Lynn O’Rourke: Bank Holiday confusion

BANK holidays always seem to throw our household off balance.

The morning routine is forgotten during that solitary day off, it just adds confusion to our already hectic mornings. A poorly child the following day means a last-minute change to child care and I’m running late. Determined not to play catch-up the rest of the week, on Wednesday we’re throwing bags, lunches, scooters and origami show and tell into the car in a frenzy. Then we remember the kids and pile them in too. Pulling up to park, there is an onimous crunch. We get out to the even more worrying hiss of our front tyre deflating. Not in that slow, nail-puncture kind of way, where you might at least be able to drive for a bit, but in a ferocious, discarded glass jar of baby food 
impaled on your front wheel kind of way.

We stand gaping at it, which, of course, is enormously helpful when trying not to be late for school/work/meetings. Daughter Number 1 and I take off and we make it in time, thus sparing her the embarrassment of telling the frankly unbelievable “sorry I’m late but we ran over a jar of baby food” story. Daughter Number 2 is thrilled at scooting to Grandma’s house. We abandon my husband and the jaggy wheel. I’m late again and, even worse, now I’m going to have to be the one to use the highly improbable but unfortunately true, “sorry but we drove over a jar of baby food” excuse.