Thus began the task of requesting an early finish, and telling various female friends at work about the fate of our little man – a trouble we had not shared with many. The surprise was perhaps that both male and female staff were taken aback. Our little man had become known to quite a few colleagues over the years – singling them out for claws and footprints on their smart clothes while en-route for a night out (or a night in with pizza and rubbish movies).

I made my way down to school, and took a wrong turn. I went the wrong way in the town I have lived in for the last ten years. I got lost in the same roads I walk every weekday morning with the girls.

Fate decided that I would be breaking the news to the girls. Little Miss 4 didn’t really understand.

“Where Mummy?”

“She’s staying at home because she’s very sad”

“Why is she sad?”

“Because you know Simpson was very poorly? He died.”

“He died already?!” (a note of consternation – obviously the four year old brain still thinks the world revolves around them)

After a few minutes stood among the gaggle of Mums – many of which I know, and all of which totally ignored my presence (and Wendy’s absence), Little Miss 6 came bursting from school. Little Miss 4 broke the news.

“Simpson has already Died!”

“Oh no!”

“We need to get nother cat! Cheer Mummy up!”

“Yeah! Dad – we are going to get two cats…. (pause for thought)… can we get three cats Dad?”

I say nothing. She starts skipping.

“Yay! We’re going to get three cats. We’re going to get three cats!”

“I said nothing of the sort little madam”

“Awwwwww”

She then feigned tears, before brightening up considerably on sight of one of her friends, and went racing off to play in the playground while we waited for the eldest to finish school.

Without exception, each child’s first remark upon leaving school was “I’m starving – have you got anything to eat?”. It’s nice on days like today to have some kind of consistency.

While skimming the various news outlets around the internet before turning in for the night, I happened upon a news story relating the frustration of home schooling parents who cannot find faith related science books that teach the same thing that their children would have been taught in school.

One of the biology textbooks promoted by several of the faith schooling institutions has the following printed in it’s preface;

The Christian worldview is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is.

I could write an awful lot about this, but am struggling to cling to my fence top position. Perhaps a few observations might be in order…

• If you want your children to have a rounded education where they learn not only about real science, but also about the variety and richness of beliefs and faiths that the many peoples of the world follow, you should have let them go to the same school as everybody else.
• Just how threatened are those preaching faith as any kind of answer when they do not encourage free will? Oh, sorry – I forgot – if you encourage free will, you end up with no “followers”, and that’s what it’s all about really, isn’t it… your gang. Everybody likes to be in the biggest gang, don’t they – so they can claim the high ground, which proves their view is the truth…

Bah humbug.

I know this post will annoy a few people. I make no apology for having written it – I happen to believe in free speech, freedom of thought, and free will. You are free to complain vociferously in the comments in just the same way that I was free to write this.

We were invited to the local school parents and teachers social this evening, held at our local pub (within walking distance!). Apparently Wendy set about organising babysitters a couple of weeks ago – which was mentioned to me, but I have no recollection of.

Apart from being prodded by a certain Mum and accused of ignoring her en-route to school the other morning (apparently she remembered me from our fleeting introductions in the past far more than I remembered her), I spent most of the evening talking to the chairman of the board of governors.

My conversation turned heads somewhat because I had been extolling earlier in the evening my distaste for the chattering classes – and this guy fell squarely into that territory. Ex city manager, worked in sales, now presiding over the management of a school in his retirement.

Word to the wise – if you take the time to talk to these people you find out they hate the job they have found themselves with, can’t wait to get out of it, and love the fact that somebody finally listened to them.

The fact that I discovered that if you let him talk long enough he ran out of breath and nearly keeled over is besides the point.

So – as the evening wore on, I found myself talking to a number of the school Mums. I knew I would be among the minority this evening, but hadn’t anticipated that all the other men present would gather together in their own little group.

Think about it (from a male perspective) – given a room full of women who have all made an effort to get out for the evening – and this is a rare opportunity – who would you rather spend your evening with? The token few men, or the group of women ?

I chose the women.

A few of the people from my year at school are arranging a reunion this year. Quite why it has to be this year, I’m not sure – we’ll all be hitting 37 – surely 40 would have been a better number ? Last year would have been 20 years since we left. It really makes no sense at all.

