Julie Hamill’s London: Lost property

For the past 18 years in NW London I’ve been sucked into the whirlpool of September, the re-start month, the true January of my year. It’s the time for fresh uniforms, well-intentioned year-long ironing, school photos at the gate, straightening ties, packing PE kits and removing the black banana from the lunchbox, uneaten. It has been after-school snacks, what’s for dinner?, baths, pyjamas, stories, cuddles and bed, then alarm clock.

Soon, it’s tangerines and half term, then Halloween and rolling dusk. Overnight, the Willesden Sainsbury’s is pilled high with plastic tins of Quality Street, reminding me of the rhyme that I hate: the goose-is-getting-fat, please put a penny… I recite it aloud to them after school, despite myself, so that the annoyance can be passed on to the two that tolerate the mind of a daft mother.

The autumn school term flies out like a swallow, just before the next one starts with dark dawn and that freezing cold walk under the railway bridge at Park Avenue, holding hands in tiny gloves that will be in lost property before the week ends. Too many layers on the way in, boiling all day in the Convent and St Mary Magdalen classrooms, then rushing out, jacketless, to worried mums at the gate insisting it’s zipped to the top, and “where-is-your-scarf?” Our walk back down is a race to shut the door and beat the street lights.

The forgotten letter in the bag informing parents that their class has swimming in the winter term at King Eddie’s pool is crumpled in denial – they know it means dripping hair in the ice.  Yet at the brow of the hill on Peter Avenue they don’t seem to feel that their ears are about to snap off without the hat they’ve left in the changing room.

Throughout the spring term, it’s find-a-costume-for-book day, when my mind turns back to what they wore for Halloween. Can it be re-purposed? Can Super Mario qualify as a book? Projects in science involve making a galaxy of planets, which, as every teacher knows, was started with glee then abandoned on a kitchen table for bigger fingers to finish. School pick up in March involves carrying home the plant grown from seed, or the large drawing stuck with feathers and glitter from after-school arts club.

Summer term is school trips on the tube to the centre of London, often to the Science Museum or one time, a crazy-long walk in the baking heat from St James’s Park to Embankment. I volunteer to help, which is exhausting and madness, but it’s the best way to learn the politics of the classroom, the friends and frenemies that are evolving, the childhood conversation, the behaviour, the new language they make – ‘Can I sky your drink? – the giggles, the troublemakers and then back to London Bridge station for a head count, hoping no little chick is lost. There’s a race to stand and hold the bars rather than sit – why take a seat on the Tube when you can swing?

Finally, it’s the sound of echoed clapping in the sun on sports day, back at King Eddie’s. ‘Well done! So fast! No, you weren’t last, you were second last! That’s great! No there isn’t a medal for it, but Mummy has a treat in her bag for after.’

An expanse of time stretches out at home, six weeks of wake up, turn on the telly, eat cereal in pyjamas and contemplate the day. There’s a dread around the repeated walk up to everyone’s favourite, Willesden Sainsbury’s – ‘I promise to make it fun! Let’s see how many dogs we can see along the way!’ – and a consideration of new choices like, ‘Get into the garden and play if you don’t want a chore.’

And we reach the end of August again, the short-sleeved white school shirt is out of stock in the hell of Brent Cross, and the worst day of the year arrives with the visit to Clarks:

“Take a ticket to be measured for school shoes. Sorry, there are only these left in this size.”

“Have you got anything in Velcro? He can’t tie his laces yet.”

The patient fitting assistants hold the smalls of their backs, while the children roll around the cushioned chairs, rubbing faces in places where bums have been sitting, and a coffee is all I want.

Marylebone and Oratory secondary schools come and go even faster, with GCSEs and sixth form changes for A-Levels, and my role begins to shrink to an advisory capacity with added fuel of hot dinners in the evening and a gossip wall for debrief.

Suddenly they’ve stretched up like sunflowers, and I have nothing to witness but the beauty of pride in their growth. Here they are now, in full bloom, they made it through thick and thin, ready to try adulthood outside of the Big Smoke.

I’m not in charge of the two little warm bodies in cotton pyjamas anymore. No more Peppa Pig, no more star of the term, no more “please collect, he’s not feeling well, he thinks he’s had an allergic reaction” (although, coincidentally, that was always a Wednesday afternoon during hymn practice).

No more complaints from rubbing cream into her crispy tiny fingers (eczema), no more Mothers’ Day assemblies at the little Convent, no more cake stall at the playground fair days, no more refereeing arguments, no more after school trips to Franca’s in Kensal Rise for mugs of tea and oven chips, no more racing up the stairs or shoving on the slide, no more chicken pox or nose-blowing, no more Gladstone Park, no more tears to catch.

I feel like a TV left on standby. And I’ll be on standby forever, waiting for them to push the home button again, the button called mum, in London.

Julie Hamill writes novels, appears on Times Radio and does lots, lots more. Follow her on X/Twitter. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE.