As I’ve mentioned before, our eldest has started a new school and this has given me lots of time to wait around at the train station for her – and catch up on my reading. A Monday is the one day of the week when we have no childcare (4 children and running our own business means that a nanny is the best option – and she works Tuesday to Friday every week).

This morning husband did the train drop off. Today was the day the train was 25 minutes late. He will not have been reading a book (he doesn’t do reading – unless it’s work or rugby team related, or trying to find an edition of NCIS or one of the Bad Boys films on the Sky planner) but will have used that half an hour or so to start the days work – emails / calls aplenty. Now he was also supposed to do pick up – but the delay to the start of his day meant a later train back from London – so I had to take the 3 younger siblings to pick their big sister up.

They were INSISTENT that they should wait on the platform rather than in the comfort of the car – even the bribe of another viewing of Frozen on DVD would not entice them to remain in the vehicle.

Here they are waiting excitedly:

This was before:

a) a lady was struggling with a pushchair, and loads of commuters and teenagers just watched her – so I had the 2 year old in one arm and helped carry her pushchair up the stairs with the other

b) an overtired 4 year old (first full day at school) had a full on meltdown because she didn’t want to walk quickly up the stairs to go home once we’d rendezvous-ed with her big sister

c) the 2 year old stropped to be put down and proceeded to run off down the road in the opposite direction from the car

d) the 4 year old wouldn’t be strapped back in to her car seat unless it was moved from the middle row where I can easily do the seat belt to the back row by her brother

e) my phone started ringing with a problem at work

Roll on tomorrow when I can sit in the car on my own and read my book after a nice relaxing day in the office……………