One down, one to go

Ah, the end of the summer holidays. Hasn't come a day too soon. Much as I love my children, they have just been........here a lot recently. It is on perfectly pleasant summer days when your children stubbornly remain indoors that you begin to wish you lived out in the country with a huge area of wilderness for them to explore, rather than in a large city with a major traffic route on the doorstep.

But today, today was Day Zero. Day Zero is exactly what it sounds like: the day at the end of a long countdown. In this case, the countdown to my baby boy, my First Born, starting senior school. All the new S1 pupils went into school for a half day today before school proper starts tomorrow (Oh the howls of anguish when FB first discovered that he would be in school and SB would not!). The idea is to give the new kids in the senior school a day to acclimatise, find their form room, get their timetable, locker key etc, all before the building fills up with huge 6 feet tall blokes in blazers masquerading as school pupils.

FB seemed to enjoy the experience - he has made a friend, a boy who did not attend the Junior school but has joined from an outside school, and said friend is also "into" Warhammer, so that's good. (Have you heard of Warhammer? Chances are if you are at all familiar with a boy child between the ages of, say, 10 and 15, then you do. If you don't, then consider yourself lucky.)

I must confess that Husband and I fretted a bit when FB began to get interested in Warhammer. It smacked to us of Dungeons & Dragons and the slightly geeky, uncool image that went with that when we were young(er). However as a hobby among young teen boys, it seems to be quite widespread so we have decided to unclench a little. Given FB's problems making friends at all (as an Asperger's child, social interaction is a bit of a mystery to him) it would be a little unfair of us to deny him the opportunity of getting into a subject about which he knows EVERYTHING (as an Asperger's child, when he gets interested in something, he gets REALLY interested, REALLY quickly). So we will let him collect small and essentially pointless plastic figures and talk endlessly with other small boys about the powers of said small, pointless plastic figures and hopefully it will make him happy and give him the chance to interact with other small boys of like mind. My fingers, they are firmly crossed.

But what of SB? He is still in the junior school, entering primary 6 but that is, in itself, a little milestone. For tomorrow is his first day at school IN LONG TROUSERS! You have no idea how happy he is about this. Honestly, to hear him talk, you would think that for the last 5 years we have routinely forced him out into blizzards and ice storms with his knees uncovered, risking terminal frostbite of the kneecaps. He is pleased to be getting into proper trousers at last. I am pleased that I can now clothe his lower half for school from Asda or similar at a cost of about £4 rather than spending £25 on a pair of regulation shorts at the school outfitters. However I am also slightly scared.

You see, SB spends every moment of free time at school playing football. And when doing so, he falls over. A lot. Part of the coming-home-from-school ritual with SB has always been an examination of the new cuts and bruises sustained during some cutthroat game of 19-a-side at playtime. He often came home with full-blown dressings applied by matron during injury time. I did not worry overly much about this. Knees are blessedly self-repairing. Trousers, however, are not. And I am no use whatsoever with a needle and thread. I suspect I may end up giving all the money that used to go on shorts to Asda anyway. Unless anyone out there has a reasonably-priced trouser-knee repair service I should know about?