It all started so well. I left work at 1pm, got to the school at about 1:10pm, ready for the kids activities to start at 1:15. Although I missed our eldest coming out of the school buildings, I found her a few minutes later taking part in her first event, caught her eye, grinned, waved, and all was well.
All was well until the rain started. At first it was just a pitter patter. Members of staff smiled at over-protective mothers, and said “it will blow over in a minute”.
The pitter patter went away.
Then it came back. And wow did it come back.
Torrential rain, thunder, lightning, screams (from parentsthe kids thought it was brilliant), and a mad rush to get into the hall. I wandered back down the field nearly last, and chanced upon a parent I knewa local builderand we laughed at the antics of the other parents.
The headmistress eventually arrived and bellowed to everybody that we could take our children home with us if we wantedall we needed to do was visit their classrooms and sign them out.
Ok. Where the hell is her classroom? After a strange phonecall to W enquiring who our eldest’s teacher was, and where the class might be (we both drew a blank), I wandered off in search. It didn’t really matter anyway because the correct teachers were not in the correct classrooms anywayit was mayhem.
I eventually found Miss Ten, and gave her the decision -“Do you want to wait here and see if the rain stops, or shall we go now? We’re already wet”“Go now” and so it was we walked out of the school and home in the driving rain, leaving behind the massed ranks of “what are we going to do?” parents, who were no doubt going to carry on agreeing with each other with how wet they all were, and how awful it all was.
Meanwhile, ten minutes later, we were in dry clothes, eating chocolate bars, and sipping hot tea.