It's a Dad's Life: Wednesday, for me, is a work day. A day I get money for doing stuff, as opposed to voluntary slavery on most other days. By 8.40am both younger and elder are ensconced in the back of the car en route to creche and school.
There's usually some screaming involved, sometimes by me, often by them. The elder still hasn't grasped that you don't bring the entire contents of the toy chest to school, and the younger has developed a simultaneous attachment to two dolls and a teddy which all have to accompany her everywhere. The back seat is like aisle seven in Smyths. So we're doing our usual frenzied dash to get to places respectably late.
The creche drop-off is a dream, the younger saunters in and deposits her three inanimate objects into her favourite buggy. I am told she walks them around the place all day. In my more worried moments I'm reminded of Billy Hayes in Midnight Express when he's shipped into the asylum part of the Turkish jail after biting out the tongue of the prison snitch. There, he spends his days shuffling with his fellow insane inmates round and round a central pillar until one day he breaks with tradition and walks against the flow. This causes all sort of consternation among the populace.
I wonder is the younger pushing her buggy with or against the tide. But I don't have too much time to concern myself with this because I have to get the elder "into her line" and I'm already five minutes behind schedule. Her teacher, 10 years younger than myself, is giving me strict looks for my tardiness.
However, this week, disaster. We get to the gates and the place is shut up tight. There's a couple of other parents and kids moving away and muttering incoherently. They, like me, have forgotten that this is yet another teacher in-service training day. This time, the note placed conveniently on the door tells me, for drama.
Drama? The elder is already a master of dramatics. What could they possibly teach her? This is the third training day this year already and I think there's at least two more to come. I don't remember getting so many duvet days as a nipper. I think I would remember something like that.
On the one hand I'm fuming. I have to backtrack to the creche and leave the child there. I have no other option for the day. All the old classics are running through my head: why the hell can't they do their "in-service" during their none-too-short summer holidays? Why not after work? They do, after all, finish at 1.30pm, would it kill them to hang on for a few hours afterwards to learn their new drama skills?
The €25 I had in my pocket as a contribution to the school's running costs is handed over to the creche instead for the extra morning's childcare. It may be a while before I remember to cough that up again.
On the other hand, I'm thinking, well that's the column sorted for this week. Do a spot of teacher bashing and get my own frustrations out. Nice and easy.
But, the truth is, that's just not fair. The following day when, incredibly, the school was open for business, the elder arrived home so bursting with news and excitement and tales from the yard that I thought she would chew her own tongue off with the "and then I . . . and then she . . ." stories. In the last six weeks she has been plugged into a whole new world. This world has poems and songs to learn, it has big girls in the yard who favour her with some attention, and it has a teacher who has become the salmon of knowledge.
While I am still one of the last parents being dragged into the classroom each morning as the elder refuses to enter by herself, in general the fear around school is gone, replaced by this wide-eyed enthusiasm. She has had her first playground spat, arriving home half bolshie and half tearful afterwards, which broke my heart. For the main part she is growing and learning and enjoying it, and that is down to the teachers. They seem pretty well trained already; so do they really need to be honing their skills so regularly?
