WALK THE WALK

There are days - reassure me that I’m not alone here - when I’m just this side of grumpy. I’m not in a bad mood; I’m borderline polite to people in shops and I’m as nice as I possibly can be, given the circumstances, to my children. I want to be quiet, I don’t want to talk and, if remotely feasible, prefer to be alone. There normally isn’t any particular reason, it’s just one of those days.

Flo asks… “What are you thinking about when you’re not talking?”

Now, that is the question I longed for a boyfriend to ask a thousand years ago. I was trying to be moody and interesting, and waiting for him to notice. I was eighteen, so in love I could hardly breathe. We’ve all been there. However, when your eight year-old child asks you that, and you’re in a just-this-side-of-grumpy mood, it can be the thing that pushes you over the edge. But you can’t let it. She can ask that, for goodness sake. So I smile and say, “Just thinking what we’re up to this week.”

Flo replies… “That’s easy, we’ve got a lot of walking to do. It’s Walk To School Week.”

“We can’t walk to school, now we’ve moved house,” I reply.

There is a resounding chorus from all three:

“We have to, the teacher said.”

“We can’t, we live seven miles from school. I have absolutely no intention of walking to school,” I snap.

We used to walk to school when we lived nearer, although I admit we were mainly fair weather walkers. There is a huge amount of one-upmanship amongst the parents at school. There are those who will walk come what may: high water, snow, hurricane-force winds, whatever, and boy they don’t let you forget it. There are the fair-weatherers like us. Then there is a magnificent mother whose aplomb you cannot but admire. She lives approximately twenty London bus lengths away from school, and yet she drives every morning. The whole school is agog to see whether she will respond to the much-publicised ‘Walk To School Week’.

Flo digs out the leaflet from her reading folder. ‘Seven Significant Steps’ it is called.

“Mum, what does sig…nif..ic…ant mean?”

By this time I am hyperventilating in my efforts to remain good-humoured. I tell her it means important through clenched teeth, longing to be left in peace. She reads the entire leaflet to me very slowly. I keep a fixed and interested smile on my face.

“Here we are,” she says. “This is us. It says…‘If you live too far away to walk the whole distance, you could park on the way to school and walk the last part together’.”

“Fine,” I reply, relieved the whole conversation will soon be over. “We’ll do that.”

She digs deeper into her reading folder and produces her reading book.

“Can I read to you now?” she asks.

“Of course darling,” I reply. But inside my head is full of silent screaming. I settle back in my chair and close my eyes.

“Mummy, you can’t shut your eyes. How will you know if I’m reading the words properly?”

“I’ll know if suddenly the story doesn’t make sense.”

“Promise you won’t go to sleep?”

It’s scary sometimes how well my children know me.

“I promise.”

Life in the Slow Lane is written by Clare Kent. She has three children - Max is nearly eleven, Flo is nearly eight and Bobby is six and a half - and lives in Wiltshire.

Read Claire's previous diary