24

Hi, sorry about the lack of blogs from me, just don’t seem to have got round to writing one for one reason or another.

Life at the moment for the OSO has been hard work in lots of bad weather so she’s not been the happiest of creatures!

Bad weather has never been good for me, trying to drive a wheelchair through snow has never been the easiest of tasks as you might well imagine!

I remember one time at my school in Bakewell we got rather caught out with bad weather, rain to be precise, lots and lots of it!

You may remember that by this time the OSO was working at the school where I was. At that time she had to take me to school and back because the Local Authority wouldn’t fork up for a taxi (obviously I couldn’t get in and out of the school bus, well you try it in a dobbing great powered wheelchair!) So Mum applied for, and got a part time job at the school which made transporting me a lot easier. It inevitably made it harder juggling Roger and Alistair at their primary school, but obviously Mum and Dad were hoping that they would come onto the same school as me.

This was not to prove to be as straight forward as it sounds because, as you know the school was not our catchment school and it was very popular and everyone wanted to go there ‘cause it was so good so it was going to prove to be quite hard to get Roger and Alistair in the school as well as me.

The OSO, as ever, was also being rather cunning. She knew that if she had a job there it would help in getting my bro’sinto the school, it was another box that could be ticked on the ‘out of catchment’ application form! She’s not as dumb as she looks.

The year after me going Mum and Dad applied for Roger to go to the school and he didn’t get a place, so they had to go to appeal which was very long winded and stressful, Mum and Dad had to write to and actually go to present their case to the appeal panel. They did eventually let him in, more fool them I say!

Roger then had to attend a sort of trial/ look round day with the other out of catchment kids. As ever, he was dead embarrassing, and on the tour of the Science labs he asked the Headteacher (who was a bit of a stickler) if anyone had managed to blow up the labs yet, the Head wasn’t dead impressed, and mentioned this to the parents when she went to talk to them in the Library. She mentioned that one child (naming no names) had asked this daft question. Needless to say the OSO knew whose child the head was talking about!

However, despite all, Roger did fine at the school and actually went on to be Head Boy, which, even I must admit, was a fantastic achievement.

Alistair’s progress into the school was much easier as he had two brothers attending and a mother working there, so in all honesty, they would have had a job keeping him out!

Well, I’ve not done very well in telling you my story about what happened when we had the flood at school, I sort of got onto another story! Never mind I’ll tell you all about it in my next blog, and I promise you won’t have to wait for it as long as you have for this one!