Back to School
Good grief, is it September already? How time does fly, whether one is enjoying oneself or not. Time was when this week would have been full of last minute purchases and adjustments to school uniforms and equipment. Does your blazer fit? Are you sure? Are your trousers long enough? Is there anywhere near here still stocking trousers in your new length?
Because we all know the thing, well, if we're mothers we know it. The shops come up with the new Back to School stuff even before summer term is finished these days. Sensible mothers do not buy school uniform for the following year then, or even at the beginning of the holidays, not even if it's three or four sizes larger than the last lot of uniform. Six weeks of freedom from school, trips to places educational and fun, or just plain fun, time spent playing with friends, crafternoons (what we called afternoons spent doing various kinds of crafts - including hand-printing with dyes onto fabric to make bedroom curtains. I still have the curtains. Only my handprints are the same size now!) and generally lazing about seem to act like fertilizer on plants. Children grow like weeds, upwards, outwards, their feet shoot out and around.
Mothers who are sensible, or who have been caught out before, generally wait until the couple of weeks of the summer holidays before trying to buy this year's uniform. Knowing all the while that if they've teenage children they'll have probably outgrown it by Christmas, if not February half-term or Easter at the latest. Specific school outfit shops know about this and stock up for the end-of-holiday rush, if a tad expensive. Other shops, running a season ahead as they do, have long since shifted most of their Back to School stuff and you are left with what they have left, if a lot cheaper. You pays your money . . .
On the whole I am in favour of school uniforms, provided that they are not too 'exclusive' to a particular school. White, grey or pale blue shirts or polo shirts, grey, navy or black skirts or trousers, fine. One can run to a sweatshirt or two with embroidered logo provided the other bits of kit aren't too bank busting. The numbers of sweatshirts required per school generally keeps the price reasonable.
Plain black or grey blazers are good for secondary schools. Fancy striped numbers reminiscent of Edwardian boating or cricketing outifts are not. They're exclusive and hence expensive. Ok, so maybe you've managed to fork out for the fees for a private education for your sprog. That's your choice after all. But having to fork out five or ten times the price for all the required kit - hockey, netball, cricket clothes; science overall; art overall . . . Heck, our sprogs' schools specified a very large shirt, preferably with their name on it.
That's one thing which doesn't change with school uniform, each item must be clearly. labelled with its owner's name, and rightly so. The nights before school starts I've spent sewing name tags into items of uniform!
Of course, the other thing about school uniform is that it doesn't half sort our getting ready in the morning. Is it a school day? Then put on your school uniform, Dear. No arguing about whether this item of clothing is 'suitable' for school. No tantrums because a favourite garment is still in the wash. And no sulks because your offspring wore that last week and a couple of classmates said that it was totally unfashionable (for all it was high fashion the previous month) Peer pressure is a terrible thing. Training your children to be resilient takes time, care and a lot of persistence and above all love. And why is it that teenagers in particular will try to get away with all sorts of individualised variations on their school uniforms, yet the minute they change into 'civvies' they all seem to be wearing exactly the same thing? I mean, if you all wear the same stuff then isn't that a uniform, by definition if nothing else?
Then there are the 'fashion' modifications which can be made to straight school uniform by the (usually teenaged) child - rolling skirts around the waistband to achieve that fashionably skimpy look. Tying ties with ridiculously short wide ends, and concomitantly long narrow ends stuffed down the inside of the shirt., but not showing below the hem of your skirt! Trying to get by with a tie apparently pulled up to the neckline but with the top button of the shirt artfully undone underneath. Trying to get away with trousers worn as low on the hips as they'll go, for all they might have been designed to sit around your waist . . . The list goes on. I didn't necessarily indulge in such mods. D and S didn't necessarily either - or they'd un-mod-ded by the time they got home. You don't tell your parents everything. After all they might try to do something about certain things, and you just know that would only make them worse.
I don't really understand the parents that say that school uniform is expensive. As I've mentioned, the generic stuff is generally inexpensive and pretty durable. Some manufacturers are making the school trousers and skirts in a Teflon-like fabric which just shrugs off spills of paint or food. Now if they would make jumpers/sweatshirts which are resistant to that white school glue . . ! Mind you, if you're going to otherwise dress your child in 'designer' gear, or pseudo--designer' gear - that's expensive.
Ah well, that was all years ago for us. Now we only know when it is term time because we see or hear people passing between 8 and 9 am and again between 2.45 and 3.30pm, and the local paper is delivered post 3.30pm, rather than just after 9.30am as it is during the holidays. I reckon they'll be back tomorrow, or Thursday at the latest. Come next week the weather may well improve and the torrential rain we've been having recently may be replaced by sunshine - good thing too, we've not had that much of it this summer.
