NotSheep

Wednesday morning: Barney did another French practice paper while I got organised to leave, and it quickly became clear that he had not been asleep early enough on Tuesday night. It was decided (by me, unilaterally) that he would be having an early night.

Late Wednesday morning: We attempted to leave town. First I discovered that the booster-seats were all in the other car (at Scratchy’s office), which meant adding another stop to our plans. Then when Barney was last out of the house, I asked him to lock the door - only to find, five minutes after we left, that he had left the front door wide open with the keys hanging in it. That meant heading home again, of course, and on the way we must have managed to get behind every kind of slows-you-down vehicle there is. A tractor, a street-sweeper, a learner driver, a double-decker bus (I have never seen a double-decker bus around here before!) - you name it, I was stuck behind it. We got home and I checked through the house and locked the door myself.

Bank, library…finally we managed to get out of town. I had one more stop to make before we really got moving, but when we did, we made good time. Barney and I talked as we drove, and he said he felt that he’d gained more from the process of preparing for the French GCSE than from the actual exams - which is how I feel too. He’s learned a lot about working out what examiners are looking for and making sure you give it to them, about making sure you answer what’s asked and planning out what you’re going to write, about preparation and revision, etc. He’s never done exams before - he left school before the first set of SATS would even have been done - so this has been a valuable experience for him.

There was great excitement from the boys as they realised that the peculiar-looking item on the back of the large pick-up truck we were overtaking was actually a climbing wall lying on its side. When we arrived at our friends’ home, Barney did one more practice paper before his friends arrived home from school and they all started bouncing about the house together.

In the evening our friends all had plans: a Scout/Cub sports evening, to which they’d invited Barney (but he needed an early night), George (but he didn’t think he was in the mood to cope without a meltdown) and Freddy (but he didn’t want to go if George wasn’t going). So we stayed at their house, I had a bath in their very deep bathtub (which, despite being very deep, still isn’t quite enough to cover my bump), and we all went to bed early. Seriously early. I think they arrived home shortly after 9, but we were all asleep before it.

Thursday morning: Friend A had offered to drive Barney to the school to sit his exam, to save me having to do so, and although I’d initially declined the offer, I changed my mind on Wednesday evening when I was feeling horrible and exhausted and contraction-y. So they left shortly after 8, and I stayed where I was and tried not to think too much about the exams. A couple of hours later, I got all the other boys packed up and into the car and went off to collect Barney. I took thank-you notes from Barney for the exams officer and the French teacher, who’ve both been so helpful about arranging this exam, along with a bottle of wine for each of them. The exams officer was surprised and pleased, and told me he’d had a look into the room when the exams were starting and Barney had seemed to be getting on with it all just fine. When asked if the school would be willing to facilitate other GCSEs in future for Barney, said they would - basically anything they do through the school that doesn’t involve coursework is probably okay, and maths (which is the most likely next subject Barney would sit) is definitely fine, because the exams officer also happens to be the maths teacher… While we were talking in reception, Barney came out with a smile on his face; he feels that yesterday’s papers went well. His friend J, who attends the school, came out with him, and begged for him to be allowed to stay over for a few more days, then, when I said no, begged to be allowed to come home with us

The French teacher was out of the school on an errand, but we left his wine and thank-you note in the office, and a while later I sent him a text-message thanking him for his help, and received a lovely text-message back saying “For goodness sake guys that is so very kind. It was a pleasure to have been able to help. Wishing you all bonnes vacances!”

We drove home without incident, and arrived back to the smell of fresh paint - the woodwork in the kitchen no longer lets the freshly-painted walls down

My friend K, with whom we stayed on Wednesday night, has had catheter ablation surgery (where they stick a needle up through your veins into your heart) twice this year - once in January, when they managed to perforate her pericardium, and again in February, when the surgery went more smoothly. As a result, she has a blood pressure monitor, which she kindly tossed my direction, to see if we could get a lower result than the midwives. The first few attempts, on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, produced high readings, and the highest one of all came on Thursday morning just as Barney would have been starting his exam papers (160/119 - scary at the best of times, but for someone whose usual BP is nearer 90/70, even moreso!) A few minutes after arriving home yesterday afternoon, I checked it again, and got a reading of 129/85. That’s a substantial drop by any standards! I checked (somewhat obsessively, I have to admit) throughout the afternoon and evening, and all the readings were between 120-something and 130-something systolic and between 70-something and 80-something diastolic. This is good news, as it indicates that the raised readings were more likely due to stress than any nasty physiological pregnancy-related process. Midwife has been on the phone this morning, asking when it would suit for her manager to visit me (answer: never, because there’s no justification for doing routine visits to women planning homebirths when you don’t do them for women planning hospital births!), and arranging to come out tomorrow morning - I’ll have a few more readings done before then

Right, time to get George and Freddy to start gathering items for Cub Camp, which starts this evening. We’ve made a good start to the packing - they’ve got a bag each. I wonder how much we’ll find of the things that are meant to go inside them…