I was busy yesterday. Spud has gone to visit his brother in Lancaster. He didn’t go until the afternoon but of course I left it to the last minute to get him organised. Tory Boy asked for a pile of stuff – old mobile, food, charger, box for new mobile, food, waistcoat, food, aspirin, paracetamol (presumably for if the aspirin doesn’t work), spare bedding and some food – and I foolishly delayed until two hours before ETA my expedition into his room to find the non-perishable items. It took an hour (in a room the size of my toe, packed with junk the size of my backside) to find everything except the charger, waistcoat, old mobile and box for new mobile.
Spud’s suitcase was packed with one pair of jeans, underwear for three days, his toothbrush, and enough food (if by food I mean crisps, sweets and other student essentials) to last them till Wednesday. I ironed his favourite t-shirts and he will wear them, I know – when he gets home, because I left them neatly folded on the kitchen counter instead of adding them to his bulging bag.
The original plan was that I would put him on the train at Stockport and he would change at Manchester Piccadilly…on his own. It was supposed to be a trial run for next year, when he will visit his cousins in Gloucestershire, changing at Birmingham…on his own. However, he is only thirteen and I am an over-protective, paranoid mother, and I spent the previous night tossing in my bed as I imagined chavs pushing him onto the rails, or drunks on the train stubbing out cigarettes on his arm, or him getting off at the wrong station and wandering around like a child who shouldn’t be on a train without his mother, or white slavers coming up from the Sixteenth Century and kidnapping him for nefarious purposes…. Okay, I must have dreamt that last one, but you can see why I was a gibbering idiot (more so than usual, the Hub noted) and pleaded with Spud to let me take him to Manchester. He most kindly consented, which surprised me, until he confessed, just as he was about to board the train and knew I couldn’t retaliate, that he let me accompany him to Manchester because he knew I would buy him stuff for the journey. I asked him how he thought he knew that but he didn’t have time to answer as he dropped his bag of crisps, doughnuts, newspaper, drinks and chocolate, and had to grab them before scrambling onto the train. He nearly didn’t make it but I shoulder-barged an old lady and shoved him on.
He phoned from Preston (the last stop before Lancaster) to say he was at Preston. I misunderstood and thought he had disembarked. I would say my panic was only at cooking voice level (as TB calls it), when I know that things are going wrong and I’m not sure how to fix it, but I can rely on a slap in the chops from the Hub or one of the boys to calm me down. Of course, he was still on the train. Fifteen minutes after he should have been at Lancaster and already phoned to say as much, TB rang to ask if Spud had been on the train. Once I recovered from my swoon, he and his brother started laughing at their wonderful joke against their ridiculous mother.
I don’t know why I ever thought having kids was a good idea.
I’ve always told my son that every single one of my gray hairs was his doing. Sigh! Now that he’s on his own I still worry about him. Must be a mother/son thing… or mother/crazy son thing.