This week, I’m afraid my piss-poor organisational skills have bitten me on the bottom as usual and I only have half an hour to write this post – possibly a little less – so it’s going to be ill conceived, badly written and will, no doubt, contain a plethora of dodgy spelling.

Things are a bit hectic at the moment, plans are afoot for Dad’s memorial service so there’s that and McMini has started a new School which he seems to be enjoying enormously. However, it’s a school where he is expected to be vaguely organised, which is interesting. He has a gum guard, because they play rugby there, and this has caused him a great deal of excitement. He spent most of the first weekend he got it wearing it about the house and occasionally whipping it out and shoving it towards my face saying,

‘Smell my gumshield, Mum.’

I wore braces as a kid. I know what things smell like after they’ve been in your mouth for a long time so my answer was always a resounding, ‘NO!’ This week I thought he’d lost it.

‘It’s in my school bag,’ he told me.

‘With the text books and that?’

‘Yes.’

I picked up the box it is supposed to live in. ‘And not in its box,’ I said, just to check.

‘Um … no.’

Gak!

Looking at it, I saw that it has been pretty much eaten. I can only assume that he’s been wearing it in lessons, trust me, that would not be beyond him.

One of the things he has to do at school is be ready for any eventuality in phys ed. So he has indoor non-marking soled trainers, outdoor trainers, rugby boots, football boots, a rugby kit, a tennis/pe kit, a hockey kit and a tracksuit. In two and a half weeks he has lost one pair of rugby shorts – but luckily he has a spare – and one of the other pairs of shorts … the hockey ones, I think, but I’m not sure.

This is OK so long as he isn’t asked to wear them as if he is asked to put them on, and can’t, it will result in slightly draconian measures and trouble. He told me, cheerfully, that if he has the wrong shorts, except the rugby ones, he’ll just wear his tracky bottoms. I do hope he gets away with it. But being organised is not his strong suit. He managed to lose a drum stick between the car and his class room last week, so that’s in a car park basically. No sign of it. It’s bizarre. He is also perfectly capable of ‘losing’ things that he actually has with him, by not looking very carefully in his bag.

Last night at pick-up he hit me with a real purler.

‘I’ve lost one of my astro turf boots,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, I never wear them. Everyone else wears trainers so I do.’

Strangely keen to conform, McMini.

Gads! I shook my head in disbelief. Completely stumped. I looked in the shoe section of bag and sure enough there was only one astroturf boot and, worse, only one football boot.

‘How have you done this?’ I asked him. Yes, I the woman who took him to nursery in one scarlet trainer and one beige trainer and didn’t notice until I got into the car to drive home, asked him that.

‘I don’t know, but I think the football boot is in with my kit.’

We looked and sure enough it was, which was a bit of a relief but no obvious sign of the astroturf boot.

‘We’re going to have to check lost property before we go home,’ I told him.

‘OK, but if we don’t find it, please don’t tell Dad about the shoe for a bit. Give me time to have another look as I’m sure it’ll turn up.’

I heave a sigh. McOther is organised and doesn’t really understand about clueless airheads, even though he’s married one and spawned another. Neither of us likes to feel his wrath over the weekend so I agreed.

‘OK,’ I said, and the search began.

We looked in the Prep School lost property and there was nothing there so we widened the search to the sports centre, but they’d just sent a box of lost property back up to the prep school.

No shoe and no shorts either.

Bollocks.

So we drove home. The speed limit on the school site is 15 mph so I tend to grip the steering wheel lean right forward with an intense expression and do it in first gear. The car is definitely better off doing it in first but I like it too because I pretend that I think I’m driving really fast and the G forces are getting a bit much for me. You know, like that bit in Minions 2 when the professor discovers yer man Gru has been kidnapped says, ‘we must help him’ and leaps onto his invalid trike and drives off incredibly slowly, with the determined expression of someone who thinks he’s going a lot faster.

We arrived home and I emptied said kit bag of stinky kit ready to wash and was disappointed not to find the shorts but, on the upside, I did discover the other astroturf boot. In with the kit. Where we both looked.

So Hoorah! but at the same time, kind of, oops. Nice to know I’m setting a great example to my son, pity it’s how not to be though! Mwahahahargh!

Finally I’ll leave you with a completely hilarious story I saw this week about Sir Douglas Bader. I’ve no idea if it’s true but I so hope it is because it’s bloody funny. In fact, I know it would have made my Dad guffaw with laughter. I do hope I didn’t post this last week. Apologies if I did. The brain fog is still strong …

Now to prepare for languages week. McMini has to go to school dressed as a European country. He has the entire outfit to go as Scotland but does he want to do that, and offer Gaelic? Of course not, he wants to go as Germany.

Give me strength.

A bientot!