school­child­ren (and feed­ing a cold)

Eng­lish school­child­ren, that is. My week seems to have been full, so far, of the unbear­able sweet­ness of lit­tle gulls. Just a few gems: lit­tle Chan­tal was read­ing to me at school yes­ter­day morn­ing and she con­fid­ed, “Mrs C, I don’t have those real­ly won­der­ful pens I had last term, do you remem­ber, the blue one with the lit­tle cracked lid? I know how much you loved those pens, so I’m sor­ry.” What I real­ly loved, more than the pens, was that Chan­tal thought I loved her pens! And the lit­tle Low­er Kinder­gart­ner who was so fright­ened, or excit­ed, at the fire drill dur­ing read­ing that she… left a bit of a pud­dle on the pave­ment. Mrs D walked by say­ing, “That, my dears, is why the lit­tle ones have a full set of clothes, and I mean FULL, left here at school!”

Then there was a lit­tle boy in Star­bucks, while I was wait­ing to have cof­fee with my friend Susan, who came in with his moth­er and a lit­tle sib­ling in a pushchair. The mum sent the lit­tle boy to the till with mon­ey of his own, to buy his snack. He was per­haps five. He showed the man behind the counter what he want­ed, stand­ing on tip­toe to give him the mon­ey, and when the man said auto­mat­i­cal­ly, “Take­away?” so he would know whether to put the treat in a bag or on a plate, the lit­tle boy stopped in con­ster­na­tion, clear­ly hav­ing no idea what that mean. The man then said, point­ing down­wards, “To stay here?” and the lit­tle boy said in relief, “Oh, no, I’m going to sit over there with my mum!”

And Avery report­ed being put in charge of teach­ing the “lit­tles,” some just bare­ly three years old, to play “Duck, duck, goose.” “But Mum­my, half of them for­got to say ‘duck,’ or when they did, the lit­tle gull for­got she need­ed to get up and run, and some of the walked back­wards around the cir­cle, not say­ing any­thing at all!” Expe­ri­ences like that are essen­tial for an only child! How we miss our niece Jane, who just last week on the phone told me that she was going to a par­ty, and she thought she would wear, “Kewwy gween.” Fair enough, a very fes­tive colour indeed.

It’s good to reflect on pos­i­tive things because for one thing, this whole sea­son of exam prep is get­ting Avery down, and it’s a job and a half at pick­up every day to man­age all the neg­a­tive reports from the day! Food awful (big sur­prise there), Eng­lish teacher too crit­i­cal, gym too tir­ing, singing too short, the French room too high up in the school, on and on. Today I decid­ed it was hunger talk­ing, so met her at the school door with a banana, two choco­late bis­cuits and a rasp­ber­ry smooth­ie, and either it made her more pos­i­tive, or her mouth was too full to con­tain com­plaints. Whichev­er, it works for me.

On the not pos­i­tive side for me, in the mid­dle of the night I woke up with a shock­ing sore throat, one I remem­ber from just after Avery was born, and think­ing, “This is more annoy­ing than labor!” Only pre­tend throat drops in the cup­board, no bet­ter than can­dy. What was want­ed was a swift blow to my head, but John was unhelp­ful­ly asleep. I sat up for the remain­der of the night, and you know how any­thing at night is worse, than it will be in the day. I kept lying there think­ing dogged­ly that the annoy­ance would stop and I’d go back to sleep. Should just have got up and blogged, now in ret­ro­spect. So with my voice some­where in the cel­lar and a head full of what­ev­er, I accom­pa­nied Avery and John to dropoff, think­ing I’d stop at Boots, but the wretched place did­n’t open that ear­ly, so my kind hus­band dropped me at home, cov­ered me with a throw, brought me a cat, and went out to return with some mega-anaes­thet­ic you spray on, which has worked won­ders all day, and I slept. As a result, how­ev­er, I’m starv­ing, and aren’t you meant to feed a cold? Right now I have a large chick­en in the oven sit­ting in thyme, sage, rose­mary, white wine and gar­lic, which should make all things bet­ter in about two hours.

Let me tell you, in the mean­time, what we had two nights ago, in our con­tin­u­ing love affair with sprouts.

Pan-Fried Duck Breasts with Sprouts, Noo­dles and Red Peppers

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Well, in the school spir­it of “if we can praise one child and leave all oth­ers in the dust,” tomor­row is the finals of the Poet­ry Com­pe­ti­tion. Avery got into the final four with “The Lady of Shalott,” and claims that the oth­er three com­peti­tors are so nice that she won’t mind who wins. Can this be true? Can she be the child of her uber-com­pet­i­tive father who would prob­a­bly be spik­ing the oth­er girls’ milk if he could get away with it? I’ll keep you post­ed. Right now I need anoth­er slug of anaes­thet­ic and a look at my chick­en… And a nice glass of the gin­ger water my nice food­ie friend Faye sug­gest­ed. Just boiled gin­ger. I’ll try anything.