#proudmama

Can’t believe it’s been seven years…

 

*

The phone rang at eight-thirty this morning:

Tilly: Hello?

Spud: [Scream] Mum!  AAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*

I think he was pleased.

 

The Best Days Of His Life

My baby’s all grown up.  Sad faces all round…though I am relieved he survived my cooking.

This was him seven years ago:

 

This was him two weeks ago:

That uniform really lasted!

Spud is now on study leave for his A Levels and then – idiocy and/or idleness notwithstanding – he’s off to university in the autumn.

The school gave them a good send off: Leavers’ Day started with a Full English Breakfast; followed by a huge dragon bouncy castle with tunnel and slide.  As the Hub said, they filled them up then emptied them again…

Lots of fun activities ensued including a barbecue and the handing out of Most Likely To… certificates (decided by each student’s friends).  Spud was found Most Likely To Run The Grand National, because his nickname is ‘Stallion’.  I daren’t ask for details.  Finally, they let off the traditional balloons in the school colours.

They were given leavers’ hoodies:

I asked why he was the number 14.  So did the Hub.  I admit it: sometimes, parents are stupid.

They received Year Books; but they didn’t write in them.  The tradition is for each child to buy a hard notebook and pass it around; teachers and friends write pages and pages of memories, good and bad.  It’s a lovely tradition.  Spud read the clean ones out to us.  I may have sobbed a little.

In the evening, they attended a Leavers’ Ball.  Five of Spud’s friends came here for pre-ball drinks and post-ball sleep.  What a funny world it is: hundreds of screaming teenagers on a bouncy castle in the morning and hundreds of screaming drunk teenagers bouncing on the dance floor in the evening.

They boys passed their school on the way there and back to the ball.  Both times, they spontaneously burst into the first two lines of the school psalm (no one ever remembers the third-plus lines).  ‘How middle class are we?’ asked Spud’s friend; before coming back to sleep on the floor of our council house and be fed a breakfast of homemade pancakes – some burned, some not; it’s the luck of the draw.

Spud has had seven happy years at a wonderful school.  He has been given a first class education at their expense.  He has great relationships with friends and teachers and many great memories.

It’s all downhill from here.

Happy future, darling.

 

 

Redressing The Balance

Image by Ben Sutherland via Flickr

I wouldn’t say yesterday’s post was unfair to Stockport because I told me no lies, but I think it’s time to tell you about what’s good here.

We have the country’s only hat museum, based in our famous Hat Works Museum.

We have a much-admired Victorian viaduct.

 

When the railway station was built, the foresighted land owner who sold his land to the railway people had a clause inserted that all trains to and from London & Manchester must stop at Stockport Station.  It means we have one of the best services in the country – a train every ten minutes to Manchester, and every half-an-hour to London.  Or it was the best service, until the last couple of years when the powers-that-be decided to ignore a legally binding contract because it had become cost-ineffective.  Sometimes now we have to wait forty minutes for a London train.

We are part of Cheshire, but also part of Greater Manchester (when it suits us).  Think of us as a geographical Venn diagram, having a share in Manchester Airport but a much-coveted Cheshire postcode – much-coveted by Mancunians, that is, who pay more with M postcodes for home and motor insurance, presumably because everyone in Manchester is a scally and everyone in Stockport is a Premier League footballer (no class, but loads of dosh).

We get a lot of wet weather but not much severe weather.  That’s something, I suppose.

We have our own pyramid. 

 

If you look carefully at the photograph, you can’t see my house: it’s just out of sight on the left of the road at top right.  Another centimetre and you’d have me.

Six pyramids were planned but the developer battled to sell this one, so one it is. 

If you watch Life On Mars, when Sam is on the roof of the Police Station – which was filmed at Stopford House, a council building – you can make out the pyramid in the distance.  A tiny error only we Stopfordians we know: it wasn’t built in 1973.

We have the oldest school in the country, Stockport Grammar, founded in 1487.  My American readers might be interested to know that the NBA basketball star John Amaechi went there.  So does Spud, who’ll be lucky if he grows tall enough to wash John’s knees.

I’m sure we’ve got other good stuff, but I can’t think of anything else, so I’ll stop on a high. 

*

There’s a new post in my other blog, http://sapoems.wordpress.com if you care to take a look.