Friday 9 July 2010

On Your Marks, Get Set....

There's nothing like being a mum, especially when it comes to beating other mums to stuff for your kids apparently!

When Em was approaching school age, I tried to get her into swimming lessons at the local leisure centre, only to be told that there was over a year's waiting list. In the end we never bothered and just took her ourselves. However, it's a bit harder finding things for boys to do at an early age so, when I heard that the newly opened leisure centre was doing enrolments today for swimming lessons, I thought I'd get down there and sign him up.

Now, the new centre has proven very busy since it opened, so as enrolment started at 8 I thought I'd get there for then as it may get too busy later. 7.50 me and Xander pulled into the carpark and there were cars parked up on pavements, on grass banks etc; however someone was just leaving so we got a space so thought we may aswell go in.

The entrance hall resembled this:

O...M...G!!! Oh well, I'd already filled in the form so I joined the queue to get a raffle ticket and wait for my number to be called. As I approached the front I saw a mum from Xander's class.
'Oh, did you get her in?' I enquire.
'Yes, just done it'. OK, so maybe things are moving quickly.
'Yes' says she' was here at 5.30 queuing'
'Er, excuse me?'
'Oh yes, took the day off work just in case'

Ahem. Now, I do want Xander to have a hobby, but getting up at the crack of sparrow fart and then queuing for 2 1/2 hours?

By this time I'd got to the front, it was 7.58.
'Hi' says I, 'I have my form all filled in, just need a number'
'I'm sorry' says she 'all places are now filled, he'll be put on the waiting list and we'll ring you when places become available again'.

Luckily, a pushy mum I ain't so me and Xan just shrugged our shoulders and set off to Morrisons to buy some things to make muffins (luckily, my son is very fickle and the he soon got over the lack of swimming with the idea of baking!). But, as we walked past the 100 or so people who'd turned up in the queue in the 10 minutes we'd been there, you could hear the news filtering down, and the faces getting angrier and we hot footed it out of there before the riot police turned up!

I swear there'll be repercussions in the playground today. May turn up in dark glasses and a hat; we're number 4 on the waiting list, I don't want to run into numbers 5, 6 and 7!

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