Friday 28th June

And the rain’s back. As I stare out of the kitchen window this morning and remember those halcyon days of summer. There’s just cereal and toast on the menu for breakfast in the Perry household today, it’s the lull before the weekend storm as Mrs P has promised us a fry-up tomorrow morning.

I drop the youngest at the station for his final day of work experience and wave off both Mrs P and the eldest in the rain. The eldest is going to a school Prom tonight. Her official one is next year, but she’s been invited the year aboves tonight, and so will be on high alert when she gets in. As ever at the moment I’ve errands to run and I come across my usual dose of poor service with Santander. I go to an empty counter to pay some money into a savings account for Mrs P and 5 minutes later I’m still watching the lady trying to get her machine to print in the book. By this time there’s a large restless queue formed behind me. In the end she gives up and I get a paper print out instead!

The power steering on my car is not working and I’m trying to self diagnose it but the rain doesn’t help. I manage to test the battery which seems ok but draw the line at crawling under the car in the rain. It’ll just have to wait, I just hope it doesn’t mean £ signs racking up.

Just after lunch as I’m trying to finish filling holes around skirting boards before the new carpet comes, I get a call from the youngest who has been let out early from work experience and so jay-le-taxi goes to collect him. No sooner are we back than I get a text to pick up the eldest, who is getting out of school early, and so once again jay-le-taxi hits the streets. The eldest is then fully into getting ready mode, hair, make-up, shoes that cripple your feet, etc … I knock up tea for us all as Mrs P is home handy, and Mrs P and I then take photos of the eldest in her finery, and also with her brother for the family album. Her date arrives for her, and Mrs P drops them off at a friend’s. The plan is they all go on to a Club after the Prom, and then the girls have a sleep-over at another friend’s house. As parents it’s both an exciting and a worrying time. We see her taking her first exciting steps into the adult world, but we can’t help worrying at the same time, and I suspect we probably always will. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll find out how it all went; if she tells us that is.

Yours watching them growing up.

Jay