Last....day....of....school....

One of Two came to me this morning about twenty minutes before leaving for school asking if I could make her a halo. It's the kind of request which one looks for as a parent in the final minutes before heading off out into the morning cold.

Last day of school, things were pretty easy going. Sure, I'd had to dispatch Two of Two to his bedroom for using the word 'fuckface', but otherwise it was all pretty smooth. (He would have pleaded his innocence had I given him the chance to defend himself, as he'd used the word in the well-known childhood phrase, 'She called me a fuckface' when in fact she'd called him an asshead or donkeybrain or something slightly more banal. It was a classic case of a kid taking the chance to swear and hoping he gets away with it. And given that I sent him to his room for fifteen minutes rather than thrashed him senseless of took away his Nintendo DS for a month, I guess he did get away with it. Usually when one of them swears I blame myself and feel bad, but I don't think I've ever said fuckface, so I was just kind of relieved not to be implicated.) Having established the principle of pre-planning packed lunches and school uniforms, mornings before school at the moment are like the last two minutes of a Hollywood movie, where everything runs smoothly, everyone is happy, and you know it's all going to work out. So I said yes, I would make a halo.

It was a rubbish halo. A few bits of wire, one of which will probably have her eye out before the day is done, and a piece of blue and gold tinsel, it looked like it had been manufactured by Opposable Thumbs 'R Not Us. I suggested she shouldn't bother with the halo and that she looked enough like an angel as it was. She took the halo. I banned her from saying that it was me who had made it.

Ten minutes after the halo request, while I was still in the middle of my ham-fisted construction, she came and asked if I had time to make her some wings... I said I'd put it out to tender, but in the end there wasn't enough time.

And so, this is it. Christmas. Only eleven days to go, but the school finishes today.

Seems very, very, very early. And all the while, Bing Crosby plays on.