Day 248. Family Life. (4/9/13)

This, then, is how time passes. Day 1, year 8.

Second year seniors in old money.

First day back at school for Matty, Tom back middle of next week. Gives the lower sixth time to settle in before the real world appears again in the form of those who've already been through the first year of A Level studies.

And Matty's decided that he doesn't need a lift to school, doesn't want a lift despite the fact that I'm at home, despite me being on a late, he doesn't need his dad to take him to school on his first day back, he's going to meet his mate and walk down with him, it's not a big deal, it's just going back to school.

Going back to school in a blazer that's slightly too big but he'll grow into over the next couple of months, in new shoes (Kickers like all his mates because you have to have what all your mates have), new shirt, trousers and a tie that I had to go and buy at 9am.

We were really prepared. Well J was really prepared. All the new stuff was bought before we went n holiday and the tie was 'right there' ready for today. The tie was right there. Where's the tie? Luckily the school had the sense to retail its uniform through a store that's 30 yards from us. Tie sorted. The original will turn up some time tonight.

So he left. And I sent J the obligatory first day photo, taken in front of the fireplace as we always have on day one of every new school year. And J rang me from her car and we talked. And halfway through the conversation Matty rang. He'd left his money in the house, could I bring it round to his mate's road to give to him?

So he does need dad for something after all.

And when I returned home, as I emptied the dishwasher and thought about what I was going to fill this page with, the radio played a song from mine and J's early days; Talking Heads, 'Road To Nowhere' - a song I'd always loved and found to have a nice profundity with the line 'the future is certain, give us time to work it out'

And I thought, well I still think that's a hell of a line for a song but you couldn't be more wrong about everything else. The future's not certain, we're constantly working it out, we don't stop working it out, we reinvent ourselves all the time, those that don't have just given up.

Matty's got a full year ahead of him in which absolutely anything can happen, he has no way of knowing what will come to him this school year; a change in the subjects that he's interested in? More time in the school football team? Switching his sporting interests altogether? It's all wide open.

And Tom has the same. A likely trip to Auschwitz in October for history, New York with law in January, exams in May. But in between, who knows? New people, new relationships, new interests, moving on to University by this time next year.

Leaving home forever.

And it's all ahead and every day invents the next and it's all change and growing and it's the way that life works...

And in the middle of all this reverie, Tom held up a DVD box set and told me that I really need to watch Arrested Development because its 'the best show ever' and I instantly switched back to 'I've got this blog to write, then I'm going to work and I'll be back at half nine tonight, it must be nice to be able to sit on your backside for eight weeks and do nothing but watch TV and read manga but that's not the way things work in the real world, I'd love to get the chance to do nothing' mode (and yes, that is basically verbatim) stopping just short of 'and why have you still not done anything about getting a job?' and then feeling bad about the dichotomy between what I'm writing and how I'm acting (and I know he's going to read this as well).

A tip for you all. More importantly, a tip for me. 

Remember everything that comes before that last paragraph at all times. Hang onto those thoughts and, for God's sake, practice what you preach.