Losing your cool; the need for time travel

Exactly how much can you lose in one morning and still get yourself plus children to school without completely losing your cool?

Shoes? - where you left them, scattered across the hall floor; tights? - no idea, scribble name on new pair, and resolve to excavate down to the bottom of the wash-basket, later; school bag? - somewhere, under the kitchen table? (grit teeth, cool definitely beginning to trickle away) - no, in your bedroom? - no, what's that in your bed?; cello? - in the car already, miraculous!; water bottle? - don't know, and losing ability to care. Ah okay, we'd better find it then, if you'll get a minus point for not having it - try the fridge. Yes! (warming up again); piano music? - have you tried the piano?; coat, tennis racket, car keys? Find the keys - in the car with the cello - tennis racket half way up the stairs and coat no where to be found. Child sulks and cries most of the way to school, then finds the coat beneath a pile of bags in the foot-well of the car. Cool seeping out, but not lost.

Bags, coats, instruments, rackets, little sticky hands and lead stumble toward the school gate, mother as pack-horse, shepherd ... and guardian of the steaming pile of poo that dog has just deposited on the pavement. Mother drops everything and frantically starts to dig in her pockets - poo bags? Forgotten. Cool? Well and truly lost. If only she could wind back time ...

Actually, only the earlier part of that story was me (and is me most mornings, but more stressed on the days I also have to get to work - cool very precariously held onto on those days); the frantic mother on the pavement dropping everything was observed yesterday. And I resolved never, ever to add Four-legged-friend to our morning routine.

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Colour, Delacroix, flochetage and why don't we all have a go at inventing words

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Walking The Dog

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