“Mum, we need to have a serious chat” said my six year old the minute he woke up this morning. He dragged me down to the kitchen and made me sit on a chair. He sat opposite me. “WHERE ARE MY PRESENTS?” was the sum of the serious chat. “I have looked everywhere and I can’t find them, which means you haven’t bought me anything and in case you have forgotton, MY BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW”. How could I forget? We have been counting down the days since about day 325, so you can imagine that his tangible excitement is now virtually uncontainable.
I hadn’t forgotten, obviously, but I had rather left it to the last minute. I had allocated this afternoon to get the bulk of his presents. This proved to be a little bit stressful. I had to teach this morning and then went in to Central London to meet a client for lunch, but just as we had ordered our food I noticed a policewoman wrapping the entire restaurant in “Stay Away” tape. Ten minutes later we were all evacuated, owing to a suspected gas leak – although I did hear several people talking about a controlled explosion and possible bomb scare. We had to hang around outside for ages and by the time we had finally eaten I had about 3 minutes to buy everything, rush home, picking up teenage son en route, panic wrap all the presents, pick up other two kids, get home with 6 kids, feed them, wash hair, rush out to buy cake and prizes, come home, realise I was supposed to be taking a plate of food out to the Year six drinks party, raid empty fridge for ideas (hopeless), contemplate whether I could get away with turning up with an empty platter covered in tin foil and put down somewhere and hope nobody would notice (probably not) and therefore had to send son out to get a pizza that I then cut up (also hopeless, but never mind).
