Back to school

Back we go, no longer keen enough to have an early night, clean the shoes or even empty last year's shavings out of the pencil case. But keen to see friends again following a two week holiday in a damp part of the Netherlands with only parents.

The new class teacher is not really new as she is entering her third successive cycle with the group of 90 now known as Year 5. There is a new girl to replace the one who went to Australia and didn't cry: she has already lived in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden. At 9 and a quarter, this is her fifth school.

The new Chair of the Parents' Association is also Australian, as was the one before last. (NB. Perhaps the Tories need to raise their quota on Antipodeans to help get Big Soc. off the ground?) Interestingly this Chair is a man. He works full time so will not be able to hang around the playground taking directions from the headmaster, placating the caretaker, manhandling the tea urn and repacking the Parents' Association shed when an avalanche of Costco crisps slides out into the mud. He got the job because nobody else could be persuaded to do it having seen how much of all of the above was involved: he wasn't there to watch it happening twice a day. He was told it was all about chairing a meeting once a month and delegating. I know, because I was called in to advise last term when a no-Chair constitutional crisis unfolded. My contribution was to suggest that it was probably better to ignore the constitution. (It said noone else could be elected until there was a Chair, meaning no cheques could be signed so no tea bags purchased for after school football tea trolley on Thursdays etc.)

My own school duties include looking after the Nature Area, a quiet half acre woodland oasis tucked away in one corner of the site which has somehow avoided being sold off for development. Whilst I was on holiday last week a huge chestnut tree crashed into it from an adjoining block of flats and a tree surgeon is needed to remove it.

I have also succumbed to being class rep this year as part of a "team ministry" with two others. It was pointed out that we were the only vaguely sociable mums with email not to have done it so far. Our class has approximately 25% "non combatant" parents who have never helped at a stall or come to a social event. If the little society that is their own child's primary school doesn't interest them I wonder what the chances of them being interested in the big one that is coming are?!