I don’t attend many events at the kids school, after all I work full time and they have at least one thing every week in the form of parent reading. Wifey goes to this with a toddler in tow and often a childminded kid too. It’s not pleasant.
Today was school sports day and not just any school sports day but Fifi’s first at the same school as the boy. So I promised her I would attend. And even when one of my few big client meetings got moved to the Friday, I made sure with my boss that I could pop along to the first 30 minutes of the hour long session of their sports day. So I was pretty confident when I told Fifi and the boy that I was definitely coming to their sports day. I went to the boys first sports day at the school so I thought it was only fair to treat them the same.
So I went into work today at the crack of dawn to get my work done so I could nip out for an hour to go to sports day. I had to rush up to London afterwards in order to go to a client in Oxford with one of our senior partners. I just about made it to London on time but I completely missed seeing the kids at their sports day. What I did do was mill around aimlessly outside in 30 degree heat for half an hour while the kids failed to materialise. Their section of sports day was one hour, 10.30 to 11.30. When I left at 11.00 the kids still hadn’t come out and a lot of the parents were looking narked, and an awful lot of younger siblings were looking really troubled by the heat.
So I let them both down. Granted it wasn’t my fault but perhaps I was stupid to put trust in the school to stick to the schedule they’d published. Silly me. Sorry kids.