School run
Whoever wrote that bull about it being better to travel hopefully than to arrive has never done a school run. Looking back, this was the order of my school runs!
The children start to fight about who gets to sit in the front. Solve battle by ordering them both into the back and strapping - I dunno, a handbag or great big doberman. On second thoughts, remove the bag and place it on the floor of the car - don't wanna chance drive-by or passer-by car-knapping. I am also not too keen on keeping such pets - the kids are enough. It's a mystery to me how in cases especially like of my girlfriend, how her son can give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to stray, worm-riddled dogs, share a piece of chewed gum from a kid with bronchitis and pick his nose and eat it on a regular basis, yet won't sit next to his sister because of 'Girl Germs'.
The kids are at each other's throats by the end of the street. This chiefly entails trying to push each other, or sometimes me, out of the car windows. I don't think the Highway Code has a clause about not pushing the driver out of a moving vehicle because no one with a rational mind would ever imagine this a possibility. Traffic lights were invented, not as you might imagine to ease the flow of cars in each direction, but to enable the distraught mother on the school run to flail around insanely at anything within striking distance - in this case the coffee mug in the cup holder. Scream in pain as the hot liquid scalds my lap.
Miss one green light because busy searching for something to mop up the spill in an effort to stem the stain which quite frankly I've not fathomed why I go through this routine all the time! Miss second green light because I'm trying to halt world war III breaking out in the back. Miss third green light cause I'm trying to fix my lipstick which has smugded my teeth following one of the kids flexing their legs out of boredom. Now so late, stopping outside the kid's school is not an option. Slowing down only long enough to hurl the kids out onto the pavement like mailbags.
Put foot flat to the floor on the accelerator and land smack bang in a gridlock of 4x4s. Why do London mothers on the school run opt for four wheel drives which would only come into their own in, say, the Namib desert or Kenyan safari planes? Guess that's why some boroughs have taken steps to penalise persons with such vehicles.
Their only motto seems to be Death Before Giving Way. Sandwiched between the high bumpers of motorised monsters, my little ford only comes up to the hubcaps of what can only be referred to as 'derangerovers'. Panic arises in chest. I've five minutes to get to the office and present myself, all calm and capable. Reverse up one-way street - and become the first person in motoring history to be given a ticket for speeding backwards. Prolly would've gotten away with it only my car got into a slight altercartion with one of them Smart car. Obviously it wasn't living up to its name and anyway, I figure its some git whose plan is in keeping the population down.
The booking officer wasn't having any of that as for some reason he'd chosen to give me a free escort ever since he'd sported me veering to the bus lane talking on my mobile. My plea bargaining about being a working mom etc and that we should have our own special lane - pink if anything, falls on deaf ears. Neither does the one about pointing out a design flaw I've just highlighted existing of Smart cars. I save it for the insurance statement instead.
Sure enough, the ticket is banked amongst the heap of other fines and now I really have to find a way for overtime to pay this one off. I'm tempted to pass along a contribution bowl to all those drivers slowing down to take a look at what has just befallen me and charge them for the free entertainment they appear to be enjoying.