Fleeced

It's been a few weeks. My dream of writing a blog entry every day remains insanely far-fetched. Been back at work on the upcoming blockbuster 'The Haunting of Barney Thomson', after my very own Fanny Stevenson did a Jekyll & Hyde number on the initial draft. Not that I threw the laptop on the fire after TPCKAM had trashed the last sixty pages of the novel, but only because it was late May, the weather was ferociously hot and we didn't have a fire on. Otherwise my ancient Advent 7011 would have been tossed casually into the smouldering ashes of oblivion. A few weeks later, and now The Haunting of Barney Thomson has emerged on the other side, without the eight foot spectral lizard. Some might think that's a good thing. Fortunately, having had to choose between two book covers, one of which featured lizard eyes in the finger holes on a pair of scissors, I had already chosen against it. Just as well really. The Haunting of Barney Thomson remains on track to be the bestselling book in the Barney Thomson series......this autumn.

Usually, in the real publishing world, books - particularly fiction - are finished far in advance of the publiction date. However, in the world of Barney Thomson, it seems perfectly plausible to still be writing the book and expect to get it out in less than three months' time.

We are in the final few weeks of school. There seems to have been a collective agreement amongst all the departments in the school that the pupils should be doing NO WORK WHATSOEVER for the last several weeks. Why teach them anything when they can be doing cool stuff, hopefully involving the parents, EVERY DAY? Next week - which will only feature five school days, like any other - the parents have been asked to attend/contribute to a sports day, another sports day, a performance of Anthony & Cleopatra by nine year olds - OH MY GOD! - helping to set-up for the performance of Anthony & Cleopatra, an Egyptian lunch, a piano concert and a graduation ceremony. A graduation ceremony, you're thinking, I didn't realise your kids were eighteen?? They're not. Oh, ok, I didn't realise they were eleven and going up to high school. Wrong again...

The wee man is seven. He's graduating. To become eight.

What is the matter with these people?! You don't graduate from seven to eight. You move grudgingly from seven to eight. You leave primary two, you trudge into primary three. You don't graduate. But what the hell, we're in an English system, designed by consultants to look like it's American. Why pass up the chance to parade your kids on a stage when you can celebrate mediocrity? TPCKAM can remember at the end of term singing something like 'Keep moving on, dum-de-dum, and before you know it you'll be at the bus stop' or somerthing like that, and off they walked into the next classroom along the corridor. I can't remember doing anything at the end of the school year to acknowledge the fact that it was the end of the school year, other than walk out the gate for the last time in seven weeks. Nowadays they have a ceremony. I expect Two of Two to get the "Most Likely To Play Football For Scotland" accolade in the yearbook, if only because there are no other Scots in his class.

And it's not all suddenly happening next week. We've already been at two concerts, turned down the chance to help on a variety of outings, TPCKAM has read to the class during Book Week and today I went to the geographical museum and the zoo with One of Two's class. School hell. The school ought to put us on a retainer, but they don't use money, they just use guilt. Them and the kids in cahoots.

"Please, please can you come into the school and teach us maths for a fortnight, dad? Please? Sung Hyun's dad comes to EVERYTHING, and he never shouts at him, and he buys him ice cream every day..."

"Bugger off!"

There was a concert the other day with twenty-nine different acts. Twenty-nine. When the programmes were handed out you could hear the collective groan from the parental body. The headmaster stood up and thanked the weather because it had stopped raining... He thanked the weather?... We were inside. Then the concert kicked off, and to the relief of everyone in attendance, it turned out that most of the twenty-nine acts were terrified wee kids playing the piano in public for the first time. Mostly they would race up to the instrument, then fly through one verse of Greensleeves or Like A Virgin as quickly as they could, before legging it for the safety of their mates. The whole thing was over in about fifteen minutes. (No one actually played Like A Virgin.)

We're also expected to be costumemakers for the little 'uns. One of Two needs her get-up to be Cleopatra's handmaiden. She wants to butcher one of my white t-shirts. Sure, I said, why not, it's well known that the ancient Egyptians got all their clothes from George at Asda and then cut them to their own design. Maybe you could do something with my kilt and a pair of scissors? Two of Two needs to be dressed as a simple peasant for his show the week after next. Whatever that means. His Armanis should be fake? He should have a beer bottle surgically attached to his face at seven in the morning?

Currently the simple peasant show is the last thing on the list before the school breaks up and the teachers get a well-earned rest from asking the parents to do all the work, but who knows what events will appear in the next week or two to fill up the first week in July? At the moment I should be able to meet my target attendance rate of around 60%, however should TPCKAM pull another Fanny and lob my latest draft fire-wards, then the final few days of school will be passed in a frenzy of last-minute rewrites, while my poor, wee, lonely children will scan the audience from the stage, seeing everybody else's father except theirs.

It's tough when you graduate from being seven.

Finally, I'd just like to make a warm, heartfelt vote of thanks to the weather, for turning bleak and miserable and reminding me of home.