Let’s do this together YOUR

The Dark Lord has now been in detention every week since school opened again – and this Friday’s solitary confinement will be her hat-trick.

A year ago I was warned by my friend Mia that when you drop your little angel off at big school on their first morning, you should expect to collect a snarling monster by tea-time.

But I didn’t listen at the time and smugly told her: “But my daughter’s never been in trouble at school – well, apart from the time she bit that boy’s ear, and the time she broke a big girl’s glasses… but apart from those, she’s very well-behaved.”

Oh how we laugh now at what an innocent fool I was. But I wasn’t laughing when The Dark Lord told me she’s got detention yet again.

“You’re turning into the Birdman of Alcatraz. What’s it for this time?” I asked, getting cross.

“And I am not picking you up after – you can walk home!”

Like all hardened lags, she wasn’t guilty of course. “It wasn’t my fault,” she whined, adding: “I only tore off a little… tiny… weeny bit of the poster on the wall. The rest was done by someone else.”

“Really?” I said, in my you-must-think-i-wasborn-yesterday voice. “After the best part of a year in lockdown and not being able to see your friends since summer, I would have thought being forced to sit on your own in a class was the last thing you’d want.”

She shrugged: “Well it’s either there or in my bedroom. What’s the difference?” Then she walked away sadly and I realised just how lonely she was.

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.