Starting Work

Carefree, earlier in the Summer

There’s a nip in the evening air and the nights are drawing in.  Term has started and I am madly preparing lessons.

But it’s only when I take a peep at FaceBook that I realise what I have forgotten to do. 

When the children started primary school I took a photo of them with forced smiles on their tiny worried faces. 

When they went along to big school, the same story – little faces peeping out from massive blazers.

However, over the last couple of weeks, both Perran and Carenza have started jobs in London and I didn’t take the pictures!  First day at work.

How could I have been so remiss?

This time round, they ironed their own shirts and bought their own blazers and they look somehow more grown up than me now. 

I’m not sure they would have let me line them up on the doorstep for a happy snap. 

But as they stepped out into the next stage of their lives, I could recognise once again that same old brave but slightly apprehensive smile.