Exam stress levels are soaring....

When I had my third child, I remember a pleasant health visitor commenting on the fact that there was exactly two years between them all.  “Ah,” she said, “they will be two years apart at school. What fun you will have in the exam years.”  I was struggling with three under the age of five at this point and was incapable of actually thinking that far ahead.  I was too busy trying to get through the night feeds, bath time, potty training and preschool jitters.  A Levels – Pah!

Well, dear reader, here I now am with my eldest two knocking on those very doors and I can honestly say it’s no picnic.  Younger Son spent his Christmas holidays revising for GCSE mock exams.  The lure of the play station was strong and I spent most of the time either cooking sprouts or acting as a sentry in front of the games console.  Eldest Son, meanwhile, strolled around with the confident air of someone who is “applying for University” and therefore knows everything and can go on the play station whenever he wants to. 

We have managed to navigate the world that is UCAS with Eldest Son and are now waiting, with much hope, for conditional offers.  We are no longer the naïve parents we once were at dinner parties where friends with older children smugly warned us of the perils of “university choices”.  We are now those smug parents (with nervous fingers crossed under the table.)

So, the spring is here and just as the birds begin to sing their dawn chorus and the leaves begin to bud, my household moves closer to exam time.  All signs of normal life will begin to disappear.  Absent Husband will be conveniently “absent” as exam timetables arrive magically by email with long winded letters about revision and study leave.  And soon said study leave will arrive and I will have two bored boys at home to “police”.  Eldest Son will be tempted by the fridge and Twitter.  As the weather warms up, Younger Son will be enticed outside to hit a hockey ball against the wall and I will be sent scurrying to the supermarket as brain enhancing food (read junk food) runs out.

While most people will be stepping out with a spring in their steps looking forward to summer, I will be pulling my hair out and not sleeping.  By this I mean the exams will find their way into my dreams and I will be taking an A level in History or, and this is much worse, a GCSE Maths paper.  Let’s not even go there.  I shudder to think about it.

Suddenly, the potty training and mass nit removal seem so much easier.

 

Is it just me or are motorised gardening tools evil and annoying?

It’s that time of the year again – spring.  It’s great to see the sunshine after so long in the wilderness.  It did seem as if maybe the sun had gone on a very long holiday to Antarctica.  But never mind at least its back.  However this means inevitably that the most dreaded thing on earth will happen in all the gardens of England.  No, not weeds – although they are annoying.  It is the sound of the Strimmer machine as it noisily hacks its way through my neighbour’s almost perfect garden beds.  Every vrrmm sends an annoying shiver down my back. 

 

The other afternoon it was so lovely, a gentle breeze kissed my sun drenched back deck and I took a plate of nibbles, a cup of tea and my laptop out to finish my work – an hour or so before the return of the children.  But just as I sat down, almost as if he’d been watching, a half naked gardener jumps out across the fence and begins to rev his machine.  It’s like it’s some kind of extension of his male parts and he is doing this ridiculous dance of “look at me with my big evil weed strimming machine”.

 

Now I know I’ve blogged before about leaf blowers in the Autumn. But to be honest they are nothing compared to the most soul destroying sound of the strimmer.  Absent Husband does own one and will be known to get it out over the weekend after he has mowed.  That I don’t mind.  It’s the weekend, the only time for him to do it and it lasts usually around ten minutes during which time you can carefully avoid it by going out or at least going upstairs for a bit.

 

But of course my neighbours don’t do their own garden so the strimming takes place mid-week for hours on end as their gardener clearly tries to hit them for as many hours as possible.  And what I want to know is why did he suddenly start doing it the minute I went outside?  And let's not even talk about the horrible fumes of petrol coming from the machine as he revs it all around their garden.  The previous owners would be horrified.  A lovely old couple who loved their garden with a passion and spent hours on their knees weeding the beds rather than running a noisy machine over them.

 

Better buy a better pair of ear defenders I think….