First day of Grade 6 for someone… no, not her

Ottawacker Jr. started Grade 6 today and is in a 6/7 split, whatever that means. He’s only got another 20 kids in his class though, so he is happy about that. Got up early, made his breakfast while Mrs. Ottawacker made his lunch… No sign of the child he was supposed to accompany to school, about which he was very happy.
 
On Friday, a neighbour had called round asking if he would mind walking in with her son – as her son was starting school that day and couldn’t be relied on to get himself there on his own. As her son is, for all intents and purposes, on the lookout for a small village of which he can be idiot, Ottawacker Jr. was not enthusiastic about the idea. But he said yes, albeit not very, erm, enthusiastically. I was a little miffed – as I hadn’t stepped in to say it might not be the best of ideas – but after a few conversations, during which words like “community responsibility” and “helping others” were bandied about, we both came to accept it, with resignation, but acceptance. You can obviously tell who was delivering the conversations.
 
This turned to annoyance a little later on, when the said child failed to turn up and there was no communication from the parent (who already has her own village role, it has to be said). It transpired that he hadn’t been accepted into the school for some obscure reason and so, favour no longer needing to be curried, she had just blithely not condescended to tell us (which is fair enough) or Ottawacker Jr. (which quite frankly isn’t). She was, admittedly, apologetic to him later on in the day, but lines have been crossed and that will be the last time I run down the road with a pat of butter or a cup of sugar. Harrumph.
 
Anyway, his day had got off to a brilliant start and, it has to be said, when he came home, he was very happy. His teacher is nice (and a man, for a change), his classmates are fun and studious, and he gets to do several lessons of music per week. It really couldn’t have gone much better. So, I sat him down and read him a short story from The Stars and Under, which I saw I had neglected to return to my high school teacher in 19XX, and then decided we were all going out for a cheap but adventurous dinner at the closest and least salubrious place we could find that didn’t serve burgers or pizza.
 
We ended up at Atyab Shee Resto, which was a small Lebanese restaurant close by, and had starters of hummus and baba ghanouj, then wraps. I had something called sujoq, which was a spicy sausage of some description… and was very nice. Not sure we’d make it a regular haunt, but it was good enough to return to. All in all, a good day.