Goodbye, school gates

the intense joy of saying no to it all

This half term we haven’t gone anywhere, or done anything. We just hung out at the house we are renting while various floods and leaks are fixed in my home. I took Sam to Brent Cross the other day and we went to WH Smith, which he insisted on pronouncing “Double you aitch ess - MITH”. And I said “No, it’s WH Smith.” And he said no it’s Double you aitch ess - MITH and I said “Listen, mate, do you want me to leave you here on your own? Because I can do that.”

And it’s very peaceful. Holidays abroad are stressful, expensive. Is anyone really having a good time? Yet I have in the past felt enormously pressurised to go away every holiday. Shouldn’t I be in St Lucia, the Lake District, Iceland, Costa Rica?

I worked out, as we sat in Pizza Express in Belsize Park having a lovely time stuffing our faces with various iterations of pizza, that the reason I no longer feel this insane status anxiety about the school holidays is that I am no longer at the school gate.

Kitty is now in Year 9. Sam is in Year 7. And though the parents I have met at both of their new schools seem engaging and delightful, I don’t actually know any of them. I don’t do pick-up, I don’t go to social events, I don’t make an effort. My view is that by mid-way throughYear 7, in terms of school, my kids are on their own. If they forget their kit despite support from me at home: tough. If they don’t do their homework: not my problem. Kitty’s school doesn’t even have a class WhatsApp group. Kitty had to work it all out on her own, and she mostly did.

And I now recall that what parents quite often chat about - because they don’t really know each other well enough to have meaningful conversations - is holidays. Where they have been, where they are going next. After all, it’s safe ground: you do not want to know what they think about Israel or Brexit or Trump because that might be awkward. So you talk about whether or not you think Noah H in 5M has got ADHD, and holidays.

And fuck me the holidays these people go on! To their Ibizan farmhouses and their friends with yachts off Costa Smerelda and their Portuguese surf “lock-up” and their uncle’s really cute shooting estate in Scotland.

Absolutely: I have been on some holidays, too. This is the great blessing of being a journalist. The work is as hard and boring as any middle-class job; you have no security whatsoever; everyone fucking hates you and talks shit about you online, but you get some good holidays. But when there is no travel piece to organise, experience, be photographed for and then write about, I am rediscovering the absolute joy of not going on holiday.

Here we are, not spending however much money on this totally ephemeral thing during which someone will almost certainly get ill or I will inexplicably hate my husband and my whole family to the point of speechlessness for three of the five days.

And it’s absolutely fine. It’s fine because I do not have to hear about other people’s holidays, because I am no longer at the school gate. I didn’t even know that people went away for every single half term, the whole of Easter and for eight weeks of the summer until my children started school. Going skiing didn’t cross my mind until my children started school.

I never had a bad time with any of the parents I met. I was very active at the school gates at nursery and primary stage. Some of the parents were great fun, a few remain dear friends. But the relief of not having to do it anymore, of only having to engage with the unlucky few whose children make friends with mine, is a blessing.

It’s like stepping out of a noisy, hot, crowded party into the cold, clear air of a winter street. The sharp air in your face tinged with the faintest trace of woodsmoke. The wet, gritty pavement under your shoe. You know what I mean.

How about you? Where are you with the school gates right now? Leave a traumatised comment in the handy box below. Let’s talk this out.