After the small triumph of day 1, day 2 is inevitably fated to bring a crushing dose of reality.

And so it proves.

And in the style of the worst Hollywood disaster movies it’s impeccably timed to cause maximum chaos.

We’re about to leave the house. I’m just helping him on with his coat.

When he says.

‘Daddy I don’t like pasta and sausage.’

‘What?’

I’m about to add the obligatory ‘well you liked it yesterday’ but he’s already out-thinking me.

‘They make my tummy feel funny daddy.’

In fairness this is actually quite brilliant in conception and remarkably exploitative. There’s just a hint of a health warning in there and it plays on my insecurities around food preparation. He’s demolished my counter-attack at a stroke. He almost looks disappointed at how easily he’s bested me.

‘Uh….ok son.’

There’s simply no time to make anything else so we strike the most hopeless deal since the 1938 Munich Agreement. The pasta and sausage will stay in the lunchbox but I tell him he doesn’t have to eat it.

There’s a part of my brain which reasons at least if it’s there and he’s hungry then he may well eat it after all. It’s the same optimistic part which keeps thinking that someday somebody will again agree to pay me money in return for labour. A nice idea but increasingly unrealistic.

In desperation I stuff a load more breadsticks, crackers and fruit into the lunchbox, just something which might get him through today while I consider the future possibilities.

And it’s getting increasingly grim. As I understand it says in The Bible, ‘Man cannot live by breadstick alone’.

I’m going to have to come up with something new. Fast.

There are certain things that as a responsible adult you’re just supposed to be able to do.

Getting dressed properly is high on that list.

Regular readers of my blog will know that at times I’ve struggled with the wardrobe demands of looking after my son.

Which is why on days like today, when I have sole charge of dressing him, I take extra care.

I ensure I’ve got his shoes on the right feet. The trousers are not back to front. The jumper is not tucked into his underpants.

I’m so well organised today I even get his teeth brushed, his face washed and his hair brushed, all in time for school.

I drop him off and complete my morning rituals and chores in the village before returning home.

Satisfied.

At which point I notice I’m wearing my T-shirt inside out.

There are certain garments which you could probably get away with wearing inside out. Ones where the difference wouldn’t be obvious.

This isn’t one of them.

For a start there is large garish lettering on the front of the T-shirt. Wearing it in reverse reveals the message backwards, faded and with an abundance of hanging loose threads.

There’s also prominent stitching around the joints.

And just in case I was able to pass any of this off as a daring sartorial statement, there’s the two inch label flapping from the side like a thirsty pup’s tongue.

It’s blatantly obvious. Cringingly obvious.

So now I’m forced to mentally retrace my steps since I left the house.

We parked the car in the main drag and walked through masses of parents and kids to the school grounds.

I exchanged brief pleasantries with the principal and spoke with a few of the mummies as we dropped off the kids.

Then I went to the shop and bought a paper before retreating to my wee coffee shop where I ordered porridge.

I saw two people I know there and spoke momentarily to them before coming home.

Nobody said a word to me about the T-shirt.

There are two possible explanations. for this. The first is simply that nobody noticed. I find this plausible in the sense that I never notice what other people are wearing and I assume they’re probably not that bothered about my wardrobe.

The second is that at least some of them did notice but pretended not to. Putting it down to another of my eccentricities.

It probably didn’t help the overall look that I decided to wear tracksuit bottoms rather than regular trousers today.

It probably also wasn’t great that one of the parents I saw in the school ground was my GP.

So how did I do it?

Was it the inevitable result of my added determination to ensure that I dressed my son correctly?

Was it just down to my utter lack of self awareness and co-ordination?

God only knows.

Sometimes the mind can be responsible for unfathomable lapses which just defy any attempt at reason.

Like sometimes when I’m in the supermarket. I need to get milk. I know where the milk is. I see the milk. I grab the milk. Only to discover when I get home that I picked up a tin of prunes instead.

The best explanation I can offer is that when you have a crowded mind sometimes the most basic things can get pushed out.

It also reminds me that it’s worth giving a little bit of yourself to every task, no matter how menial it might seem.

It’s a new month and there’s another new stream to be splashed through.

As the leaves turn dry and brown and the sunshine becomes more scarce, the P1 day gets longer.

Which brings school dinners into the equation.

