Were schooldays really the happiest days of our lives? Well, yes and no. My three sons' schooldays were certainly chaotic for me, with each of them attending a different school. How had we managed to contrive that? Looking back, I now also begin to understand that I had brought a good deal of the drudgery upon myself.
Take, for instance, that wretched absence note:
Feeling really sorry for my son's form-master, having to read all those boring absence notes, I decided to spice things up a bit by writing the next one in rhyming couplets. This I did and it totally back-fired on me. The note was read out in the staff room and much appreciated. I was requested to write all future correspondence in verse.
A victim of my own success, I would typically find myself at 07.45, with just three minute left to leave the house on the school-run, struggling to find rhymes for 'laryngitis,' 'middle ear-infection' and other such maladies.
Were schooldays really the happiest days of our lives?
Dear Mr. Wood,
Smart came home on Tuesday night,
Said he wasn't feeling right!
Get your homework done, I said,
Then I packed him off to bed.
Wednesday morning, 3.03
He threw up - comprehensively!
And writhed and wretched, the little sham,
And griped and groaned, ad nauseam.
Till by today, I'd had enough.
'Cos I myself am feeling rough
So, back to school, I've done my part.
Yours sincerely,
Maggie Smart
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