Surreal meeting

The heavens open as we are led through a maze of corridors and stairs to a room in the basement of the County Council building.  They don't even bother to sign us in.  

The attendees are an array of Social Workers, Youth Workers, an Educational Psychologist,  someone from the Education Department (chairing the meeting) , the mendacious Headmaster,  a Teacher, our friend D and Mr and Mrs Grasshopper.  

The purpose of the meeting is to find a "way forward" for Grasshopper Jr., although there seems to be "alternative" and powerful agendas elsewhere.  

For a change, I am the least nervous person in the room.  Everyone else is defensive, fidgety, evasive...

Mrs Education and Mr Mendacious Headmaster have a lot of boxes to tick, this being their main objective.  Mrs Social Worker and Mrs Supervisor want to wash their hands off us to put us in the hands of Miss Upbeat Youth Worker.  Mrs EP does not quite know why she is there, and Mr Teacher might as well have turned up with a gag, as his input was exactly 0.  

Usually I turn up very tame in these meetings, with just a bit of crying and a moderate display of emotional incontinence.  But not today.  Everybody else have fucked up so royally in their diverse overpaid roles that I feel firmly in control.  

Mendacious Headmaster lied (and admitted to his "error"), did not follow procedure, failed in an epic fashion on most of his responsibilities and got paid handsomely for all of it.  He went from pompous to defensive ("Am I under scrutiny?" - Well, yes! ) and finally to compliant and meek. 

Mrs Education Department also had to admit to not having found any provision (or a plan to get one) in the mere 5 months she had to that task.  Unfortunately, she failed to ask the two institutions closest to us....

Miss Upbeat Youth worker could only offer us a "Mickey Mouse" parenting course and the vague promise to try to secure one of two Youth Worker tattooed dudes for the occasional consumption of burgers with Grasshopper Jr in the hope that after a chat, he might abandon his dreams of a life of crime or the luxury life-style choice of "living off benefits". 

We were also told that we should downgrade our aspirations for Grasshopper Jr from  "achieving age-appropriate targets" to  "not dead" and "not in prison".  

Anyway, as we were not asked to sign in and nobody took minutes, this meeting may have not happened.