It all happens tomorrow

We’re at Mary’s and I don’t know whether to be excited, or slightly nervous. The last week has been pretty crazy from a work perspective. I started the three weeks intent on doing my thing: a 360 piece of work offering my thoughts on ways forward. In the end I found myself enacting the change I was recommending. Which was fascinating. And exhausting. And fulfilling. I have kept on in a coaching role with the boss of the team … and that is interesting as well. 

Westonbirt

But, excited or nervous?

The choice is because Henry’s coming home. Yesterday Bex sent a smashing WhatsApp video yesterday of her and Henry dancing to Elton John’s Glasto set (which was fab, wasn’t it?). I immediately recognised what was happening. It was the end of their summer term, something C and I have experienced many times previously. It’s like the day before your two-week summer hols, but on steroids. Teaching has an insidious way of sapping everything from you and, by the end of the academic year your final reserves of energy are gone … but, all of sudden and as if by magic you have 6 to 8 weeks of break to look forward to. It is a huge, huge relief, which Bex and Henry, filmed by Dad, Steven, were expressing. It was magical. 

They arrive at Terminal 5 tomorrow at about 6 in the morning. And promptly hand Henry over to us. Whilst they train it to Birmingham to catch another plane to Porto to run part of the Portuguese coast for 8 days, we’re on Henry watch. Excited? Yes. Nervous? Yes, also. We’ve shown time and again over the past five years or so that we’re not getting any younger. Having a toddler (albeit our fave toddler) full on for over a week is going to stretch us in every direction. So … excited and nervous. That’s me.

Jen and James came for lunch

But we’re prepared. We have assigned the next week as ‘holiday’. Apart from day-to-day business, our job is to look after his nibs. They’ll be plenty of earlies to bed and earlies to rise. Lots of Henry activities, and little time for ourselves. It’ll be fine. I’m sure it will.

More to follow …

That does give me a few minutes to talk about the craziness of world events. Climate change continues to stalk us. We, or more accurately, Ireland, has been singled out as a hotspot of madness, with sea temperatures 5 degrees warmer than the norm. In addition, land temperature records are being broken in the Far East, in the Middle East, in Siberia and Mexico/Texas. The view from the climate scientists is that what’s happening now is accelerating at a speed which baffles them, and onto which they are struggling to predict what happens next. We, with our temperate climate, are perfectly placed to benefit from a 2 degree rise in temperature. It’s lovely weather we’re having, no? But in other places currently knocking on the door of 50 degrees, it must be absolutely unbearable – certainly in poor countries where there are no cool places to find solace.

5.10 am. In practice for Henry coming

What we, the UK, are not prepared for is rising sea levels. A couple of years ago we were looking decades in the future before we saw anything meaningful . Now, well, who knows? The scientists are flummoxed …

Then there’s Wagner and Putin. And, come on, with Johnson resigning and Trump clearly caught on a mic boasting about holding secret documents, we’re getting a decade’s worth of news in a couple of weeks. It’s off any scale. What’s next? Hopefully Ukraine will advance to its borders, Trump will be sent to prison, this woefully inadequate government will move on, and we will all wake up to the fact that, among the many consequences of global warming, the insect population – which sustains us all – is in massive decline. And then we will do something about it, rather than just enjoy the balmy weather. 

How does your garden grow?

I fear not, though. So I’m going to spend the next 10 days loving my fabulous grandson, telling him that I’m sorry for the sh*t state of the world we’re leaving for him.

Stay safe everyone.