Teaching Granny to Suck eggs

Is it me? Jamie Oliver's school dinners haven't gone down so well. Quelle surprise! At the risk of sounding like an old fart, when I grew up, we had school dinners or went hungry. We weren't an overweight generation of kids and we enjoyed plenty of excercise and fresh air in and out of school. Why do the powers that be (and I'm not siding with any particular political party) insist on nannying us to the point when we all just lose interest and do our own thing anyway? It's not rocket science. If you force certain foods on kids, they will just go and eat what they want when they can, thereby creating bad eating habits by missing meals and filling up on crap on their way home. Successive governments have meddled with the school curriculum in an effort to falsely increase exam results and in doing so, they have deprived a generation of children of the right to run around the playground, enjoy sports and keep well. If the government wants a generation of academic overweight unmotivated people, that's what they'll get.

I've stepped down from my soap box now.

Today did not get off to a great start. We have three showers in our house. Two double showers (one in each en-suite) and one single shower in the main family bathroom. 15 year old H (hormones) refuses to use the shower in the family bathroom (because his 16 year old brother B uses it once a week), he can't use the double bathroom in the other en-suite because the twins are in the bedroom and anyway that's his sister's bathroom (God help us - I never had a bathroom to myself in my life!). Anyway, the long and the short of this is that he has to use our en-suite. We have to be out by 8.15 latest to get him to school. So, I wake up at 7.00 and immediately dive (not literally) into the shower. I'm out by 7.15 by which time his father (K) has gone downstairs for his ritual coffee and fag. So I drip into H and tell him the shower is free now, but if he doesn't hurry up, his father will be back upstairs and using it. I get a muffled grunt from under the duvet. I trail back into my bedroom, sigh and start my hair and makeup. Time passes, and I'm constantly watching the clock on gmtv. 7.45., 7.50 and guess what? K is on his way back up stairs for his shower. Great. I go into H and remind him we have to be out by 8.15. Get this. I then get a text message from H bemoaning the fact that he can't have the shower. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I ignore him. K doesn't vacate the shower until 8.05 and H takes over. I am sitting downstairs with my kellogs and toast, clock watching again.
At 8.25 I run upstairs and ask H if he's ready. "Nearly" is the response - he's gelling his hair. We finally leave at 8.30 and I have to drive 5 miles in the wrong direction to get him to school because he's missed the school bus. I drop him off at school at which point I get an unexpected kiss on the cheek whilst he raids my purse - he needs breakfast and lunch you see. It's 8.44. I drive back on the dual carriageway and hey ho, the traffic grinds to a halt in front of me. At 9.05 I telephone the office to warn them I'm going to be late. I then sat there for over an hour. Nasty accident, air ambulance and all that. Car had an argument with a tree by the looks of it. I drive past and hope that the driver and any passengers will be ok. Finally arrive at the office at 10.25. It's now two hours since I left home. The journey should normally take 25 minutes.

I'm meeting a girlfriend for a quick drink at 5.00pm. Not sure I want to go home.