Ellen's blog: All About Me

Last Friday my 4-year-old returned from school with a note in his bag to say that from the following Monday it would be his turn to put a display on the “All About Me” board. This was to include such elements as photos, drawings and writing by my son to give the rest of the class an insight into his life outside school. And it had to be produced over that weekend. A TWO DAY lead time on production of all of this seemed a little ambitious, particularly since it was one of the dreaded two-party-weekends, whereby the same children attend birthday parties on both Saturday and Sunday for two boys in the same class whose mummies probably realised too late that they could have combined them, in order to save both the time and extortionate amounts of money it costs to have some rock-climbing-themed-underwater-science-party type of thing that is now standard practice.

Somewhere in between the swimming lessons, birthday parties, reading homework and a 40th birthday party (adults-only) which left me slightly the worse for wear on Sunday morning, I managed to get him to select some photos we could print and to write some captions to go underneath (the latter achieved by bribing him with sweets). On Sunday night once the effect of the sugar-rush from the sweets had worn off and both sons had finished bouncing off the walls and gone to bed, I realised I’d forgotten to get the photos printed in the photo-machine, so I started to print them on my ageing, low-quality home printer, only to be told “printer not found” by my computer. Bit rude, I thought (why don’t they make the errors message more apologetic)? I had to e-mail the teacher to explain that, due to parental incompetence and inadequate contingency planning (for something so important) he would need to bring in his photos on Tuesday instead. What a treasure - she wrote back and said that if I sent them to her she would print them!

My son asked me if there was an All About Me board at my work - he probably thinks this because when he visited my office at Christmas they put on a big show for the kids, including a chance to pet wild animals, and multiple games set out along a yellow brick road across the trading floor, which my children believe is a permanent fixture of office life!. I explained to him that All About Me displays are more common in schools than offices, to which he then asked me what I would put on if I did have the opportunity to showcase my out-of-office existence to everyone in my office? So I had to give him a detailed answer, including which pictures I would put up on the board, and why….

1. Here is a picture of mummy when she is not at work - she looks scruffy because she is not wearing a suit, and has removed her jewelery for health and safety reasons.

2. This is mummy with her two sons aged 4 and 7. They are her main ‘thing’ outside of work - look at how gorgeous they are!! (they look like Daddy)!

3. Here is Mummy with Daddy - yes, it is true, someone did agree to marry her! Daddy looks a bit drained - probably because he is married to mummy and she’s always too busy for him!

4. This photo of Mummy with her sister who is a lawyer in the city. They are meeting for coffee in the morning before work because their offices are close to each other, and there is no other time available!!

5. This is Mummy with her friends - they are on a hen weekend away from their offices and families. There are 14 bottles of rose wine in the background. They are very relaxed…

6. Here is Mummy on the platform at London Bridge. No train came, Southern Rail were on strike again. Mummy was late to work and late to get home. Sometimes Mummy wishes she could go on strike, too.

Ellen has two boys aged 5 and 3 who are both at school (although the youngest is in the school’s nursery). She recently joined a brokerage firm in the City following a 6-month career break which marked the end of her involvement with the banking world, after 15 years. She has an au pair to help out at home.