Something had changed significantly in my life, I could feel it. For the past few weeks everything had felt different. But I couldn’t say exactly what it was.
And then one day last week I realised what it was: I am no longer at the school gates.
My eldest child is 13 and has been at secondary school for two years, so that’s nothing new. But the youngest started secondary school in September. And that is what had changed.
I am still, at times, actually at the school gates. Taking my children to and from school is the only exercise I get these days. But the “school gates” is not only literal. It is also a metaphor for a school’s parent community. I have checked out of that almost completely – and it’s sort of amazing.
I had my first child, Kitty, before any of my peers started families. This was shortly after moving to an area where I didn’t know a soul. Those two years before Kitty’s first day at nursery were incredibly lonely and weird. I am not a massively sociable person but even I felt myself sliding into some sort of insanity through lack of adult…
