When I was a young child education finished when the school bell rang.

You sprinted out of the building, said goodbye to your chums and then spent the rest of the day coming up with useless ways to amuse yourself. Climbing trees so you could chuck stones at your brother down below, flinging cow dung into his face, pushing each other into nettles. They were happy times.

But society has taken a firmer grip since then. Education is a much broader concept. We’re continually being told that the most important learning takes place in the home. What is begun in school with the teacher should be continued by the parents.

And opportunities are everywhere now. The number of extra-curricular activities available to children today is, frankly, mind-boggling. In our little boy’s short life so far he’s already taken classes in swimming, tennis, yoga, taxidermy, rugby, football, music, morris dancing, goat staring, yodelling, goose counting and collecting navel fluff (I’ve made some of these up, but you get the idea).

The village centre next to his school offers a seemingly never-ending variety of activities. I know some mummies with several children who seem to run themselves almost to exhaustion hauling different members of the family from one class to the next.

There’s an obsession with making sure the kids don’t miss out on anything. Give them every chance. They might be a ballet genius. A piano virtuoso. A Wimbledon champion.

And I’m utterly hopeless at it all. Left to me the only class my poor boy would ever have partaken in is Sofa slouching: From beginners to advanced. Learn from an expert with over 40 years of experience.

Joining classes was never my thing. It meant meeting new people, learning new skills. Habits I spent most of my life trying to avoid.

Thankfully mummy is a bit more proactive. And so it is that after school we’re in the village centre for drama class.

The lovely instructor Jo gets all of the children to sit in a circle. Six children in the room. And me.

Regular readers will know my boy is very shy and sensitive. But despite this we have high hopes for drama because it seems to suit the personality we know he has, it’s all about creativity and imagination.

It’s just that he doesn’t want to do it alone. He wants to do it sitting on my knee.

I don’t want to give the impression that he’s being dragged along to something he doesn’t want to partake in. That we’re pushy parents trying to force him into awkward corners. I ask him a couple of times if he’s having fun and he always nods. I’ve seen my boy at classes which he doesn’t enjoy. He lets you know soon enough. It never ends well.

He definitely wants to do this. He’s just not ready to do it on his own yet.

And that’s just fine.

So while Jo is introducing the class I inevitably think about my own acting experiences. There aren’t any.

Well, except for a class production of the assassination scene from Julius Caesar when I played the crowd. It was a non-speaking role. However, my brooding intensity was much admired, although scandalously overlooked during awards season.

Jo starts us off by getting us to do a bit of superhero dancing. It’s a decent warm-up. We run around in circles with a straight arm protruding humming the Superman theme song. The inhibitions are quickly shed.

Some of these children are very vocal. I suppose this is to be expected in a drama class. They start to babble excitedly to the instructor. She deals with them patiently. My wee man is a little intimidated by the noise and buries his head in my chest. I tell him he doesn’t have to stay but he insists he wants to.

Monkeys is to be the theme of this week’s class. Jo wants us to act out the parts of lots of different simians.

But there’s a problem. I’m just not feeling it. I can’t quite seem to get into character. I ask Jo what my motivation is. She answers me in the same placid, unruffled tone she uses with the kids.

We run around the room doing impressions of gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans. My son laughs at how animated I’ve become. But all of my monkey impressions are much the same. I’m worried about the apparent limitations in my range.

While I’m running around cupping my arms and shouting ‘ooh ooh ooh’ I notice that a number of adults are gathered outside and staring in the window. But it’s too late for dignity. I give them a moronic look, scratch my head and mimic eating a banana.

I used to be a respected professional, you know.

Next Jo tells us a story. It’s about lots of different types of monkeys in a zoo. It’s a preamble to us all acting out the parts in a little sketch.

My son and I are chosen to play the gorillas (a step up from being the crowd in Julius Caesar I suppose). This necessitates us both beating our chests and roaring a lot. I’ve got an advantage in that this is how I usually behave when I’m about the house.

Jo gives us a couple of lines. When it’s our turn I bellow them. My son whispers them. Nobody else can hear him, but I do and that’s enough. I know he’s having a good time.

The class finishes with some colouring in, which I imagine is a method of calming the children down after all the monkey mayhem.

