And after all our anguish, the leaver’s ball ended up being great fun for all of us. The evening didn’t start out particularly well, with a harmless prank ending up causing potentially hundreds of dollars of damage to a motorbike (it’s a long story), but after that it was all good. All the young people looked fabulous, and even the zebra hair was able to be disguised with a carefully placed hair tie.
After a concerted campaign of years of misanthropy, it turns out Simon and I don’t have any close buds amongst any of the other parents, so our table was made up of just us and six teenagers. The conversation began to pall after a while, as well it might after 23 years of marriage (our anniversary today in fact), so we ended up joining in the dancing and it was great. The only casualty of the evening (apart from the motorbike, rip), was my toe:
The photo of my blister is in super close up so you don’t have to see any of the broader details of my unpedicured feet.
Addendum: matching blisters with zebra haired daughter! Twinning!
And just like that, we have no more school children in the house.