“You’re always running!” Mary told me as she dodged out of the way so I could shoot past, "Whenever I see you you're running!"
She’s not wrong. For someone who is most definitely not a runner, I do a lot of running. Running behind schedule, running around like a headless chicken, running low, running late – that kind of running.
The school run is the most frequent example of my running. For most people, the school run is a run only in name, but for me, it is an actual full-on dash.
Two days a week, I drop my children off at 8.55 to begin my own job at 9.10. This involves an actual and very public race between school and car outside the boys' school, then arriving at my work to fly past the member of staff stationed at the front of my school to scoop up late-comers. Similarly, at the end of the day, a couple of days a week I finish teaching at 3.05 and need to collect at 3.25, which after packing up normally means another public run, appearing at the boys’ classroom doors out of breath and apologetic.
I recently realised another local mum with children at both schools (mine and the boys’) does the same after school route, and I looked at her in surprise: “Wow – you got here quickly!”
“So did you!” she pointed out. She’s right but it never occurred to me that someone else would be mad enough to try to do the same.
Once, my students were doing an assessment in the last period, and I’d not foreseen the need to give some of them extra time which would mean staying behind after school. As I thundered out of the building in a fluster, a member of support staff called after me, “You’ve got the look of a woman late to the school gates. Will your child be the last lonely face in the classroom?” She wasn’t wrong either.
At school I clatter around corridors in heels I wear to make sure that I’m not the shortest person in the building (once they hit Year 8 I stand no chance of competing). I like to fit in things I can at break and lunch: book clubs and creative writing clubs and events, and then zoom back to the class room to teach, wondering when will be the next opportunity for a comfort stop. Today I ate my lunch at 4pm when I got home, with my youngest stealing my grapes. On Tuesday, I realised I was somehow triple-booked for after school, dashed to a meeting still in my hi-vis vest from duty, and then ran off for the next thing. But it all just about worked out.
During lockdown, we got into the habit of ‘daily exercise’ which somehow later merged in our language into the ‘daily mile’ that was practised at the boys’ school. During last year’s winter lockdown, I declared that at lunch we would all run up and down our (very short) road three times to break up the tedium of our all being stationed on different devices around the house during the school day. This did not make me popular and we very quickly gave up on the plan. But it happened often enough that a neighbour inquired if we had employed an au pair as she kept seeing a flash of hair followed by the boys rushing past her window, and I have never been more complimented in my life.
I can’t even blame my circumstances for my current state of running around. Plenty of people have much more demanding jobs, and besides, I’ve always been in a rush. At my wedding, my mum made a speech which included stories of my dashing about; she said in it she could write a book about all the trains I had nearly caught. (Fortunately, the frequency of trains where we lived in Manchester make this less disastrous than it sounds).
I think a lot of this stems from my aforebloggedon FOMO, (https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-acronyms) and a desire just to fit in as much as I can from life. A lot of the time it works out and I get to squeeze in the things I hoped to; sometimes it really doesn’t, like trying to fit in a friend’s 21st birthday party before arriving late to the college ball and realising my gown was locked in an inaccessible room; or running two holidays back-to-back so I went Tunisia-England-Scotland in a few hours without going home in the middle and somehow mislaid my Tunisian passport in the process, which proved fairly disastrous and expensive and drawn-out. On the other hand, once I planned to do Oxford-Cambridge-Manchester in a day for different events, and it all somehow just about worked out, despite getting stuck on the A14 in a snowstorm, and the trains being mostly cancelled.
My long-suffering husband has quite a different approach to scheduling. He likes to be prepared, to arrive early to everything, and to leave space on the calendar for downtime. For me, a blank calendar day is an excuse to dream up an outing. The boys use the phrase, "That sounds a bit hectic." and they haven't learnt it from me. (More on balancing contrasting needs here: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-balancing-needs)
I’m approaching 40 and maybe I’ll slow down, but I just can’t work out what I’d be prepared to compromise on. Put the boys into after school care on more days so I don’t have to do the after school race? Well, you’d have to meet my home-loving boys, or see the cost of after school club, to realise why that’s not the most viable plan.
Even now, it’s a Friday night and for once there is nothing on; no sleepovers happening upstairs, no piles of books to mark, nothing to be up for in a hurry in the morning, and the house is reasonably orderly thanks to a visit from the cleaner today, so I thought I’d fill it with a blog. Which just about justifies squeezing in another gratuitous 'Hamilton' reference.
But now I'd better run off to bed...
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