Think You're Forgetful? I Took My Son To Start Nursery A Week Early

I was born a week early. According to my mother, anyway, whose memories of my induced birth, due to sky high blood pressure are sketchy to say the least.

Ieuan

I've been early for things ever since. Meetings, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, theatre performances, I've been early for them all. I have spent countless hours sat in lobbies looking at dreadful carpet, listening to the sort of piped music that makes you yearn for death. I have shelled out hundreds for unnecessary coffees and Danish. I have read acres of dull newsprint and flimsy celebrity magazines.

Whether this is a strange streak of perfectionism (Freud would use a less polite word) or an inherent love of organisation is debatable.

When I was still working, I prided myself on my multitasking and organising skills. I'd arrange numerous events, write and proof-read numerous newsletters and maintain databases without any problem.

In Law, as in any other field, time is money and each unit of time is measured and, if you're a lawyer, billed.

Since I gave up work to have my children (July 2007), it appears all these skills have gone out of the window. Now that 'deadlines' and 'targets' have been removed, I seem to have lost all impetus and the smallest task takes on a Herculean perspective.

You might have thought that with something as important (to me at any rate) as my son's first day at nursery I would, in true helicopter mummy fashion, be there on time, in a non-stained dress with infant duly spruced and perky.

Unfortunately I am mortified to report that, although these 'critical success factors' were partly met, today I took my son to start nursery a WEEK early.

Admittedly I am not 'without form' in the area of the curricular cock-up, having missed a dressing up day and book fair. It doesn't help, I know, that my Parentmail email address is the one I don't really use and I am not really in the 'mummy gang' who congregate there serenely each morning while we bomb up breathless and dishevelled.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Ieuan hadn't practically run in to start playing without so much as a backwards glance. The staff probably think I have some form of dementia or that I drink. The correct date for Ieuan's induction was, it turned out, written at the back of an information leaflet I hadn't fully read. (Why at the blummin' back?!).

So I had to drag him screaming his head off OUT of the school and march back home.

Hubby of course was his usual sanguine self. "Hmm", he said "I should probably have read the leaflet too". My worries about Ieuan now being psychologically scarred were duly dismissed. "He's fine about it", said Hubby, "why aren't you"? Um.... because after 20 years of organisation and method I'm becoming scattier than ... I can't remember what!

So, roll on next week's induction. At least we had a dummy run. A dummy mummy run!

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