Ironing my knickers

The night before we used to go away on holiday with the boys , you’d find me at the ironing board at midnight , feversihly ironing my knickers dry having pulled them halfway through a wash from the machine.

I’m nothing if not organised but when you have a packing list that includes enough warm weather / cold weather / wet weather / twenty below zero weahter clothing and equipment for 3 children ( 2 boys plus husband ) , there’s precous little time left to see to your own needs.

Amongst the ‘must-have’ kit  was the battery operated gopher that yodelled which had to be found , re-batteried and propped up on the dashboard ( an age old tradition ) , not to mention the camping raclette set in case we found ourselved halfway up a mountain with a kilogram of swiss cheese and nothin else to eat. This had a whole raft of its own problems including the gel fuel that fired it, a box of matches to light it and the little pick fork thingys that you scooped up the gooey cheese with in order not to burn your fingers. In all the years we spent our summer holidays in SWitzerland , I think we only used it once and that was at a French rest-stop on the long motorway drive home where we set up camp next to one of those infernal urinals that turn every motorway stop in France into a nightmarish retch-fest. I can only ever associate raclette cheese now with the smell of piss.

The unread books, untouched travel journals and unopened sketchbooks with their cellophane wrap intact,  which I’d thrown in the boot in the insane belief that I might get a moment to myself, would be unpacked at the end of the trip in pristine condition. However , the first aid kit, which would keep a military hospital in a war zone supplied for a month, would have seen front line service . Why my husband thought it would be a good ideas to buy eldest son who was only 10 at the time, a Swiss Army pen-knife and let him ‘play’ with it in the bcak of the car, was beyond me.

We came back with a carrier bag full of assorted calomine lotions, potions and herbal remedies once for youngest son’s chicken pox which kept us room-bound for half of one entire holiday. Of course, because we had the car , we’d be expected to cart back the rest of the extended families’ ( yes we all went together in one big bickering  happy family group of about a dozen ) souvenirs and heavy items, shoes, fondue pots and assorted baggage . It was a wonder there was room for the kids in the back of the car for the trip home when I think about it.

So, here I am the night before husband and I embark on a weekend,childless, in Switzerland for old times’ sake. Not only will I not have to iron my knickers dry this time, but I may even be able to pack some of my own clothes and possibly a smidgeon of make-up. It’s just struck me that I need to get up into the attic and check out the whereabouts of that gopher. Old habits die hard.

Education

For some reason I was thinking back to our very first foray into education for our boys. I was lucky enough to have held a senior position in broadcasting which allowed me the luxury of being able to afford private education. I say ‘lucky’ but I worked very had to get there, studied hard and put in long hours. I didn’t land a dream job: I clawed my way up to  that glass ceiling, often on my hands and knees.

We weren’t into luxury cars, exotic holidays or designer clothing, so to spend our salaries on something worthwhile seemed logical. I make no apology for ‘going private’ .

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate that private education sometimes sucks. You could spend all your hard earned cash on it and still get a bum deal. Still, ‘you pays yer money and you takes yer choice ‘ as the old adage goes. Not complaining – just saying. I need to get this story off my chest because it still bugs me to this day some 20 years on.

Eldest son was 3 years old. We started scouting around for nice, homely, decent schools nearby and fell upon Twickenham Prep – yep – naming and shaming. Whilst the 6 children being ‘interviewed’ … yes interviewed … that day were taken to a room and sat down with a colouring  book and a bunch of wax crayons to be be observed ( incidentally the group comprised our son and 5 girls – this is relevant ) the parents were lined up outside the Head’s office to be similarly grilled interviewed.

Our ‘interview’ was nothing short of a farce. The grinning Head asked both of us where we had attended school. I resisted the urge to say “None of your business” which I thought might jeopardise our son’s chances so mentioned my lowly comprehensive which scored zero. Husband, meanwhile, had had the privilege of attending St. Paul’s School for boys, which is currently heading the league tables for posh schools ( and also hitting the headlines for employing paedophile teachers who have now, thankfully, been imprisoned ) . This hit the jackpot and I hat to sit and endure another ten minutes of sycophantic toadying from the Head who seemed only to think of the academic gene pool our son may have inherited which could potentially nudge his own school a couple of places up the league table.

Interesting that. My husband is the nicest, kindest, most generous man you could wish to meet. He does have some faults though – namely believing that the 14th February holds no other significance than being the day after the 13th February and that I wouldn’t want flowers on our wedding anniversary … oh and the propensity to buy a manopause car every other year … oh and an addiction to car magazines, spending too long in the loo ( with car magazines ) …. but then all of this can wait for another post . By his own admission, he wouldn’t claim to have made the most of his education though. This was back in the gentler days of the seventies when you could still choose a career and graduates didn’t have to work in MacDonalds. He didn’t go to University but strolled into a career in telly to work with his father ( Nepotism wasn’t a dirty word back then either ) and did very nicely thank you . He is actually fantastically talented.

I, on the other had, busted a gut to do well at my under-funded, over-crowded Comprehensive school where half the girls left at 15 to have babies. I was lucky to have what we used to call a photographic memory, devoured books, studied under the covers by torchlight when I should have been asleep and managed to get 10 A grade O Levels, a raft of A Levels and a degree from a top university. Both of my parents’ schooling had been interrupted by WWII . They were grafters too. The work ethic was in my bones. I was nothing if not relentless in my pursuit of a better education. I even took O Levels in subjects they didn’t teach at my school like Latin because I found it intriguing. I must have been revolting but not in an arrogant way , I hope. I was simply blessed with drive and ambition. Sadly none of this counted when it came to impressing

So the upshot of my story is this. Don’t judge a school by its cover. Private schools publish brochures which they grandly call a Prospectus. They are full of smiling children wielding state-of-the-art equipment in gleaming school science laboratories, hurtling towards goalposts on manicured rugby pitches and leering Head Teachers promising inclusivity. Believe them at your peril. Holiday brochures show turquoise swimming pools and wide angled shots of voluminous hotel bedrooms. When you turn up you wouldn’t be able to swing your suitcase let alone a cat in your bijou room and lucky to escape from the swimming pool without a verruca or two.

Trust me – they want to breed a Super-Race of academically gifted achievers with parents who will ask no questions but just pay the bills and mothers ( never seen a single man on a PTA committee ) who’ll run the Summer Fair to raise funds for their gifted and able programme. If you’ve got defective genes, a hint of dyslexia or a whiff of ADHD in your gaeneology then it’s curtains. You’ll be turfed out as soon as you can say Special Needs.

And what happened at Twickenham Prep ? We received a letter two weeks later declining our first-born and were told that ” We had to understand that competition was fierce for places at their school “. Phew , lucky escape. This might have had something to do with the fact that our plucky boy had shown compelling signs of full blown ADHD in the Headmaster’s office that day. Whilst the girls had dutifully coloured between the lines on their princessy  colouring sheets , our little lad had found a ball of string and cocooned the Headmaster’s desk in a cat’s cradle of criss-crossed twine. That’s my boy – Proud of you son !