Jo gives the kids a bag of sweets and then we’re off. As we’re driving home my son asks me if mummy will be home from work yet. We’ve had a lovely day but I can see him slowing down a little now. The day catching up with him.

I tell him that mummy will be home soon. When we enter the house he disappears straight upstairs. Soon he returns carrying a pair of mummy’s pyjamas. He is holding them against his face. It seems a bit odd.

‘What are you doing bud?’ I softly inquire.

‘It’s so I can feel mummy right here until she comes home.’

Children, just like great actors, have that uncanny ability to speak straight to your heart.

I got a parking ticket today.

My offence was that I had parked in the same spot by the side of the street for more than an hour.

As the photo above shows the warden ticketed me for not moving my car after 1 hour and 12 minutes.

In truth I was actually parked in that spot for a little bit longer than that.

I was taking my son to an after-school drama class.

The class lasts for an hour. The car-park at the community centre was full.

So I parked on the street. There were several empty spaces. I forgot to move it in time.

There were still several empty spaces when I picked my car up.

I try not to personalise issues like this. I’ve seen the red-coated wardens often patrolling the village.

Their harassed eyes and expressions betray the pressure they are under to collect more fines.

They have to make a living like everyone else. Just part of the bigger system.

And they are certainly active in Hillsborough where I live. In the first six months of this year 275 parking fines were handed out in the village.

In the same six month period there were 12 towns in Northern Ireland in which not a single parking fine was handed out. 

They are Ahoghill, Armagh, Ballykelly, Castlewellan, Cullybackey, Dromore (Co Tyrone), Gilford, Kesh, Newtownstewart, Portballintrae, Richhill and Tandragee.

I’m not familiar with the regulations in these towns. Perhaps they are different. Perhaps the people are simply much better at obeying the traffic regulations.

The neighbouring town of Dromore, which is significantly larger than Hillsborough, received 15 tickets in the six month period.

I know I’ve only got myself to blame. I know I stayed over the time. I was all to aware the red coats were just desperate to pounce.

But I can’t help but feel annoyed at the sheer inanity of it. Who benefits from it? Has trade in the village been improved? Am I supposed to have learnt some sort of lesson?

Or is it simply hitting a soft target so another £90 fine can be collected?

Can this really be the priority?

I note that the ticket has the logo of the Department of Infrastructure on it.

So in any normal society I would thus know exactly where I could direct my unhappiness.

But not here. Not where there is no functioning government. Where our utterly useless, contemptible excuse for a political ruling class get paid a full wage as a reward for abject pitiful failure.

Where decisions on our lives are being made by unaccountable, faceless civil servants.

Where the health and education systems are being driven to paralysis, used as pawns in a wider political game.

But it’s ok. Because no matter how defective the system is the parking tickets will still be collected.

Of course I’ll pay my fine. I’ve never deliberately tried to break any law or regulation in my life.

I’ll pay it just like I pay every other household bill. On time and in full. I’ve always tried to work within the system.

Yes I’ll pay it. But I’ll be just that little bit more bitter towards the system for it.

This morning I stood at the school gates chatting to a small number of parents. We had just dropped our kids off for P1 and were consoling each other as usual. Comparing the damage.

We were approached by a beautiful little dark-haired girl in uniform. Her eyes were bleared with tears, she was obviously distressed and afraid. She had come to us even though we were all strange to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she timidly blurted out between tears, ‘but I don’t know where to go’.

My wife took the child’s hand gently and asked her what class she was in before leading her off to the care of a teacher.

And that was it. Sorted. Except, the incident never quite left me all day. When I see an upset child it tends to stick in my mind. I know I’m overly sensitive but I prefer that to being indifferent to juvenile tears.

I’m always asking myself why it had to happen that way? How could it have been avoided? And, in this case, why was a situation deliberately created that led to the unfortunate encounter?

My little boy started P1 less than two weeks ago. Like many other parents in the same situation our tiny boat has sailed on a rough sea of emotions ever since. There’s been plenty of tears from all of us, moments of encouragement and progress punctuated by tantrums and worries.

