Future shock

You know how in my last post I said I wouldn't be picking my son up from school on foot again? Well, the best laid plans, and all that...

We did it slightly differently today, though. Instead of walking to the nearest park as yesterday, where I had handily parked the car for the remainder of the trip home, this afternoon we were forced to walk the entire way. It's a fair step: the way there, without Boy #1 (but with his brother in the buggy) took all of 25 minutes. That's quite a distance when you're 5 and you've had a long week at school.

Anticipating this I had bought each of the boys (and their mummy too, of course), a decent-sized cookie to take the edge off the first 10 minutes or so. "It's for extra energy" I told them. "What, the raisins too?" asked my eldest poppet, curling his lip at the thought that he might unwittingly eat something wholesome. "Yes, the raisins too. Try them, you never know, you might like them."

Shock number 1: he did like them! Not a lot, it has to be said, but they were eaten without further complaint. Which only goes to show how tired he must have been feeling at that point: his resistance was clearly low...

The subsequent sugar hit fuelled us along the pavement for a while, with only a few pauses for complaining and fretting that the pavements weren't smooth enough for his scooter to coast on at optimum speed, but eventually, as I had known it would, the energy rush ran out. Our pace became slower and slower. Comments about how far we'd come and how he couldn't go any further increased in frequency. It didn't help that Boy #2 was still munching on his cookie at this point, sitting in his buggy like a little pasha, and taunting his brother with the remains of his treat. As we were on the home straight by this time though, I was hopeful we would all make it back in one piece.

Suddenly, we ground to a halt. "What is it, Boy #1?" I asked in my sweetest and most reasonable voice (aren't blogs great for rewriting the past?). "Come along, we're nearly home!" Amazingly, this was in fact true. So near home that we were by the girls prep school around the corner from our flat. It appeared that it was the sound from the playground (it was break) that had stopped my exhausted son in his tracks. "What's that?" he asked. "A girl's school." "Oh."

Slowly, he began to move again. As we drew level with the school gates, his gaze became fixed on the girls inside. So fixed, in fact, that as he continued walking and pushing his scooter, not watching where he was going, he ran into the gate post...

Far from being perturbed by this turn of events, however, Boy #1 made the best of having found himself an audience. He got back on his scooter, crouched low over the handle bars, literally growled (think Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones, revving the engine of his flash car as he picks her up for their 'mini-break'), and sped off down the street, leaving his admiring audience gasping at his derring-do.

He's 5. There may be trouble ahead...

Still, I shouldn't complain. At least that flash of dash got us home.