The Buggers have returneth to ye old place of education, the place from which both dreams and nightmares are born and where you will, whether you like it or not, have “the best years of your life!”. (Probably – let’s face it – simply because school-goers are too young to have mortgages yet.)
The school holidays have been fabulous because we all survived, no teeth were lost and no bones were broken! But I must admit, the last few weeks have seen an interesting development in the relationship of my youngest buggers. They have taken to full-on body wrestling each other at every twunting opportunity. It starts out as fun, it escalates (slowly at first) until thumping sounds can be heard. Then squeals follow, until there is maniacal laughter (Boy), followed by a high pitched scream (Boy) and thence we progress onto a guttural, wild animal-esque growl as Mini Seymour tells him, in her own unique way to GET OFF. Which he doesn’t. Not until she has growled her way to a frenzy and somebody’s nose is bleeding.
Stay away from each other! I urge. But they can’t. They just bloody can’t! Like electromagnets, they attract each other until someone gets hot and bothered – and often injured.
Boy couldn’t sleep the other night. He had a headache, he said. I sent him back off to bed, my sympathy depleted after a day’s refereeing, and when I eventually got off the sofa to take him the Calpol, he was missing.
Images of hobgoblins filled my head. Had King Jareth taken him to the Goblin City? I’m sure I hadn’t uttered those words – I’m usually very careful about such things because, for all they annoy me, the Four Little Seymours are my buggers, and I want to keep them. But Boy was gone.
He wasn’t on the bog.
He wasn’t hiding behind a pillar, ready to pounce and scare someone (another new trick).
He wasn’t in my bed.
Panic started to grow, until I looked into Mini Seymour’s bedroom and there, tucked in behind her, he was. Two darling little angelic faces, not arguing, getting along, being brother and sister in the most favourable circumstances: asleep.
I felt a warm glow. The bloody noses? A distant memory. The black eye? Forgiven. The endless games of Bickery Tennis (-where they keep on returning insults and arguments, back and forth over the imaginary net, sometimes powerfully, sometimes stealthily, even when you think there can be no returning that last insult, with a rally that can outlast Federer and Nadal anytime. It’s fucking exhausting-) are all but forgotten.
I left the room, happy.
Until 3.am.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” It was Mini Seymour. She awoke to discover her sleeping brother in her bed, and instead of thinking, Oh, how nice! has taken umbridge. I hauled myself up out of my pit to remove him, and to placate her. Thinking about it, she has never liked sharing a bed. Long may it last.
Anyhow, with the return to school looming, I spent yesterday ironing and naming garments (and glueing shoes back together), carefully preparing the uniforms, and laying them all out on the bannister. Oh how lovely! A bannister! For the last two Septembers, we have had no such luxury. And there the uniforms waited, for this morning.
What I did not plan on was that we’d awake to torrential rain, with Boy shunning his ironed shorts in favour of creased long trousers and an unwashed fleece, and Mini demanding tights instead of her lovely white socks, then finding a pair of the totally wrong colour. I simply cannot win.
But Little Seymour Number Two was prepared. She was up, ready and dressed in her new (to her) secondary school uniform. It fit – sort of. I mean, Year 7 blazers are supposed to be roomy, right…? And then, she was gone, swallowed up by a big blue bus and whisked away to start “the best years of her life” again, at Big School.
Oh, I do hope she’ll be ok…
I suspect, somehow, that she will though. For she had already, on her first morning, mastered the art of rolling her skirt up and wearing headphones – skills not adopted by Number One until she was in Year 9, at least. And at 4 o’clock, Number Two alighted her blue bus beaming, having made numerous friends and been complimented on her knowledge of the school grounds.
She’s clearly got this.
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