Being at the school every morning has allowed me to witness how all the children are at different stages. Some run into class without even hesitating to say goodbye to their parent. Some need a little bit more time and encouragement. Some just find it a little bit harder to leave mummy and daddy behind. Our boy is one of these.

But we felt we were getting on top of it. A good routine had been created. We took him to the door of the classroom each morning. We didn’t go inside. We kissed him goodbye in the corridor and handed him into the care of his teacher.

And he was getting it. He felt the comfort of the responsibility being handed on. He understood the process and was accepting it. To be honest it was all going much better than we had expected. I assumed this was the way it would continue.

But then on Friday a letter arrived home in his schoolbag. I almost didn’t see it in the midst of all the advertising leaflets.

Apparently the P1 teachers had decided that it would be more beneficial for the children to say goodbye to their parents at the school gate and for them then come into the playground either by themselves, or with a friend.

My stomach heaved when I read it. Less than two weeks to get my boy used to the new regime and it was already being changed. Instinctively mummy and I knew it would be a backwards step for him. Just another problem to be solved.

The letter said this was beneficial for the children but didn’t elaborate.

I can totally understand the logic of trying to foster their burgeoning sense of independence, to weaken the dependence on their parents.

But did it have to be done after just two weeks? It was hard to avoid the feeling that there was a simple preference that the parents not be on the school grounds.

I always try to be sympathetic of professions and practices I don’t understand. I don’t like to give teachers a hard time because I know they already deal with an abundance of stress and worry.

So we explained the new arrangements to our boy. Predictably he retreated back into himself. When he is afraid he tends to bury his problems, become non-communicative.

We tried to talk him round. Eventually he opened up a little. He asked us to promise that we would not leave him on his own at the gates but would come into the playground with him. We readily went along with this although it was counter to what the letter had requested.

Were we too soft? Should we have been firmer in insisting that he go in on his own? Decisions like this tend never to be as clean and simple as they appear when committed to prose later.

And so this morning mummy led him into the school grounds while I hung back. I knew he was likely to react badly and thought two parents might make it even worse.

There was a further complication. The school has an exterior set of gates. Then there is a short walk to the fenced P1 playground where there is another gate.

Mummy took our son down to the P1 gate. But several other parents had interpreted the instructions differently and left their children at the exterior gate.

Minutes later my wife returned. It was as bad as I had feared. He had bawled. He had refused to go into the playground by himself.

In the end a member of staff had to take him by the arm and lead him in. She told my wife that what was needed was some ‘tough love’.

It was at this point, as we were discussing the trauma, that we were confronted with the teary little girl.

Her mother must have interpreted the instructions that she was to leave her child at the outside gate. Presumably she did this and left. But the little girl just didn’t know where to go next and came back outside to talk to us. Desperately afraid and seeking guidance.

It was a poor way to start a Monday morning. It didn’t get a lot better until we picked our son up after class. The teacher told us he’d settled down really well and had had a good day. He usually does.

The sun was shining so we went to the play park for a couple of hours. He was like a different boy from the scared child from the morning.

So what’s been learnt? Were we not firm enough with him? Should be just embrace the new routine and get on with it? Do we make it worse by indulging him?

Perhaps.

But the truth is I don’t know. All I’m certain of is that each of these little energetic wonders we are raising is completely different. They all react in their own way. There are no universal rules that work with children.

You have to go with your gut because sometimes that’s all you’ve got. The people who speak with the most certainty, the ones who keep telling me they’ve seen it all before, are often the ones I’m least inclined to listen to.

The kids are all unique and unpredictable like shards of broken glass.

Yes there’s a time for some tough love. But there’s also a time when it’s better to take a frightened little child by the hand and lead them where they need to go.

I’ve always believed in the transformative power of progress.

Things can’t stand still. Uncomfortable though it may be society must always strive for new and better ways of doing things.

Having said that, giving Postman Pat his own plane is just taking the piss.

After the slimming debacle from earlier in the week my son came home yesterday with a leaflet for a private cosmetic dentist in his school bag.

I’m not sure what’s going on.

Is the school offended by both my obesity and my crooked teeth when I drop him off at class?

There was also a promotional book in his bag advocating the virtues of an individual church.

School is certainly not what I was expecting.