Ballroom Dancing, Blur and Bad School

A while ago I kept banging on about the Pixies, since when I don't think I've mentioned music much. One of the things that gets me to put a cd* on is to drown out the awareness of the low-level noise coming from our neighbours. The random amateur carpentry games their 4 year old plays, the accelerating vocalisms of their baby. Not the shouty lady who rants at her husband, who we recently discovered has taken to peppering his gujarati with "fuck off". 50 years in this country, and the local dialect is rubbing off on him... No, we are blessed not only to live in a terrace, but one in which the party walls** on either side are Very Thin. So I'm listening to Think Tank, the massively vermillion-fabric'd cd Blur did about 9 years back. Damon Albarn and Kristin Hersh's voices are always good to re-tilt the axis in a mad day...

Because it has been one of those. Back in the swing of the World of Work, with a morning where the recent training actually came in useful in a fairly heavy situation, and where I'd got the 14 year old off to school. By bus for the first time. All good so far. And then his school sent an automated text that he'd got a detention to do that lunchtime... no explanation. And possibly the best way to ensure his continued enthusiasm to attend, with a less than 50% attendance so far this month.

No one at the end of the phone knew anymore than it was for "failing to follow instructions". Yes, that's why he's not been at school for the past year, etc, etc, and why he's under their monitoring... By now already late for the afternoon session I was working in, I got hold of someone who was able to tell me he'd walked out of school 2 hours previously. Although fairly confident his homing instinct, and desire for a quiet spot with his computer, would guarantee he'd be at home, I excused myself and went straight home to see what was what. After which I calmed myself down by catching the tail end of a programme about the coachload of ballroom dancers who'd been called in to be in the Magical Mystery Tour film.






* Too old to be trained to use an iPod. That's for when I'm 80. And I usually forget about 6Music.

** To non-Brit readers, that's a technical term for the bricks 'twixt you and the neighbours. Not a wall covered in lurex, Twister mats and balloons.