As you may know, my son has started school.  This is a great new step but it does mean that I need to work out my new routine.  Our awesome nanny Leigh left at the end of July, my daughter is now spending more time at preschool and I need to get my son to and from school (with my husband’s help).

This week, he is only doing from 9:30 am to 12 noon.  I can see the rationale behind this – it gives him a chance to get used to the place before he starts doing full days.  However, as we need to get the bus, this does rather mean that by the time I have cleared up, put a load of washing on and done whatever jobs I needed to get done, it is time to catch the bus to pick the boy up.  Yesterday, I cut it rather fine – my husband had said that they were insanely early arriving so I didn’t leave the house until 11:30am.  The bus came at 11:39am – in that nine minutes I had been weighing up whether to run to a cashpoint and then hail a taxi but thought “This is stupid! I’m sure I’ll have time”.  So I got the bus.

The problem with leaving no contingency for delays is that it is mind bogglingly stressful.  I started reading my book but, after a few minutes of looking up every minute, just to make sure that the clock hadn’t jumped ahead, I gave that up.  It got to the point where I was getting wound up whenever anyone pressed the bell and sauntered out the door.  In the end, I arrived just as the church bell was chiming for midday.  I RAN to the door – which was open but thankfully my son wasn’t out yet.  He wasn’t the lone child left weeping because his feckless mother hadn’t turned up on time!  Hurrah!

I will do better next week and leave a ten minute contingency margin.  Now that I have calmed down, here is a picture of some lovely hydrangeas.

They’ve turned and are starting to look crispy but are still very pretty and autumnal all the same.  Once hydrangeas have turned properly brown, you are meant to dead head them (just so your garden doesn’t look appalling).  However, Pippa Middleton (in her marvellous book Celebrate) mentioned that vases of them can be very effective for Halloween.  Can I hang on until then?