Do you have anyone going Back to School, Dear Reader? Have fun getting your uniforms!
Because we all know the thing, well, if we're mothers we know it. The shops come up with the new Back to School stuff even before summer term is finished these days. Sensible mothers do not buy school uniform for the following year then, or even at the beginning of the holidays, not even if it's three or four sizes larger than the last lot of uniform. Six weeks of freedom from school, trips to places educational and fun, or just plain fun, time spent playing with friends, crafternoons (what we called afternoons spent doing various kinds of crafts - including hand-printing with dyes onto fabric to make bedroom curtains. I still have the curtains. Only my handprints are the same size now!) and generally lazing about seem to act like fertilizer on plants. Children grow like weeds, upwards, outwards, their feet shoot out and around.
Mothers who are sensible, or who have been caught out before, generally wait until the couple of weeks of the summer holidays before trying to buy this year's uniform. Knowing all the while that if they've teenage children they'll have probably outgrown it by Christmas, if not February half-term or Easter at the latest. Specific school outfit shops know about this and stock up for the end-of-holiday rush, if a tad expensive. Other shops, running a season ahead as they do, have long since shifted most of their Back to School stuff and you are left with what they have left, if a lot cheaper. You pays your money . . .
On the whole I am in favour of school uniforms, provided that they are not too 'exclusive' to a particular school. White, grey or pale blue shirts or polo shirts, grey, navy or black skirts or trousers, fine. One can run to a sweatshirt or two with embroidered logo provided the other bits of kit aren't too bank busting. The numbers of sweatshirts required per school generally keeps the price reasonable.
Plain black or grey blazers are good for secondary schools. Fancy striped numbers reminiscent of Edwardian boating or cricketing outifts are not. They're exclusive and hence expensive. Ok, so maybe you've managed to fork out for the fees for a private education for your sprog. That's your choice after all. But having to fork out five or ten times the price for all the required kit - hockey, netball, cricket clothes; science overall; art overall . . . Heck, our sprogs' schools specified a very large shirt, preferably with their name on it.
That's one thing which doesn't change with school uniform, each item must be clearly. labelled with its owner's name, and rightly so. The nights before school starts I've spent sewing name tags into items of uniform!
Of course, the other thing about school uniform is that it doesn't half sort our getting ready in the morning. Is it a school day? Then put on your school uniform, Dear. No arguing about whether this item of clothing is 'suitable' for school. No tantrums because a favourite garment is still in the wash. And no sulks because your offspring wore that last week and a couple of classmates said that it was totally unfashionable (for all it was high fashion the previous month) Peer pressure is a terrible thing. Training your children to be resilient takes time, care and a lot of persistence and above all love. And why is it that teenagers in particular will try to get away with all sorts of individualised variations on their school uniforms, yet the minute they change into 'civvies' they all seem to be wearing exactly the same thing? I mean, if you all wear the same stuff then isn't that a uniform, by definition if nothing else?
Then there are the 'fashion' modifications which can be made to straight school uniform by the (usually teenaged) child - rolling skirts around the waistband to achieve that fashionably skimpy look. Tying ties with ridiculously short wide ends, and concomitantly long narrow ends stuffed down the inside of the shirt., but not showing below the hem of your skirt! Trying to get by with a tie apparently pulled up to the neckline but with the top button of the shirt artfully undone underneath. Trying to get away with trousers worn as low on the hips as they'll go, for all they might have been designed to sit around your waist . . . The list goes on. I didn't necessarily indulge in such mods. D and S didn't necessarily either - or they'd un-mod-ded by the time they got home. You don't tell your parents everything. After all they might try to do something about certain things, and you just know that would only make them worse.
I don't really understand the parents that say that school uniform is expensive. As I've mentioned, the generic stuff is generally inexpensive and pretty durable. Some manufacturers are making the school trousers and skirts in a Teflon-like fabric which just shrugs off spills of paint or food. Now if they would make jumpers/sweatshirts which are resistant to that white school glue . . ! Mind you, if you're going to otherwise dress your child in 'designer' gear, or pseudo--designer' gear - that's expensive.
Ah well, that was all years ago for us. Now we only know when it is term time because we see or hear people passing between 8 and 9 am and again between 2.45 and 3.30pm, and the local paper is delivered post 3.30pm, rather than just after 9.30am as it is during the holidays. I reckon they'll be back tomorrow, or Thursday at the latest. Come next week the weather may well improve and the torrential rain we've been having recently may be replaced by sunshine - good thing too, we've not had that much of it this summer.
Do you have anyone going Back to School, Dear Reader? Have fun getting your uniforms!