Or rather it doesn’t.

Because when you’re dealing with a shy and sensitive young boy who also happens to be a picky eater then the strange and exotic surroundings of the canteen is the wobbly stone in the middle of the water where it is too treacherous to tread.

The packed lunch is the safer option.

Although only slighter safer. The tropical storm rather than the hurricane.

Because knowing what to put in that lunchbox makes me a little worried.

First, there’s the challenge of trying to find something (anything) healthy that he might eat.

Also there’s the uncomfortable knowledge that somebody else might look into that box. The box that opens up to reveal my ineptitude as a parent for the rest of the world to view. I can’t get away with fish fingers and potato waffles any longer.

I think there’s a bit of mental scarring here. I remember my own primary school days when I had to make my own packed lunch. I used to keep its woeful contents hidden from sight as I gazed enviously at my friends with their neatly cut sandwiches and abundance of treats.

I don’t want my boy to ever feel like that.

As I was lying in bed last night unable to sleep I was thinking that I have to do his lunchbox for the next 14 years and I can’t even work out what to put in it on the first day.

The school helpfully sent home some glossy leaflets complete with recipe suggestions and pictures of beaming children eating fresh fruit and carrot sticks.

Meanwhile back here on planet earth I’m trying to combine the concepts of what he might actually eat with what is relatively nutritional.

Sandwiches would be the easy solution. Except my boy won’t eat sandwiches. He’s never so much as nibbled at the corner of one but he’s as certain he doesn’t like them as I am that the world is not flat.

Take sandwiches off the lunchbox menu and things really do begin to get a bit complicated.

Although it could be worse. If I’d had to do this a couple of months back then I’d really have been struggling.

But recently I’ve seen the first unfurled petals of hope as we’ve slowly started to integrate pasta and apples into his diet.

And this gives me a way in.

I cook some fusilli pasta. My son calls it ‘springy spaghetti’ and I’m able to get him to eat it sometimes by telling him that the springs help him to jump higher. Creating a narrative around the food increases the chances that he’ll eat it. You do what you have to do.

I chop and soften some tomatoes from my Da’s greenhouse in a pan and then push them through a sieve. This creates a simple sauce which I mix with the pasta and some cocktail sausages.

When all else fails I know he’ll eat sausages.

I put the pasta in a Tupperware container and then into his lunch bag along with some sliced apple, raisins, breadsticks, a smoothie and his water bottle. There’s probably too much there but I want to give him options because there’ll be something he refuses.

It’s a respectable enough spread but I’m strangely nervous as mummy gets him dressed for school.

I show him again and again how to open the various boxes, bottles and packets but I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that I’m sending him off to something which I’ve not prepared him properly for. The regular worry that through my indulgence of his whims I’ve not equipped him with the robustness needed to cope with this world.

Last week he had PE for the first time. All it requires is that he’s able to take his shoes on and off. When I picked him up at the end of that day I noticed his shoes were on the wrong feet. It felt like a personal failure for me.

The morning school run is an awkward one today. He’s more emotional than usual, as if he intuitively senses the change in routine. He clings to mummy at the school gate weeping. He hasn’t done this in a while.

Often I’ll meet a few of the other parents in a little cafe for a chat after the drop-off, but I don’t feel like it today.

Beginning this week the school day is two hours longer. The pick-up has shifted from late morning to early afternoon. As I sit in the house trying to divert myself with some writing the hours just won’t move quickly enough.

By the time the parents are eventually gathering for the daily reunion, the bright early morning sun has long since surrendered to the persistent, grey rain.

He’s smiling as the teacher leads his class outside and comes running happily to meet us. Once I manage to get him extricated from a lingering mummy hug I ask him how was lunch.

‘Good,’ he says. I wait for further enlightenment but that’s all that’s coming.

Back in the car I anxiously look inside the lunchbox. He’s eaten the sausages (no surprise) and about half of the pasta. Not too bad. He’s opened the containers with the raisins and breadsticks and nibbled at them. Best of all he’s opened the packet of apple slices and eaten them all. He asks if he can have his smoothie on the way home.

Sometimes you just have to trust them. Even when you don’t trust yourself.

As usual he gives very little away about his day. He does mention that a couple of his friends went to the canteen for school dinners. I think he’s slowly moving in the direction of asking if he can have school dinners too. But we won’t force it, we’ll let him make that decision in his own time.

