Episode of My Family

This is the first September in seventeen years that hasn’t been committed to the school year. Half way round a room of introductions at Uni, I stopped short that I couldn’t say I was the mother of two school children, or even two teenage children. I’ve started to think about pensions, the quality of Marks and Spencers goods, and the menopause. There has been a tipping point over the summer, I went in myself, (pale cold and damp) and I’ve come out middle aged (slight tan, hot flushes, dry…). Ah but life goes on.

Been rather busy, tidying out cupboards and cleaning things, almost like I’m a 42 year old housewife (oh). Also, I ‘ve finished four quilts (Nina’s for college, Bernard’s poorly blanket, snuggly throw for H and Bernard and Gwen’s Emerald Anniversary double). Textbooks have arrived, and I have a new pencil case with good pens, stapler, and post it notes. It feels good.

Soon, I shall be youthing up. Freshers week starts in fifteen days, and while this time around, I’ve no plans to be getting drunk on cider and black, being too scared to see the Petshop Boys at the Union, or crying myself to sleep in my loneliness, I am looking forward to doing something different. Can’t see myself at the Freshers UV Bubble Party though. If this weren’t excitement enough, the weekend before freshers, we have to do the parenting classic and drop Nina off at Uni where she will move into a swanky student village which is sure to be an upgrade on the place we’ve hitherto provided. I’ve given her so much advice that she is now only willing to receive it in iambic pentameter. I am concerned enough to rise to the challenge. It is only slightly more pressure that H starts at college tomorrow having spent the weekend in Manchester with a girl she met on a train.

This is surely a middle aged lifestyle you couldn’t make up (busy but boring), unless you scriptwrite for My Family, in which case hello, and I KNEW you had rigged CCTV in my house (not really, I don‘t watch it, it‘s busy and boring).