back to school Dubai Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

At breakfast on the first day of school, the smell of toast and sight of shiny shoes and packed bags reminded me of that bittersweet feeling from childhood, when you’re excited to see your friends but don’t want the holiday to be over. I remained cheerful as Son2 stared at his Coco-Pops. “It’ll be fun,” I said brightly. No reply. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His face looked like noodles sliding off a plate, all droopy and dripping and sad. “You’ll see everyone again – that’ll be good, won’t it?” I gave Son2 another overenthusiastic smile. Although actually I was feeling wobbly too. I was thinking about how fast time was passing. Taking the obligatory back-to-school photo had triggered waves of nostalgia about years gone by when my boys wore pint-sized uniforms and looked so cute and small in their Facebook photos. On the other hand, I felt like doing a happy dance and was ready to pop the Prosecco – because, HALLELUJAH, school was back!

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Meet Brittany Blum, a desert-dwelling mother of three who resolves to throw off the ‘trailing spouse’ label she hated anyway and reinvent herself in the sandpit. Having followed her husband to larger-than-life Dubai and lost him to another woman, Brittany decides to shake things up with the support of four very different friends: Adrianne, Natasha, her first ‘ex’ and a bottle of Prosecco.

I was late getting organised for school this year for various reasons, and after patting myself on the back on the first day for delivering both children to their classrooms (with lunch boxes, water bottles, labelled clothing, shiny new shoes, hats, pencil cases and so on), it dawned on me that the trouble with back-to-school is you then have to do it all over again for another 188 days.

As I dwelled on this while resting my head on my desk, I remembered a character I wrote about several years ago: Organised Mum. Some of you will know her. She’s a yummy mummy-of-three-hen-pecked-children extraordinaire.

Organised Mum breezes through back-to-school week, while my uniform shopping trip screeches to a halt due to the out-of-stock school ties

You meet her at the uniform shop – except she’s not there to buy uniforms. She bought those in June, long before the store ran out of book bags and PE shirts. She’s there to buy a new wall planner, because last year’s didn’t have enough space for all their extra curricula activities.

“Are you ready for school?” she trills, with the smug air of someone who could quite easily spend this week by the pool. “Olivia can’t wait for school to start, can you darling?”

You see, Organised Mum has every reason to gloat, because she spent her entire summer planning for this moment. The Organised family went to the Rockies to climb mountains in July, with two weeks in St Tropez on the way back. But she never took her eye off the start of the new term.

Her children were measured and fitted for shoes on a stop-over in London; haircuts were done at Vidal Sassoon in Mayfair; her maid sewed satin labels on while they were away; and she restocked their stationery supplies with some stylish new lines sold exclusively at a French boutique.

Organised Mum has all the time in the world this week, and it’s beyond her that other mothers might still be buying last-minute uniforms. She finds a wall planner she likes and asks at the till if she can pre-order a diary for 2017. As she discusses typefaces, the working mothers in the line behind her, with approximately 10 minutes to get all their back-to-school supplies and get back to their desks, start silently cursing.

She leaves her details and the queue exhales a sigh of relief as she moves aside, but she’s not finished yet. With Mr Organised, a big cheese in oil pipelines, away in Saudi, she fancies a little more adult interaction and asks what activities we’re signing up for this term.

“We’re doing some extra French tuition,” she says. “The girls practised so hard on holiday. Go on, Trixabelle, say something in French. She sounds so clever when she speaks French. And we’ll be at the swimming trials, of course. Harry was very inspired by the Olympics … You never know!” she tinkles proudly.

“Maybe see you at the pool later,” she calls, as she breezes out the door into the sunshine.

Maybe not, Organised Mum. Some of us still have shopping to do.

Are you a school mum in Dubai? You might enjoy my short e-book: Cupcakes & Heels – I don’t know how she does it abroad. Download it for 99p here. THANK YOU!