Catchup

First off I’m really sorry about the heinous length of my disappearance. Oh you haven’t noticed. Ok. That’s me humbled. I knew tumbleweed was blowing through my blog when I started getting anonymous emails telling me that I could bulk buy Viagra and a very strange ‘comment’ which I quote in full:

But placid, there are well known companies which deserve benefit words and created an distinguished get Cialis now reputation.

Er right. What?

So, quick catch-up. I’ve been ploughing through work and feeling grateful to have any since at least three of my friends have been made redundant recently. This alas is not much comfort when you get the ninth draft of a script back from your producer with the note ‘I preferred the eighth draft’.

Took The Boy round to a series of sixth form colleges last week. I tried to stay in the background, only to reappear whenever he needed to fling a witty comment in my direction, or to place an umbrella over his head. When did I morph into a butler? At one point as we were wandering round a school, lost, he hissed in my ear: ‘Why don’t you go and talk to the other mums?’ So I sidled up to another mum who was looking really fed up and asked her a few banal questions about her boy going to sixth form. Her boy doesn’t seem to be interested in anything, especially not his GCSEs. She looked at the prospectus. ‘Apparently if they get into this school they have to do a course called Critical Thinking’. I watched her boy and mine hunched, gloomy and wandering round the Art department. ‘Well, The Boy is pretty good at being critical’ I mumbled. ‘I’d be glad for any vestige of thinking’ she added. ‘Perhaps we could enter them as a duo’.

We found our way to the psychology department, where bright eyed students were on hand to answer questions. I mentioned that I’d have loved to have studied psychology at school. ‘Look Boy, they do criminal psychology!’ I chirped over eagerly then saw his face shut down and realised I’d committed the parental Cardinal Sin of Being Eager. ‘Muuuuuuum’ he snarled and moved away as though I had bad breath, BO and swine flu.

Later on as we sat in the taxi I said that I’d been hurt by his obvious contempt. And reminded him that when I was fourteen and deeply into the Grease soundtrack, complete with hairbrushes for microphones, and fights over who would be Sandy (God knows why – Rizzo is a far more interesting character) my dad would wander past my bedroom door and start whooping: ‘Wella wella wella ooh! Tell me more tell me more – now what’s that supposed to mean – doesn’t mean anything . . . ‘ and on and on in a Touretty rant until mum shouted from downstairs that Hawaii Five-O was on. Now that’s an embarrassing parent. The Boy’s mouth turned up slightly at the corner and he touched my hand very lightly. I’d forgive him anything. He’s my boy.