But, for now, it’s a good start. That’s day one out of the way. Just another 5,109 to go.

I’m sitting in my car. In lane 2.

It’s MOT day.

For the uninitiated this is an annual ritual which tests two things. The road-worthiness of my car and my levels of manliness. Generally speaking the car passes. And I fail.

MOT stands for Masculine or Timorous?

I know the drill, some guy in blue overalls will stand there in the huge cavernous garage shaking his head and tutting while I vainly attempt to locate the fog light.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In other more civilised societies you can simply take your car along to an MOT approved garage, hand over the appropriate amount of money and they’ll ensure the vehicle is safe for the road.

It’s a legacy of The Enlightenment I imagine.

But here we still have public testing centres. To me the MOT is like a grown-up version of the 11 plus. Unnecessarily stressful and archaic in conception.

The test does strange things to people. I look at the guy in the lane next to me and he’s spraying air freshener from a can around the interior of his motor. If your tyres are bald then I doubt that a fresh lemony scent is going to be much assistance.

The large metal door begins to slide upwards, slow and serious as a funeral.

I’ve done my homework and I’m not going to be caught out this time. My finger hovers near the fog light button.

Then I see something I didn’t expect.

The examiner is a woman. In blue overalls.

She smiles and motions to me to drive forward.

I stall the car.

I think I can see her eyebrows rise just a fraction. She motions again with her hand and the car crawls forward.

My mind is sprinting. Is this the new friendly, caring face of the MOT centre? Or is it just another twist of the knife? A way of saying ‘Even our woman is a better man than you’.

Is it just another way of massaging sodium chloride in the laceration?

I put the car in neutral. She walks around to the driver’s side.

‘Good morning,’ I say.

‘How many miles does she have on her today?’

‘Excuse me?’

She looks past me towards the dashboard.

‘She’s got 84,596.’

I’ve often noticed with amusement how some men refer to vehicles or machinery using female terms. Hearing a woman do it is even weirder.

From her banter with her male colleagues I quickly establish the examiner’s name is Lisa.

‘Indicators’, Lisa says.

I sit there.

‘Indicators’, Lisa says again, slightly louder this time.

‘What about them?’

She shoots me a quick glance to see if I’m taking the piss.

‘Can you try them?

‘Yes, yes, sorry, of course.’

But my brain has turned to scrambled eggs and my fingers to jelly babies. I push at a lever and water sprays out of the window washers.

The tutting and head shaking begins.

Lisa barks a series of instructions.

‘Lights….main beam…..horn….wipers….brake light.’

I suppose I must turn on the lights on my car most days. I assure you I’m perfectly able to do it. Generally I don’t even have to think about it.

But here. Now. Trying to work out how to turn on my lights when I’m being instructed to feels like trying to work out the square root of 375,765,385.

But then it happens. My possible chance for salvation. The moment I’ve been rehearsing.

‘Fog light’.

The fog in my brain clears.

I press the fog light button. Expertly.

I relax in my seat and make eye contact with Lisa. I give her my best ‘Yes I am rather skilled at driving in fog’ smile.

But she’s not fooled.

‘Flip the bonnet.’

‘Uh?’

‘The bonnet.’

I’m about to protest about unfair tactics.

‘What possible reason would a driver ever have to want to look under the bonnet?’ I almost say.

Instead I fumble uselessly with knobs on the dash. Blindly I push a button and the sound of Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’ fills the garage.

Lisa walks to the driver’s window.

‘Down there, just beside your leg.’

I reach down and find a secreted lever. Hidden in exactly the same spot as it was when I did my MOT last year.

Earlier I called the MOT archaic. To be fair the methods have moved with the times. Much of the testing is electronic and the huge pits in the ground which I used to have nightmares about driving my car into are gone.

Lisa tells me to get out. I take a seat at the side of the room and watch her drive my car faster than I’ve ever done. She takes it onto a platform which then rises into the air. She puts on a cap and examines the underside.

At one point she seems to be checking that my wheels are actually the right shape.

I’m imagining her saying ‘Round…round….that’s good.’

I’ve been taking cars to MOT centres for the best part of two decades and the truth is I’ve never failed the test. I always go to a garage in advance and pay out an unnecessarily large amount of money to avoid the social ignominy.

