t seems like yesterday I was telling you how, despite being eminently well qualified to contribute, I had shown great resolve and resisted helping Jimmy write her first University assignment, a 500 word essay on the cultural differences between a handshake and a Namaste. In fact it was over a month ago but I was as good as my word and left her to her own devices for quite a while. I’m ashamed to say though that I wavered this week when I got another plaintive ( an understatement if ever there was ) call from her. This time, you see, it was proper crisis facing her in the form of a second, but longer essay ( have these universities no regard for undergraduates who might want to have a social life ), discussing cultural norms in burial rituals and required to be handed in the following day. I had to intervene really didn’t I? And it was quite interesting actually. Gone is the need to drag yourself and your hangover down to the library only to find that the one single copy of that crucial book has yet to be returned. Nowadays all it takes is a few taps on your computer keyboard and hey presto you can become an expert on any number of anthropological theories. The other insight from this experience - and those of you yet to go through this phase please note – is how it highlights that a GAP year or fifteen years as a stock broker can turn your brain to mush. I say this because after spending an hour on the phone with Jimmy, jointly researching, formatting, writing and refining her essay, I retired utterly spent to the sitting room for a well-deserved glass of wine and to catch up on what had been happening in the Australian Jungle.
Moments later Lottie, our 13 year old, a pupil at the renowned Perse Upper school in Cambridge ( go me ), strolled casually in and settled onto the sofa next to me and the dogs. “What have you been up to?” I summoned the energy to ask her during the adverts. “ Oh, just a bit of prep”, she said. Just a bit of prep????! Turned out she had rattled off a one thousand word essay entitled “ “ The Industrial Revolution was Overwhelmingly Beneficial For the People of Great Britain” How Far do you agree with this judgement?” . No tantrums. No cries for help. No biggie.
Talking of writing it appears that only Lottie is capable of completing an assignment without assistance. Hen rang me on her way back from Ashford where she had been fund raising for the Red Cross. She had taken the opportunity of the train journey to write a letter to Jimmy, despite finding herself squashed next to three elderly and rotund Chelsea supporters. Hold your tongue David. Don’t do it. Hen gives everyone the benefit of the doubt and talks to them too and by the time the letter was completed her three new best friends were fully involved in her epistle. So much so they each added a message to Jimmy, jointly signing off “respectfully yours, The Three Musketeers”. Says as much about Chelsea supporters as it does about my eldest daughter.
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