As fun as it has been to get hear voices from the past on Facebook making encouraging noises about the prospect of seeing one another again, my gut reaction is to stay the hell away from any sort of reunion.

I have a couple of misgivings; one entirely pragmatic, and the other less so.

When the idea of a reunion first cropped up, everybody seemed enthusiastic. I’m not quite sure when, but suddenly all those who are either unhappily married, divorced, or still single suddenly started admitting all of their various crushes, and their excitement about perhaps seeing those people again. Some people who are happily married then got sucked in.

I’m not so sure I want to be a part of that.

There’s also the entirely irrational memory of not really fitting in at school. Sure, I had friends, but I was never one of the “popular” people. As an adult things seem to have turned around somewhat though – I have a half decent career, a house, a lovely other half, amazing kids… I wonder how difficult it will be walking into a room full of ghosts of the past.

As my other half commented – “there’s a reason you didn’t all keep in touch”.

Have you been to a school reunion? What was it like? How did you feel?

If you’re wondering what on earth is going on with my WordPress blog, you’re not wondering in vain. I’m experimenting with the “P2″ template from Automattic (the guys that make WordPress). The main thing about P2 is that all comments are visible – so (as a reader) you can see any conversation. P2 also appeals because it’s stripped of anything that’s (probably) not needed.

This morning my better half had a meeting with our youngest’s school teacher. It’s worth mentioning that this teacher has the best name I have ever heard for an infant teacher – I’m not going to share it directly here because this is a public forum, but trust me – it’s good. It’s akin to calling a male teacher “Mr Fantastic”.

I’m already wandering off the story, aren’t I.

I had to take the kids to school. In the rain. This didn’t pose too much of a problem; each child was suitably attired in a big coat with a hood, and the younger ones had scooters (this was a crafty trick apparently – they get to school twice as fast if distracted with their own scooter). I was just explaining this crafty trick to our eldest while walking along a particularly puddle populated and muddy path when I heard a crash far off in front of us.

You’re way ahead of me.

Little Miss 6 was led in the puddles and leaf mulch on one side of the path, with her scooter jettisoned into the undergrowth on the other side of the path. For a few moments she led on the ground, horrified at her own predicament, without making a sound. She looked back at me as I approached, shouting “up you get then”, and finally let rip.

How do you tell a small child they are fine when they have mud streaked up their coat, soaking wet tights, and bits of leaf stuck in the hood of their coat? It just goes to prove that children really don’t care that much about how they look, because 50 yards further on (after a very noisy, very slow, very tearful trudge) she re-mounted the scooter and charged after her little sister. They got about 50 yards before nearly being run over by a car backing out of it’s drive. We really need to impress on them the idea of LOOKING WHERE THEY ARE GOING. I ripped the scooters from their hands and carried them (and pushed my bike) the remainder of the way to school.

Arriving at school brought “Hellos” with lots of parents I vaguely know, and I somehow ended up taking various young friends to the school door too.

Handing over the final child to the awaiting teachers on the doors of the primary school, I marched off up the road; time to get my hair cut! (it has been slowly turning from vaguely smart, into full-on village idiot over the last couple of weeks). I sat down in the hair dressers and was about to be called to a chair when a little voice in the back of my head told me “you’ve got no money”. Seeing the bizarre spectacle of a customer preparing to leave before even talking to anybody, the head hairdresser looked at me quizically.

“I just realised I need money – I remembered I haven’t got any on me”

“You can get it afterwards if you want – you just need to leave something here”

Seeing that the guy who would have cut my hair had only just arrived anyway, I offered him time to go and make coffee, and wandered to the cashpoint and back. It’s weird how the ten minutes leading to 9 o’clock in the morning are manic – with cars seemingly hell bent on crashing into each other, and yet ten minutes later the town becomes deserted.

While getting my hair cut a quiz played out on the radio – with the station playing various songs from a given year with listeners invited to guess which year it was. There are no prizes (it’s just something to do for people with boring jobs – like cutting hair, and trying to make conversation with strangers). I seem to remember “Ordinary World” played, by Duran Duran. I’ve not looked it up yet, but we guessed 1996.

Leaving the hair dressers, the heavens predictably opened, and I realised I hadn’t picked waterproofs up on my way out of the house. Three miles on a mountain bike in fine drizzly rain.

Wonderful.