School’s OUT!

Whew! It’s been six months and four days since Avery began her odyssey through King’s Col­lege Prepara­to­ry School, and we are all ready, I can safe­ly say, for vaca­tion. Home­work, skat­ing, swim­ming, bal­let, hand­writ­ing, pack­ing and unpack­ing the ruck­sack, do you have your ten­nis rack­et, dra­ma club and LUNCH. No doubt by Sep­tem­ber she’ll be rar­ing to go again, but right now she’s rel­ish­ing choos­ing her own clothes every day, play­ing with Lucky, her new Build-a-Bear, and pack­ing those essen­tial items with­out which her sum­mer in Con­necti­cut will suf­fer. It’s a mot­ley assort­ment: a book on horse­back rid­ing with her beloved train­er Joey’s pic­ture in it, most excit­ing, her flute, an assort­ment of cloth­ing that has­n’t been worn since last sum­mer, and all her fan­cy dress items for the Hamp­tons Clas­sic. I must begin pack­ing as well, although I con­fess to a sort of “what the hell” atti­tude toward it, as in why not just take a car­ry-on with a tooth­brush and see what I find at Red Gate Farm? Plus Avery has out­grown near­ly every­thing she owns that has a waist­band or cuffs, so a major shop­ping trip is prob­a­bly in the off­ing when we get back. I might as well do the same.

I’m also leaf­ing through my cat­a­logue of CityLit cours­es for Sep­tem­ber, since reg­is­tra­tion is this week. Shall I take “Writ­ing for Chil­dren,” or “Screen­plays 101,” or “Auto­bi­og­ra­phy Into Fic­tion”? Or maybe more than one, why not. Spareribs mar­i­nat­ed in my own spe­cial secret mix­ture are siz­zling in the oven, and I think we’ll pack our pic­nic bas­ket and have din­ner in Hyde Park, unless there is some mind-bend­ing­ly thumpy pub­lic con­cert going on. No one warned us about the dark under­bel­ly of liv­ing adja­cent to the park. It is real­ly loud, when it is. Dun­raven Street is a haven of peace, but even its gen­tle envi­rons are pierced by the sheer deci­bel lev­el of some of the bands that play. Oh no, I sound like a lit­tle old lady.

The last day of school was quite touch­ing for Avery. I arrived at school to pick her up at noon, along with Anna and Ellie to give Becky some breath­ing room to pack for Scot­land. I was chat­ting with my friend Angela when she sud­den­ly said, “Avery’s at the head of the group in the door­way, in floods of tears [one of my favorite Eng­lish expres­sions]. You had bet­ter go see what’s hap­pen­ing.” And sure enough, there she was with her lit­tle pink cheeks and teary eyes, clutch­ing all her belong­ings and look­ing quite for­lorn. “What’s wrong, what’s hap­pened?” I asked in some alarm. “It was a real­ly SEN­TI­MEN­TAL last assem­bly!” she qua­vered. “Form Six are real­ly, tru­ly gone.” Poor dear. All the oth­er moth­ers and the teach­ers were look­ing on in sym­pa­thy. “Per­haps it’s the heat,” Mrs Davies sug­gest­ed. “No, she’s just feel­ing sen­ti­men­tal about Edwina and her oth­er Form Six friends leav­ing,” I assured her. “Well, in my opin­ion the assem­bly was not quite the dis­play of mawk­ish­ness that we have seen in years past,” the lady men­tioned dark­ly, and retreat­ed into the school. Poor lady, can you imag­ine what her life has been like the past few weeks? All those cups to engrave, all those wound­ed egos to salve when not every­one can be Joseph in the play, all the report cards to sign with “Well done!”

I gath­ered up the girls and we head­ed to Nan­do’s in Bak­er Street for a lit­tle rotis­serie chick­en and air con­di­tion­ing, where I pro­ceed­ed to blow my head off with spicy chick­en wings. Ellie in par­tic­u­lar watched with glee to see my head actu­al­ly blow off and was quite dis­ap­point­ed to find it was mere­ly a fig­ure of speech. “But it could PART­LY blow off, which would still be fun,” she sug­gest­ed. We all looked over report cards, and I’m hap­py to kvell a bit and say that she just did mar­velous­ly. And it was quite a col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments, that report card. Accus­tomed as we are to the rather more min­i­mal efforts of PS 234, as devot­ed as they were, the eight or so pages were rather intim­i­dat­ing! “Wow, the fold­er isn’t blue or green, it’s turquoise!” Avery mar­velled. And with her name print­ed on the front and every­thing. All the teach­ers remarked on how won­der­ful­ly she had done with mere­ly half a year. Good on you, Avery.

We’re now about to watch a hilar­i­ous pro­gramme on the BBC called “Only Fools On Hors­es,” a char­i­ty deal where­in minor celebri­ties raise mon­ey by rid­ing and jump­ing, when most of them aren’t any good. It will run for sev­en nights. Hard to believe that on night five, we’ll be in Connecticut…