When he came out of school the teacher said he’d been fine all day. When we talked about it he told me that everybody in his class had been really kind and had tried to cheer him up and tell him jokes and I think he had the dawning realisation that the rest of his class had some empathy towards his situation and that he wasn’t on his own. It was a difficult process for both of us, but he had to go through all that emotion and I had to force him to school everyday in order to get there. The tummy aches have abated. The headaches and toothache too. Phew.

Instead. My morning drama today was having to write a letter to my daughter’s maths teacher explaining why she’s messed up her homework. I wrote that she had spent over an hour trying to get it right, but had somehow made a mistake along the way.

She had to create a polygon by sticking little triangles together in the correct order. Each edge had another sum for her to work out, for example: -2 (5+-12+4). If I was being honest, my letter to her teacher would have said:

I am so sorry about her homework. We all had a go, but failed. I have no idea what was going on and can’t remember which bit needs to be worked out first so she didn’t really bother to ask for my help. Her older brother of course knew the answers easily but would only help her with bribery and she got bored of having to make marmite sandwiches for him every time he gave her a correct answer. We decided that we’d make a snail shape instead, but my daughter felt this was probably not what you wanted.

…and when I say “temporary calm returns” it is all relative because the entire drama unfolded to the tune of “God Save The Queen” which my son was practicing on the trumpet. God. Hideous.

My 8 year old finishes tomorrow. He might be well enough to go back to school today. I hope so because I’m not getting anything done. I’ve still got all my presents to buy. 30% of his class were off yesterday with a much depleted staff as well and judging by the amount of coughing we had to listen to during the carol concert last night, those germs need to be separated for a few weeks.

I’ve lost my new Christmas cards. I’ve put them somewhere obvious and safe. They’re the ones my 8 year old designed (well, copied) and we had printed at vast expense through his school. That means I’m having to send out the cards he did 3 years ago – when I was more enthusiastic about his personalised cards and ordered too many, but couldn’t actually be arsed to send any out (finding writing just my name, without my husband’s alongside the children’s sad and empty). Now the few people I send cards out to these days will wonder why he is still drawing like a 4 year old.

My 8 year old asked me yesterday as we went to get our tree “how much money would you give me if I go on holiday for two weeks?’. “That depends”, I said. “Where are you planning to go?” He then launched in to his plan to go somewhere on his own quite soon and that he would need money for food, aeroplane, accommodation, some spare spending money. He’s thought it all through. “If you pay for the flight, do you think I can have about £200?” he asked. “I had a dream where all you gave me was 2p and I couldn’t even afford the phone call to you to ask for more”. I can’t say I blame him for planning to go away for Christmas. I wonder if he’d mind if I come to.

Sports day brings out the best and the worst of humanity I think. Children trying their hardest and parents screaming from the sidelines. To be honest, I am incandescently bored of sports days – rather like children’s parties I have had to endure far too many of them (32 and counting) and my photograph albums are full of tiny specs of unidentifiable children running down a field. But in addition to boredom, there is also the looming fear at the thought of the Mother’s race and of course a little bit of excitement and/or sympathy thrown in for the ups and downs of the races themselves. The children run their little socks off, some laughing when they lose, some crying. Such raw determination. It’s great. So you can imagine that when I turned up yesterday to find that they have redesigned the whole day to ensure that “everyone is a winner”, I was not terribly impressed. Ok, the children probably prefer it, but is it right to protect them from the concept of winners and losers? It’s a tough world out there and I’m not sure we are doing much to help them if we allow ourselves to bring up a generation of winners. We all have our sports day nightmare – mine was getting stuck in the sack during the sack race, falling flat on my face and having to crawl to the finish line – did that do me any harm? Well yes, probably.

One huge bonus of the newly designed sports day was that they have done away with the parents races. Normally, I am filled with trepidation about how to get out of the Mother’s race without my children losing face. The reason I don’t want to participate in it is because I won’t win. Obviously this is not the right message to be sending to my children, so I have had to make up excuses (like I’ve got my period). I was sorry not to be able to watch the mothers in high heels and wrap around skirts suddenly peel off their clothes to reveal cycling shorts and killer spikes and doing star jumps in preparation.

The Father’s race is even worse. It should come with a government health warning. It is one of the most dangerous races the world has ever known. Emotionally charged, completely determined, focused, highly competitive men who have temporarily lost all sense of sanity (because their children are watching), stampede down the length of the field, divets flying and hamstrings snapping all the way. If you are unfortunate enough to be standing reasonably close to the finishing line you are now either in a coma or dead. These men can’t stop – they are running so fast that it takes them 200 yards to slow down and stop, that’s if they haven’t hit a standing object first. Last year one of the dad’s fell over during the race, badly injuring his ankle. He hobbled over to his daughter, who was crying hysterically. “It’s alright darling, I’ll be OK”, he said to her. “I don’t care about whether you’ll be OK, you’ve really, really embarrassed me and now everybody will laugh”, was her devastating reply.

“Why is my child the only one wearing a white T-shirt?” I asked my friend. “Because you’re the only useless mother who doesn’t know that they have to wear a green T-shirt for PE”. Do you know I have now had three children at that school and have therefore been there for about 10 years and I have failed to notice that they wear green T-shirts, not white for PE. How crap is that? About as crap as having to make my children’s sandwiches with mouldy bread this morning I suspect (I did pick the mouldy bits out and they do say that mouldy bread is good for you).

Anyway, the really good news is that the red colour team won on points and my daughter is red colour team captain so she went up to collect the trophy. The really bad news is that I am such a crap mother I didn’t even have my camera with me and so will have one less “proud child” photo for my album.