The shock of being home
After a fortnight, we’re starting to get used to the shock of being back in England. Things
like the cost of everything. After living for a year on a budget, it is a bit of a shock to pull into a motorway service station, and pay a
week's food budget for a meal and drink. It's been an expensive time in other ways too - we've had to buy two cars, one for me to get to work,
one for Sarah at home.
The other thing that we have been trying to resolve is a place for Charlotte back at her old school in September. When we applied in January, we were turned down because we didn't live in the village at the time of the application. But the school told us to lodge an appeal, which was just a formality, and we'd then be able to get a place for her. Ah, they said, don't worry about timing - you can lodge your appeal when you get back to the UK. So we have. And it looks like the appeal isn't going to be heard until after the new term has started in September. Call me naïve but I'd assumed that the panels that decide this sort of thing would want to meet in time to allow children to go to the right school at the beginning of term. Instead its looking increasingly likely that Charlotte will have to go to a different school for her first week or two. So instead of both Emily and Charlotte walking to school, we may have to send Charlotte 6 miles to the other nearest school. We know this will get sorted out in the end (we hope), but its one completely unintended consequence of our trip. And compared to how few problems we'd had with the rest of our trip, it seems like Murphy's Law that things start going wrong the minute we get home!
The other thing that we have been trying to resolve is a place for Charlotte back at her old school in September. When we applied in January, we were turned down because we didn't live in the village at the time of the application. But the school told us to lodge an appeal, which was just a formality, and we'd then be able to get a place for her. Ah, they said, don't worry about timing - you can lodge your appeal when you get back to the UK. So we have. And it looks like the appeal isn't going to be heard until after the new term has started in September. Call me naïve but I'd assumed that the panels that decide this sort of thing would want to meet in time to allow children to go to the right school at the beginning of term. Instead its looking increasingly likely that Charlotte will have to go to a different school for her first week or two. So instead of both Emily and Charlotte walking to school, we may have to send Charlotte 6 miles to the other nearest school. We know this will get sorted out in the end (we hope), but its one completely unintended consequence of our trip. And compared to how few problems we'd had with the rest of our trip, it seems like Murphy's Law that things start going wrong the minute we get home!