Wishful thinking
Leanda de Lisle
It's a very, very important week: school exams on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Monica from Friends getting married on Thursday, sports day on Saturday. But what will I be doing on Friday? Oh, yes, reading post-mortems on the general election in our daily newspapers. Voting Conservative is like buying a Lottery ticket. I've got used to the idea of losing again but, if our number comes up, just think how exciting it will be. What a turn up for the books, what fun, what jollity.
In my mind's eye I can see Tony Blair leaving Downing Street, his face still white with shock. There will be no freebie holiday in Tuscany this summer. Gordon Brown is being interviewed on the news. He looks flushed. Is it whisky, or is he working himself up for the leadership election ahead? His sour tones suggest the latter. But they are a little slurred too. At the Independent and the Guardian journalists can feel themselves falling out of fashion, while I actually have won the Lottery and may retire before I am dead. But that's enough wishful thinking. I suppose life is going on as expected and there's just the excitement of sports day to look forward too. Yes, of course. Bah humbug.
I loathed organised games when I was at school, but feigning an interest in my children's modest sporting achievements has helped me develop emotionally to a place way beyond complete indifference. I quite look forward to those baton races where tiny people in creased white T-shirts run for their lives, their faces screwed up, determined not to let the side down. Happily it is remarkably difficult to know who has. With five or six dashing backwards and forwards at any one time, each with a slightly different start, you can't tell who is the future pentathlete and who the future politician. Fat children with their slow, rolling gait are the most vulnerable to accusations of uselessness, but who could resent their lack of speed when their efforts so visibly bring them close to explosion? They often get the biggest cheer at these races — or am I getting carried away and making that up?
Sports day has taken on a rosy aspect since we discovered the comfortable picnic. We haven't yet acquired a chef and a marquee as some parents have for similar occasions at public schools. However, our old pink Damart blanket has been exchanged for folding tables and chairs. The days are gone when the deputy head would find me rolled up in the blanket surrounded by empty cans and crisp packets. I now fall into a dignified sleep in a chair, a plastic goblet resting on the table and the remains of a smoked-salmon sandwich on my lap, looking like a normal mother. The afternoon sports events for parents will proceed without me this year. I need to rest after spending half the week acquiring the mountains of equipment and wardrobes of labelled clothes that the boys require for their forthcoming French trips.
A large proportion of children on school trips indulge in disgusting sexual activities with very low people, I read in the Telegraph (so it must be true). However, my 13year-old says his year are staying in a camp surrounded by barbed wire, so they will have the added amusement of digging themselves out before they can find their victims. That's a Catholic education for you. Happy days. Now we adults must make our own fun huntin' and shootin' the strange little men who buggered up the Conservative party.
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