Mum, what’s calculus?

For many parents during Lockdown, while juggling work and video calls, there is also the requirement for home schooling.

I’m lucky, insomuch as my youngest kid is 27 and so there is no need to force him to conjugate French verbs; draw an ox-bow lake or help make scones.

However, I do wonder, should this home schooling have been happening when I was a school kid, in the early ‘70s – and how might my parents have coped?

I would have been at an immediate 50% disadvantage as my mum rarely attended school (evacuation to Dorset, where she said there wasn’t a single school, and then returning to London and the Blitz, when she wasn’t allowed to leave her flat until the end of the Korean War).  A consequence of these continuous absences meant she could barely add up and couldn’t spell.   This would have left my dad to have done maths and English.  My dad had a large vocabulary but was incredibly vituperative – I’d have returned to school as if I’d spent months in The Shed.  Maths would have invariably involved cigarettes: “If I have 20 Senior Service and buy another forty…” (his daily ration) “…what would I have?”  The answer is either a massive coronary or 60 – depending on what I’d learned in science.

My mum would have done biology.  She was stunningly attractive – blonde-haired, blue-eyed and two other massive assets – which weren’t spelling or adding up.  An afternoon’s shopping with her in and out of the shops along Balham High Road, where we lived, showed you, all too obviously, how boys and girls interact – bit like birds and bees.

Dad would have done geography as he’d served his National Service in Singapore and, after he was demobbed, travelled in an old taxi with several mates throughout NW Europe – not for the desire to travel, more to find cheap fags and learn how to swear in several different languages.

Neither parent knew a foreign language so I’d have to teach myself German (plus ça change as the Greeks would say).

History would have been revealing with my mum as she had a lot of history with the Balham tradespeople – no one got cheaper veg than my mum.

PE would have been dad teaching me leg breaks in an effort to make me a modern day Ramadhin and Valentine (only taller).

Music would have meant me learning the entire discography of Frank Sinatra; RE would have been me learning prayers to offer to God asking for less veg with every mealtime and careers advice would have entailed dad suggesting I try advertising and mum recommending I go on the game.  I haven’t got the legs for the latter, hence a career in advertising it was.

Is it playtime yet?