Best Foot Forward

Dear O’h dear and Lovely Tea Jenny,

Tonight Youngest Mini Princess went into a bit of a panic. The reason? She is going away in three days and ‘WE HAVEN’T PACKED MY CASE’.

‘Ok, we can do it now but there’s still loads of time’.

My relaxed attitude to the packing for this trip is a sign that I have come a long way in the last few years.

When Eldest Mini Princess went on her first ever school trip. It was for four nights to an outdoor centre in the middle of February. I went into major sock panic. The required kit list said to bring ‘lots and lots’ of outdoor socks. There was a parents meeting about the trip where this point was emphasised ‘You need to pack more than you think’. To be honest, this is incredibly poor advice for your average over thinker with borderline OCD. I started out buying six pairs. That seemed reasonable. Until my brain went into ‘flowchart mode’. What if they did more than one water activity per day? What if it was so cold she needed to wear 2 pairs at a time? WTF does ‘lots’ even mean? I then checked the weather forecast and it was due to snow for the whole time which put my brain into meltdown.

THREE times I was back in outdoor shops buying more socks. I’m pretty sure the staff in Trespass thought I had a sock fetish. By this point, I had also done a straw poll of the other parents to determine the ‘optimum sock level’. In the end, I sent her away with sixteen (no it’s not a typo) pairs of socks for which I was mercilessly MOCKED. I will concede that they took up half of her case but that’s beside the point.

I felt VINDICATED when she returned and told me that she was the ONLY person with warm feet on the gorge walk as she had doubled up. I completely ignored the fact that there were lots of unworn socks which came back in the suitcase.

I still maintain that ‘lots’ is a very poor way of quantifying anything.

C