Let’s do this together

I bumped into a couple of mums from The Dark Lord’s junior school having coffee in the high street at the weekend, and girded my loins for inevitable stealth boasts.

Such as: “Oh I’m so tired from getting up at 6am to take Allegra to her swimming galas – but the medals come in handy as napkin rings.”

Or: “We’ve had to get a bigger 4x4 since Octavia started playing the harp.”

But actually I joined them and we ended up having a competition on whose child does the least these days. Turns out I wasn’t the only one whose daughter didn’t leave her bedroom all summer.

It was a real insight into some of the problems other parents are experiencing since our generation of kids hit Covid and puberty and new schools all at the same time.

One said: “I had to practically push mine out into the garden at times to make sure she didn’t get rickets.”

While the other probably had the most middle-class problem ever: “We managed to get away to Portugal for a holiday, but all she did was moan that the sun was too bright and she couldn’t see her laptop. We should have just stayed at home in the miserable rain!”

And these mums were the ones whose daughters were the alpha types and most likely to be international humanitarian lawyers when they grow up. While The Dark Lord was considered most likely to become a vandal.

I mentioned I’d met them to my daughter when I got home and she looked at me like I was mad.

“What’s the problem with staying in your bedroom? I like being in my bed,” she argued.

“Yes but these are the best days of your lives,” I said. “But you all carry on as if you’re suffering from some Victorian wasting disease!”

“I think you’re overreacting, Mother,” she replied, adding: “I spent an afternoon in the sun only last week.”

“That’s only because you had the whole school photograph, which is pointless buying as you’re so white, you’re practically transparent!”

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