Come Back Betty - All Is Forgiven!

Where does all the time go? Where?? Answers on a postcard to the usual address please.

I ask this question for two reasons: firstly, because I've been AWOL from my small but perfectly formed blog for far too long (you may beg to differ, dear reader) and, secondly, because we parcelled daughter-dear, Tizer, off to her first day at school today.

"Too soon!" I hear you cry, and you'd be quite right - she's not even reached the ripe old age of 3 yet - but we're not talking about sending her to board at a grey and foreboding convent school clinging grimly to a windswept moor somewhere with nought but an oversize trunk containing countless pairs of woolly tights and a term's supply of ginger beer to keep her company. Of course not. That's what we have in store for her next year, unless she bucks her ideas up... For now, for two days a week, she'll be attending her nice new nursery school, and very giddy she is about it too.

We took her out of the day nursery she's been going to for the last year or so at the beginning of the summer, as she was clearly starting to out-grow the increasingly poor childcare she was being provided with courtesy of our local council. It started off OK, and was pretty much ideal for her when she joined just after her first birthday.

However, thanks to the locale of Mrs V's career choice - she works for the local education department - it meant she was based in the centre of one of the largest council estates and most deprived areas in Northern Europe, and we thought it was probably best that she moved on before she started swearing as much as some of her fellow students. No really, you'd be shocked at what some of them can come out with (I was). And when they installed smoking shelters for the four year-olds, that really was the final straw.

So, this morning dawned bright and breezy as a recumbent Tizer was roused from her beauty sleep earlier than she's used to - which didn't go down especially well - then neatly tugged and pulled into her first ever school uniform. Cue emotional parents and a rather non-plussed toddler holding determinedly to Betty, her erstwhile forgotten doll who all of a sudden appeared to be playing centre-stage in bolstering Tizer's confidence today.

As it was her first day, both Mrs V and I wanted to escort her and help her settle in, and I think we were all pretty nervous on the drive over. Will she fit in? Will she make friends? Will there be tears? If there are tears, will the other parents think that I'm soft for blubbing uncontrollably or will I be able to pass it off as 'something in my eye'?

As it was, she was fine (and so was I, mercifully). She was shown where her coat hook and the box that all the children put their hats in are (which, considering the price of the damned things, should have its own security guard and attack dog). She quite quickly settled herself down with another little girl who introduced herself as Neve. Rather disturbingly, Neve clearly had a stinking cold as was evidenced by the three inch, bright green snot slug making it's way across her top lip, so we'll all be coughs and sniffles around ours within the week I should imagine.

This has been one of my bug-bears (pun intended) since Tizer first started day-nursery. Never, in all my years, have I had so many colds, sore throats, coughs and stomach bugs since daughter-dear started mixing regularly with other peoples' diseased children: Kiddie Bugs. They're different to normal viruses, and much more contagious.

There's clearly some sort of morphing process that goes on with your everyday virus once a child under 5 gets hold of it that makes it more virulent and last much longer than it really should. For adults anyway. Kids spend two days apparently oblivious to the fact that they have a quart of luminous green mucous, like the discharge from that slimey character out of Ghostbusters, sliding relentlessly from their nose and down their top lips. Then - after a couple of days, three at most - it clears up. The last time I got a virus off Tizer, it lasted 3 months! Three stinking months! Where's the fairness in that?

Anyway, all went well with Tizer's first day. The only casualty appears to have been poor old Betty, who seems to have gone Missing In Action, hardly an auspicious start to her school career. We keep asking Tizer where Betty is, and she obligingly tells us, "Betty in tree", so it looks like a search party may have to be formed tomorrow to scour the grounds for a small, damp and rather cold plastic doll. On the upside, she did come home with her hat, which was my main concern (did I mention just how much they charge for a two-year old's school hat? Someone really is making an obscene profit down at the local school outfitters).

Day 2 tomorrow and, with everyone hoping that Betty can be found safe and sound, we're looking forward to another successful day. If things go well, she'll progress to the 'Pre-Prep' part of the school in January (thankfully they wear much the same uniform - and hats!). Then proper Prep School and so on until she takes her A Levels sometime in 2024, assuming we can keep up to the cost of uniform and fees. It doesn't bear thinking about does it? As the song goes, 'one day at a time, sweet Jesus' - or Mohammed, or Vishnu - we atheists aren't all that picky, as long as everything is going our way...