I’m told if your car fails then they give you a bell and a fabric ‘M’ which has to be sewn into your clothes and displayed at all times in public.

Soon enough Lisa takes my car off the platform and begins to print my new MOT certificate. I know the ordeal is over so I begin to walk towards her. She sees me coming and puts up a warning hand.

‘Stay seated until I call you!’

I sit down like a scolded child.

Precisely seven seconds later Lisa calls me.

I walk over and she hands me two sheets of paper.

‘She’s fine, so she is,’ she says.

I take the sheets and walk out into the sunlight grasping them like Neville Chamberlain in 1938.

I hope it ends better for me.

Until today there hadn’t been any promotional literature sent home in my son’s schoolbag for a couple of weeks.

There was a part of me which wondered if, after all the debate about the Slimming World and cosmetic dentist leaflets, an instruction had gone out not to give my boy anything that I might be tempted to write about.

And it did spark an almighty discussion when I blogged about it.

Countless angry parents contacted me to say that they thought it unacceptable that promotions for private companies were being placed in a child’s schoolbag. I thought this was a valid point.

Several others told me that it wasn’t worth making a fuss about and the best thing to do was just to bin the leaflets. There were bigger things to worry about. I thought this was equally valid.

One mother seemed quite peeved and asked me if I had nothing better to do with my time. When I honestly answered that I hadn’t, she unfollowed me. Such is the lot of the blogger.

And so today, secreted among the schoolbooks, I discovered another leaflet. This time for Kumon Maths and English Study Centre.

I had no idea what this was so I went surfing. It turns out Kumon is a private education system designed by a Japanese maths teacher in the 1950s. It has since spread all over the world. It’s big business. There’s a centre just a couple of miles from our house. It provides after-school tuition for children.

The leaflet which was sent home offers a two week free trial.

What it doesn’t mention are the prices if you decide to continue with the study. It’s £30 registration and then £65 per subject each month, according to the Lisburn Kumon centre’s website.

So what we have is another private business being advertised via the schoolbag.

Of course it can be argued quite reasonably that it’s easier to defend this practice when it’s tuition in maths or English (private though it may be) rather than an ad for a slimming company.

But here’s the bit that confuses me.

Yesterday the parents of P1 pupils were asked to come to the school so the curriculum could be explained to us. Many of us complied.

Let’s look at what they told us about mathematics. The presentation said it’s practical based, numerical concepts reinforced through structured play. One of the teachers went as far as telling us we wouldn’t be seeing any maths equations in exercise books for a while.

It’s a world away from how I was taught maths in P1, but I’m happy to trust the system and go along with it.

But when I look at the maths programme offered by Kumon for young children, it’s very different.

Their website talks about a daily ‘worksheet based programme’ allowing students to develop ‘an affinity for mental maths’.

The website says this: ‘At Kumon we place great importance on children understanding how a calculation works and therefore their ability to select the most efficient approach to solve a problem. This is achieved through individualised instruction and the use of traditional methods.’

So, on the face of it they seem to be describing two completely different systems for teaching maths. Structured play v traditional methods. It’s night and day.

Would following both approaches be confusing for a young child? Does it undermine the school system if another method is being taught simultaneously?

And how does Kumon sit with the local school curriculum?

Their website says this. ‘As a global programme, Kumon does not follow a school curriculum, but rather is complementary to curricula across the world.’

Which is grand. It’s great to give people choices and not to be overly fettered by narrow systems.

But it doesn’t answer my basic question. Why does the school tell us one day how we can assist in following a curriculum but the very next pass out promotions for an education company which operates outside of that very curriculum?

Is the leaflet a case of the school advocating the Kumon system for those who can afford it?

Or is it something else?

Since I posted about the previous leaflets several parents have told me there is a flat-rate charged for the distribution of leaflets by the school.

So has the schoolbag simply become a conduit in a mercenary exercise?

Is it simply a case of Kumon down, the price is right?

Things are getting serious now.

All the parents of P1 pupils have been summoned to the school hall. We’re going to hear about the curriculum. More specifically we’re going to hear about what mummies and daddies can do at home to assist the school curriculum.

It’s the moment I’ve been dreading. The moment when my carefully spun narrative over the last four years that it’s all just fun and larks begins to unravel.

