Unforeseen dilemmas

The children are busy growing up. The summer is ended and Toby has started school. Yes, that's right. My tiny little, one month premature, mop-headed six pound baby is wearing a shirt and tie and V-necked jumper and Start-Rite shoes (I do so want him to start rite) and trotting off to Reception, away from my soft and loving arms into the charge of the iron-faced Mrs. Ferris.

Who is Mrs. Ferris that she should get my boy for four and a half hours every day?

There are thirty children in the class. That's nine minutes per child. Bearing in mind that lunch is one hour and playtime twenty minutes, that's six minutes per child. Six minutes! How's he meant to learn to read in six minutes?

Beatrice, meanwhile, spends long minutes writing stories and teaching her baby how to use the potty. Her baby, she informs me, does not have a willy. Toby, on the other hand, does have a willy. Please stop pulling Toby's willy, I asked her yesterday when they were in the bath.

Oh, said Toby airily, she doesn't have to.

And people said I was lucky to have one of each.