Apologies for the silence. I’ve been a bit busy. I’ve been busy working, stretching myself thinly and growing fat on oven chips and posh pizza (we don’t like cheap pizza with its fake cheese topping and cardboard bottoms). It’s alright when it goes alright, a logistical Heath Robinson Affair, ready to topple as soon as someone runs out of leave. At least I haven’t got any marking to do, even if I have the report writing, the phone calls and the emails, so many emails on a continuous running stream throughout my working day.
And then there’s the appointments. Squeezed in between the school run and the supermarket delivery, I have to log in and use a password and it’s not even for me. I have to explain (again), cajole and question; is that blood test really necessary? Will it make any difference? Is there really no-one to coordinate it all? No paediatrician for a grown up boy? It’s me? Are you certain, are you sure?
And the meetings. The number of strangers touching our lives is growing daily and yet we can’t find anyone to spend the personal budget on. Economic migrants, we haven’t got a social network; we haven’t got time to form one. Even if we had, there’s no reason why anyone we knew would want the job. No-one wants an itty bitty job that pays peanuts, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t shift that sneaking feeling that there’s an element of motherblame that still hangs around us, whispering, poisoning.
Slowly, so slowly, ‘inclusive’, ‘inclusion’ has shifted its meaning. Slowly, so slowly, we depart, softly wrapped up and separated into a lonely little isolated world and I can’t help but wonder, as I sit in front of the fire in a haze of relief and slight bogglement that the weekend is finally here and tomorrow I can sleep beyond the alarm, who should be apologising to who.
The Diary of a Not So Ordinary Boy 