I’m expecting my son to come home from school any day now and exclaim angrily ‘You mean there’s a point to all this shit?!’

The room is full of impatient parents. Mummies and daddies I’m used to seeing casually dressed at parties are wearing their smart work clothes and glancing nervously at their watches. I know how they feel. This is exactly the time when I would usually be having my first slice of cake in the cafe. I’ve made the effort today though as well, putting on a pair of trousers which don’t have an elasticated waist and getting my coffee to go.

To be fair the teachers don’t appear enthusiastic either. Sitting at the front surveying the parents like how I imagine a group of student nurses on their first day at the leper colony might look.

One of the teachers begins by noting that there are a number of babies in attendance and if they start to cry would their parents mind slipping outside. She’s very polite about it but it does make me think of a Donald Trump rally. While she starts to explain the curriculum I’m lost in some daydream where Trump is in the room, jerking his thumb at a crying baby and yelling ‘Get the hell out of here!’

I must have started giggling because mummy nudges me in the ribs. One of the teachers is explaining about learning through play.

I play a lot with my son. Often it involves him leaping on top of me and kneeing me in the testicles. I’ll retaliate by giving him an abrasive beard rub. Sometimes one of us will break wind and blame it on the other. I wonder if this is the sort of thing the teacher has in mind.

I’m particularly interested in how reading and writing is being taught. I’ve got hazy memories of interminable days copying out the letter A in my exercise book in P1 while a demented teacher lurked close behind with a taped ruler twitching in her hand. After what seemed like six months we went on to the letter B and so on. I’m able to read and write at an acceptable level so I suppose it must have worked for me. However, there were a number of my peers whose levels of literacy were wretched when they left primary school.

It’s very different now. The children learn a system called Jolly Phonics where more importance is given to learning the sound than the name of the letter. Each sound also has an accompanying hand movement. The sounds are then put together to form a word. The first sounds they are learning are S, H, A and T (I might have gotten a little bit mixed up there, there’s been a lot of new information to absorb).

The teachers say it’s scientifically proven to work. It’s a fascinating area, trying to unlock a child’s potential towards a new process. We’re told to practice sounds at home with him after school.

Maths seems a bit more fluid. No written work as such but practically based activities through structured play which encourage the concept of learning numerical concepts. I can grasp this. How many chocolate biscuits can daddy eat before he has to unbutton the top of his trousers?

History, geography and science seem to have been replaced by the World Around Us, which means the textbook I bought him on the fall of the Weimar Republic was a big fat waste of money.

Then the teachers talk about the importance of punctuality, structure and discipline. They say the single most important thing they want us to take from the day is the concept of teaching your child to do what an adult tells them.

I lean across to my wife and whisper ‘That’s us fecked then, we’ll have to look at home schooling’ but she pretends not to hear.

There is a list of six consequences for bad behaviour. The punishment the first time a rule is broken is ‘eye contact’. I’m not sure what a child thinks of this but it scares the shit out of me.

I wonder if a similar sliding scale existed when I was at school. First time rule is broken: Beat repeatedly with ruler. Sixth time rule is broken: Fractured skull, concussion optional.

The meeting breaks up without fuss or the option for questions. We have to go and sign a leaflet to confirm our attendance and to pick up some forms on E-safety and healthy packed lunches.

As we’re waiting in the queue I say to my wife ‘That went OK’ and she gives a little nod which I’ve learnt over the years means ‘Well you haven’t done or said anything stupid. Not yet anyway.’

At that moment I realise that I’m holding my paper coffee cup horizontally and the remnants of a cold, milky cappuccino are cascading all over the floor, splashing over other parents’ shoes and trousers and leaving a large sickly brown puddle on the wooden floor.

As always in the face of disaster I go on the attack.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ I bark at my wife.

She reasonably points out that she’s not holding a cup, torpedoing my desperate defence.

One of the other daddies produces a cloth handkerchief from his pocket and sinks to his haunches to clean the mess. I feel that I really should help him. I don’t.

Then one of the teachers comes over with a plastic warning sign which says ‘Wet Floor!’

She casts an accusatory glance around us. I hide the plastic cup behind my back. I meet her eyes and then nod my head in an incriminatory manner towards another daddy.

I roll my eyes.

‘Grown ups, you can’t take them anywhere.’