All Around Me Are

When the kids were in 4th Year and 1st Year, I crashed our car right where that round-a-bout is. 

There were originally traffic lights that took over 16 weeks to erect, which meant leaving the house in the morning to get to work, took an extra 20 minutes to be sure of catching the temporary lights at the right time. 

The lady in front of me started to go through the lights, and then thought the better of it, for whatever reason, and I went straight into the back of her stationary arse. 

You could tell who had the better car.  Her car was unscathed, ours was crumpled.   Si was sitting a few cars back in his car, and came running forward to make sure we were okay. 

Which we were. 

However, the kids were late for Music lessons - hence the reason we were rushing.   They had classes before lessons from the Wicked Witch of the West.   This woman terrified both of them. 

Yes, big 6 foot Boy was terrified by this 5'0" scrap of a human, and Tooli was rendered mute from Tuesday Night til Wednesday lunchtime until the lesson was over. 

Both had coping mechanisms to deal with it.   

And we got through it.  

Don't get me wrong, I tried,  I went to her.  "My Children are terrified of your teaching methods, your demeanor, I'm going to have to stop them coming". 

"Don't be ridiculous" she said.  

"I'm actually a bit scared of you myself".  I said.  

And she looked at me, standing a whole 5 inches taller than her and a good 3 stone... and laughed, and said: "don't be ridiculous" (obviously came from the school of don't tell children they are stupid). 

And then she looked more closely and saw how close I was to tears, and said, "Oh okay then, I'll try and tone it down a bit". 

But she never did. 

She remained ferocious, intimidating, unapproachable (well to me anyways I never went near her again).   But the kids music skills were amazing. 

One thing I hated about that woman - I bought Tooli a clarinet.  And she told Tooli, "i know your mum thinks she was doing you a favour, but in order to produce beautiful music you need a good instrument, this isn't a good instrument". 

That year, at the Ayrshire Music festival, Tooli was singled out for the beautiful tones, and melodies she was producing; from that sub-standard clarinet I bought her.   

I made sure I pointed that out to her.