Carol’s Column

Cast off the gherkins

MOTHERS of the world unite. Cast off your pickled cucumber sandwiches, cakes that fail and cricket matches that never end. For you have nothing to lose other than your sanity.

I realised all was lost — the late-morning sleep-ins, the hazy, lazy days of summer — and that it was that time of the year again when a truck-load of brown paper was delivered to the house.

"You've made a mistake," I growled to the delivery man who staggered to the front door, wading through the dogs, cats, one legged-tricycle and other general debris that forms the welcome mat in the puce-bricked driveway.

My youngest unmarried son admitted he'd placed the order.

"Ma, last year I was the only boy in St 1 who covered his books with toilet paper."

And so began the new school year. While the other provinces are still baking on beaches and braaing in backyards, the Transvaal schools are back to the grindstone. And why not? Why shouldn't we have these appalling long unbalanced terms with ridiculously short holidays in between?

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At 8 am next morning, armed with several credit cards in case one ran out, cash and a cheque book, purely for show you understand, we set out on the school uniform bit.

Later, much later that day, the chief financial asset of the family returned from work. He burst into the house not even pausing with his customary "hiya" for the duck.

"What the hell is that parked in my new stainless steel and asbestos carport that took me seven months to build. It's making the most ghastly noise, it smells and it's creating manure on the all-weather carpeting."

"Ah yes, that's my new form of transport," I replied. "I traded my car in."

"You what?" he shouted rather loudly.

Unperturbed by the chartreuse colour of his nose blending with the purple of his somewhat extended forehead, I added gaily: "Yes, I traded it in for three school blazers, six pairs of longs with itch-proof inners, four pairs of shoes with built-up heels for flat feet, fallen arches and knock-knees inherited from your side of the family. Two yellow dresses, eight shirts, several ties, four sandwich boxes and four flasks."

My man was speechless: "You're mad," he said.

I could only bow my head with pride.

"What was wrong with Barry's blazer?" he wanted to know. "He's been wearing the lining without the blazer for the past two terms, why change now?"

"I want him to be part of a flock," I said.

Meanwhile in the carport, Angus was braying and honking for hay.

The kids took the wheelbarrow to the Zoo Lake fields and brought back the cricket pitch, conveniently rolled and ready for use.

We unpacked it for Angus, who gobbled away as if he'd not had a square meal for a week.

The day before school started was traumatic.

In between stitching labels, covering books and repairing satchels, there was barely time to cut the boys' hair.

Eventually I got them in a half-Nelson on the kitchen stool and shaved their heads bald to conform with the "short back and sides" directive issued by their high school.

By 11 pm that night, it was all systems go.

"Do you think school is necessary?" I asked my husband as we snuggled together under our quilted allergy-free duvet.

"Who knows?" he pondered. "Look where it's got us."

At that moment the phone rang.

"Could you please put your dog inside?" said an irate voice at the other end. "It's making the most peculiar noises."

We duly put Angus in the playroom where he spent a quiet night chewing on the sofa.

Next morning, Ralph fed Angus at the crack of dawn and tethered him to the cart. Both younger children refused to go to school with Angus, which I felt was pretty ungrateful under the circumstances.

It took me half an hour to make 24 pickled gherkin, cream cheese and peanut-butter sandwiches with a temperamental loaf of bread that kept curling at the corners.

At breakfast my spouse issued an ultimatum: "Either Angus goes or I go. The playroom is not big enough for him, me and his droppings."

Things were getting tense. Barry and Ralph biked off to school in the already hot sun, weighed down by their compulsory, heavy, thick wool and Trevira pants, thicker blazers and ties that strangled their adolescent Adam's apples.

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They looked so smart with the sweat dripping on to their lapels.

They came home full of the joys of school with 32 books to cover in brown paper and plastic, 32 pencils to sharpen, four homework books to buy and orders for cheese and tomato or chicken mayonnaise sandwiches in the future.

There were 12 forms to fill in ranging from tuck shop duty lists to willing-moms-wanted-for-sports fixtures-teas and in the words of my daughter: "You MUST sign them all, Mummy, otherwise I can't go to school tomorrow."

I seem to have mislaid that application form to join the Foreign Legion. Oh well, roll on 1980.

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