Dear Diary…

Doh, it’s a blog and it’s in the public domain – not under my bed with one of those tiny locks, which were always so pickable anyway.

So this morning I started wondering about the school run: I am neither a parent nor do I in fact own a car… I did go to school though.

I am astounded that during term time, it takes me twice as long to do my bus route to work and I see so many individual little people in BIG cars – is it fair to say that the car-share never really took off or are we just a bit shit at sharing and befriending (trusting?) our neighbours?

I remember when my parents used to share the school run with another set of parents – I actually hated their children, especially the boy and used to practically sprint from the car to the school door so I didn’t have to hang with him or even worse, be seen with him!

Now before you judge, I am talking about a very disturbed young boy who thought nothing of flashing his bits in class and laughing like a hyena whilst having a good tug – I believe in his adult life he went on to get arrested for making obscene phone calls. Who’d have known eh?

Whilst I have dubious memories of  the rents making me share a ride to school with the local ‘drop em like it’s hot‘ boy, surely there is something that can be done to get all of the erroneous traffic off the roads, (whilst saving the planet?) and indeed encouraging  social interaction amongst families and kids in the community?

Could this be a way of building positive relationships from an early age perhaps? (Hmm maybe I should pitch this to C4…)

I am not for one moment suggesting that kids make their own way to school via any skates/bikes/horse  (even I am not brave enough for that yet) but there was a fascinating tale which springs to mind of a young mum who walked her kids to school every morning – AFTER they had been for a swim that is.

OK, so she was some kind of sports trainer anyway which makes it easier to comprehend I guess… either way, it was really inspiring.

I guess what I’m saying is – is there something in creating fun ‘routes or trails’ from local residential hubs to and from a school?

These could be supervised and run every day by CRB checked individuals/historians/volunteers/out of work actors for example – hired through some crazy XFactor style audition by the local community/council  (c’mon I’m attempting to appeal to masses here!). Hmm, ladies and gents, meet the ‘DON’T BE IDOL, IDOL!’

I spotted the ‘Clerkenwell trail’ the other day – no idea where it goes after that one lamppost but I’m going to look and see if I can get to work by following it.

It’s amazing that such constructive thinking can stem from an early morning thought, which admittedly went a bit like this :

“Effing school run – let the little blighters walk you morons, why’d you need such a big effing car anyway? If I don’t get to Kings X for 9am, I can’t get toast and a latte before my 9.30 meeting and you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…’