At the end of my tether on a busy road but not at the end of the line

‘HAVE a good day, Pops!’ Pops? Where on earth does young Persephone pick up all the American expressions? ‘Have a good day yourself, Poppet.’ I wished our daughter goodbye and watched as she skipped away and up the lane to school without a backward glance – which is as it should be.

There’s me sitting in The Jalopy and thinking back how it was only yesterday that I used to change her nappies. And there’s Persephone waving to her friends, thinking forward to how she is going to earn a place in college to study some subject her father has never even heard of and leave Our Town, probably forever. Sigh.

Hermione and I have begun counting down to the day when our birds will have flown the nest. She is threatening to join the golf club, reasoning that she will have plenty of time to work on her handicap when there are no school runs to make and no underage matches to watch. Meanwhile, I have begun reading the bridge columns in the newspapers, contemplating a return to playing cards on evenings when there is no homework to oversee and no piano practice to hear. I can look forward to being in company where, though my ability to play a hand in no trumps may be atrocious, I will pass for young blood: ‘I’m only 61, you know…’

I engaged gear and pulled away slowly from the school entrance, carefully threading a path through the anarchy of traffic milling around the gateway. Sandwiched between a yummy mummy in her SUV heading for the crèche with a bunch of tots and a bread delivery van running late, I belatedly ran casually through the checklist I should have run through before departing from Medders Manor.

Wallet – gottit. Watch – gottit. Briefcase – gottit. Glasses – gottem. Keys – gottem. Of course I gottem – how could I be driving The Jalopy, without the keys! And finally, phone. Phone – not in jacket pocket. Hmm. Phone – not in trouser pocket. Gulp. Phone – not hooked up to the in-car charger and not on the passenger seat either.

Hell and damnation, I left the fecking phone on the kitchen table in the rush to have young Persephone at school before the morning rush. Darn and drat, that did not work out well. Not only did I forget the fecking phone but I also blatantly failed to make it on to the highway before the daily gridlock brought Our Town to a snarling. congested standstill.

The frustrated guy in the delivery van tooted loudly, pointing out that I had allowed a gap of at least two feet to open up between my bonnet and the yummy mummy’s exhaust pipe. As our ragged line of vehicles crept forward, I contemplated the awfulness of turning right at the T-junction ahead to return home and collect the phone. Turn right and I was doomed to fight a battle with the congealed traffic to cross town and then re-cross at snail’s pace after collecting the missing handset.

I turned left. I turned left and hit the main road, speeding to that day’s meeting filled with trepidation, for surely everyone else at the meeting would have their phones in hand.

They would be free fill in the gaps in proceedings by checking e-mails and catching up with social media on their phones. They would be able to send sly texts composed under the table while the chairperson droned on about targets and challenges and budgets. They would be fielding messages from their partners about picking up a litre of milk and a jar of Andalusian olives (not the big green ones, remember) on the way home.

And I would be left twiddling my thumbs.

As it turned out, a working day without a phone proved quite pleasant, once I decided not to succumb to the nagging stress of concern that I might miss a tweet or be called on to find a number in my contacts. The mischievous thought occurs that I might even do it again, next time on purpose…

I picked up a carton of low fat and a jar of salty black olives without having to be asked and then, nine hours after abandoning it on the kitchen table, I was finally re-united with the phone. In the end, the only worry was that not one missed call showed up on the screen. Does no one want to talk to me?