Back to School Blues

It only occurred to me last week that the boy would soon be going back to school.  And that I didn’t know what day he was due to return.  And last term he’d trashed all but one pair of trousers and had maybe one shirt that was still in a useable condition and I still hadn’t gotten round to replacing them.

Cos I’m a good mum and all that.

And being the good mum that I am, I sent the husband a rather long and very specific list of what we needed to buy, in the hopes that he would convince the mother in law to go out and do our back to school shopping for us.

No such luck.

Whilst on a mission to find maternity t-shirts on Saturday I took a bit of a look round the schoolwear section in Matalan, but it was looking very worse for wear.  As we were relatively near to an Asda I dragged to boy over there to try and score some cheap uniform.  Unfortunately they seem to think that kids only wear white polo shirts or short sleeved shirts to school and I was left rummaging through the racks.  To his credit, the boy did help but was more interested in the short sleeved shirts he’d sported through the summer than the long sleeved ones which promised winter would soon be on its way.  Still, we found two packs and at an equivalent of £1 per shirt, I could almost forgive the jumble sale mentality and hideously long queues.  Just maybe not the lack of trousers in his size.

Sunday passed and Monday morning appeared.  I figured I should try and make a bit of an effort to find out when the boy was due back in school and the council website told me Thursday.  Funny, but I thought it was supposed to be Friday.  But I guess you never can rely on the brain of a pregnant blonde woman.

At this point I realised that as there was no way I would be back to school shopping in an evening after work, we would be spending our bank holiday trying to purchase the rest of the items on the list.  Oh joy! 

Not being brave enough to face Asda again, we headed to Tesco.  I nearly had a full on panic attack when we went up to the clothing department only to find two racks of boys school trousers and nothing else.  I couldn’t face M&S prices, especially after the boy managed to wreck two pairs of their rather expensive trousers within the space of a month.  Luckily the uniform placement was all just a ploy to panic those of us who really were leaving our shopping til the last minute and everything we needed was downstairs.  Except age 5-6 trousers.  4-5 they had, although they’d be too short by Christmas.  6-7 they had too, although they were rather too long.  Seeing as there appeared to be no in between, we went for the larger pair.  Muggins here will just have to take them up.  We managed to find a pair of shoes that the boy approved of (although they weren’t the ‘toy shoes’ (whatever they may be) that he’d been looking for.  The only thing we couldn’t get was a pair of plimsolls in his size, but the husband was convinced he had a spare pair at home.  Luckily his PE kit still fitted.  See, this forward thinking mum made him suffer all last year in a kit that was rather too big.

As Tesco didn’t have a great choice, we stopped at Sainsburys to find a suitable lunch box and bottle.  While I would much prefer to pay the money for the boy to have school lunches, the lure of a cool lunch box and getting to sit with your best friend is far stronger and he’s remained insistent that he has to be packed lunches.  One transformers lunch box and bottle set later, and he was definitely a happy boy.

As for me, I’ve got a future of hemming trousers and sewing on name labels ahead. 

And today, still niggled by the thought of him returning to school a day early (my current plan was to phone up tomorrow morning just to check we’d got the right day), I decided to  call the school to find out when the kids actually did go back.  Off to the council website to find the number and I noticed in the small print a link to current school closures.  One that I hadn’t noticed before.  One that said that the boy’s school wasn’t back until Monday.

So I phone to check, and it was right.  I’m sure the boy will be happy, but I can tell you now that the husband is not.

All I know is that gives me the weekend.  And maybe Nan can hem those trousers for me.