Extra-curriculum
My friend’s daughters were forced to participate in a hectic extra-curriculum existence of piano lessons, dancing lessons, saxophone lessons, horse riding lessons, archery lessons - you name it – they had every useless lesson imaginable on top of their all-day school lessons.
If the girls had their own way, they would have just chilled out in a heap of exhaustion after school.
'I get out of breath, trying to blow down the saxaphone.'
'I can't shoot an arrow,' they both used to moan.
But, their mother was determined that they wouldn’t be left out of London’s thrusting social swim. There was nothing strictly social about doing all these daft activities after school, but all the mothers were very competitive when it came to their offspring. They would rather emigrate to Siberia than not enrole their precious children in the current fashionable past-times.
The mothers were all frothing with concealed social ambition, anxious that their kids wouldn’t be left out of anything. More to the point, the mothers didn’t want to be left out of anything themselves. Through their children, they had a busy social life, inviting all the other like-minded parents (whom they carefully cultivated at the school gates) to innovative dinner parties, so that they could all boast and swank how well their children were doing at school.
The girls couldn’t care less if they never saw another extra-curriculum activity for the rest of their lives. For, when did either of them have an interest in archery? And, what with all these expensive past-times their mother insisted upon driving them to all over London, they were exhausted 24/7, for they had to fit their home-work in too. 'It's all very well being dragged around to all these stupid things after school, but we have to pass our exams too,' they whined. Their mother tried to help them with their school work, but as far as she was concerned, it was all gobbledegook! And, as for maths, it had all changed out of recognition since she had been at school.
The girls didn't realise how privileged they were, but the reason why their parents had the finances to enrole them in all these useless classes after school, was because they saved themselves thousands and thousands of pounds a years, having their kids educated for free. 'Why pack them off to expensive boarding schools and be poor?' my girlfriend said to anyone who would listen. At times, the girls would have given anything to go away to school, just to get some peace and quiet.
'I forbid you to come home with a cockney accent,' my girlfriend ordered the girls. They couldn't care less if they spoke in Hindu like a lot of the Asian girls at school did. They were just thankful that they lived in Central London, and were able to participate in clubbing without their mother's cloying supervision during the weekends.
Copyright: 2006
If the girls had their own way, they would have just chilled out in a heap of exhaustion after school.
'I get out of breath, trying to blow down the saxaphone.'
'I can't shoot an arrow,' they both used to moan.
But, their mother was determined that they wouldn’t be left out of London’s thrusting social swim. There was nothing strictly social about doing all these daft activities after school, but all the mothers were very competitive when it came to their offspring. They would rather emigrate to Siberia than not enrole their precious children in the current fashionable past-times.
The mothers were all frothing with concealed social ambition, anxious that their kids wouldn’t be left out of anything. More to the point, the mothers didn’t want to be left out of anything themselves. Through their children, they had a busy social life, inviting all the other like-minded parents (whom they carefully cultivated at the school gates) to innovative dinner parties, so that they could all boast and swank how well their children were doing at school.
The girls couldn’t care less if they never saw another extra-curriculum activity for the rest of their lives. For, when did either of them have an interest in archery? And, what with all these expensive past-times their mother insisted upon driving them to all over London, they were exhausted 24/7, for they had to fit their home-work in too. 'It's all very well being dragged around to all these stupid things after school, but we have to pass our exams too,' they whined. Their mother tried to help them with their school work, but as far as she was concerned, it was all gobbledegook! And, as for maths, it had all changed out of recognition since she had been at school.
The girls didn't realise how privileged they were, but the reason why their parents had the finances to enrole them in all these useless classes after school, was because they saved themselves thousands and thousands of pounds a years, having their kids educated for free. 'Why pack them off to expensive boarding schools and be poor?' my girlfriend said to anyone who would listen. At times, the girls would have given anything to go away to school, just to get some peace and quiet.
'I forbid you to come home with a cockney accent,' my girlfriend ordered the girls. They couldn't care less if they spoke in Hindu like a lot of the Asian girls at school did. They were just thankful that they lived in Central London, and were able to participate in clubbing without their mother's cloying supervision during the weekends.
Copyright: 2006
posted by Frances Lynn @ 11:44 AM
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