My eyes popped open instantly, my heart was racing and I started to sit up in bed. It was 6 this morning and it's a Saturday. I get a lie-in until 8 as football doesn't start until 9.
Unfortunately, however, that is how I wake up almost every day at the moment, that constant, persistent feeling of incompleteness and stress, there is always something to do and I usually haven't done it. More often than not at the moment, when I switch the alarm off on my phone I find that I have been in the middle of composing an email, listing an ebay item or trying to write a blog as I fell asleep the night before.
"You can't multi-task." My husband tells me. "It just means everything gets done inefficiently." He's all about the efficiency my husband, he finds it very difficult to understand any of the logic that goes into my decisions.
For example, when I return at the end of a long Tuesday and collect the children from after school group (which takes at least 35 minutes; Pip has a picture to finish, Rex hasn't had his go on the Wii and Max has been struck temporarily deaf) what should be my first task? There are ten minutes to feed all 3 before Brownies. Usually the slow cooker has been turning Tesco Value cow flavoured pieces into steak stew, the bread maker has produced a pale, but perfectly edible granary loaf and 3 children can sit and negotiate about how much constitutes "enough" until Pip has to transfer the lot to a plastic tub and "eat it on the way".
But every now and again I forget, or there's an unexpected meeting, or I got up too late and then it is necessary to slide the washing up away to the end of one worktop while I squeeze in a chopping board to get something on the go while I hear Rex read and remind Max to complete his homework and Pip to empty her share of the dishwasher which she didn't do this morning as she was too busy labelling her bedroom with pink post its.
Even in that time I will be expected to stop, mid-cook, to get three drinks, wipe one bottom, establish what has been accidentally erased from my email while someone was "trying to get on mathletics", empty the bin, feed the cat, give Dan an update on my day, take a phone call from a union member, ring the insurance company, persuade my mum that now is a fine time to ring and not to ring back later when I'm less busy - because then I'll be marking, get a white wash on because someone has been stock piling dirty school T shirts in his room, order a repeat prescription before the doctor's closes, get Rex to set the table to stop him stealing Max's sword, smooth things over when Rex gets Max "the wrong fork" cook something vegetarian for me and sew on the interest badge I forgot.
Women don't multi task because we think we can, or it's sensible. Often we agree with you guys, it would be better to concentrate on one thing at a time, but I have ten things to do. All before 5:30 when normal people apparently finish work, and if I don't start them all they won't stand a chance of getting done. And I'm sorry, darling, if I didn't finish loading the dishwasher, but I was interrupted 3 times by each child who tried to ask you a question, but you were busy.
All of which preamble makes me wonder how Nicky Morgan gets a damn thing done these days. What with forcing every school to become an Academy and testing spellings and connectives at Key Stage 1, added to scrapping the use of baseline tests, it's no wonder mistakes are made. But Nicky Morgan isn't just scrapping the Local Education Authorities, if all of these academies go badly - and many of them already are, the secretary of state has ultimate responsibility. The department that accidentally printed the real tests online. The secretary of state who hand wrote "sincerily" at the end of the letter. (I haven't yet been able to prove that it should have been "faithfully" anyway - but wouldn't that be nice?) As Michael Rosen has so reasonably demonstrated in his comments on the subject; there is nothing wrong with it, as far as we're concerned, but we've been told that our opinions don't matter. If you have chosen that word as a key word on the list - and it probably should be - it's been on my list of commonly misspelt words for GCSE for 20 years, then make sure you spell that one right. It's a trick to play on the examiners, I tell my students, you may not know every word but learn the ones that everyone else spells wrong. It's the same problem with some PE teachers, they tend to become heads of year because they're the only ones with the time, but if you've got an English department next door, then for goodness' sake get one of them to check the letter before you send it home. They'll love it. We're all pedants. Which is probably why we're all enjoying this so much. We have been held to account for so much over the last few years that we are relishing the chance to see someone else get into trouble for a change.
Anyway, I'd better stop writing and get some sleep, after I've emptied the dishwasher at least, I've got an early start tomorrow, it's Sunday, St George's Day Parade, now where's that Promise Badge?
