Julie Jay: I’m back teaching — I’d forgotten how hard it is to work outside the home

I have returned to teaching part-time because I love it and for mortgage approval. Being back in the classroom is my biggest joy: The children are just great, and the school is so amazing it makes Summer Bay High look like something out of Michelle Pfieffer’s film Dangerous Minds. 

Besides, having a day job while doing comedy is not new to me. I was a teacher for quite a few years pre-covid, though it’s my first time double-jobbing as a parent. And, my word, did I underestimate the amount that parents have to conquer to be able to work outside the home.

I am amazed by how much I repressed the memory of mornings under pressure in my previous teaching life: Car keys waylaid, milk suddenly evaporating, and a pair of clean knickers lost like a needle in a chaotic haystack. 

At the risk of sounding like a hardcore conspiracy theorist, nobody can convince me that 10 minutes between 8am and 9am is the same unit of time as 10 minutes between 8pm and 9pm. 

While I can get many things done post Nationwide, the morning is a warp zone, wherein socks disappear and showers suddenly stop working with no explanation other than the universe is against you. 

Mornings are the Bermuda triangle of parenting, when you have children of school-going age, and can bring out the worst and the best in us.

Going into the week, I was not prepared for the craziness that would ensue just to get everyone where they needed to be and how much military precision this would require.

The one benefit of gigging at 10pm is that traffic is minimal, so factoring in any form of congestion has blown my mind in the last few days. Admittedly, this congestion is less down to roadworks and more down to retired American tourists moving at a glacial pace to soak up the view, blissfully unaware that the rest of us have a job to get to, something they had until relatively recently themselves.

So far, we have just about got away with nobody being late, but given that we are only on week two, this doesn’t really feel like too much cause for celebration. The husband was away last week, so the process of getting the small fella to the childminder and the big fella to school was made a little complicated, especially on day two, when I forgot the small fella’s bottles, which I had placed in one of many Paw Patrol bags that have somehow infiltrated my life.

The problem with having more than one Paw Patrol bag is that when somebody informs you the item you are looking for is ‘in the Paw Patrol bag’, this only narrows it down to 17 places.

As such, it is little wonder that I forgot the bag with the bottles and had to hightail it back from the babysitter to our house. Of course, as I took one step into the hallway (or vestibule, if we were ever looking to sublet), it dawned on me that I had left the bottles in a bag I had given Ted to take into the naíonara.

And so I returned to the naíonara to procure the bag, only to have Ted presume I was picking him up early and arrive at the door ready to hit the road.

When I explained to him that I had forgotten one of our many Paw Patrol bags, he looked at me with raised eyebrows and returned to his friends, announcing his mother’s latest failure.

“My mammy forgot JJ’s bag,” he said mournfully, the realisation suddenly dawning that a lifetime of forgotten lunches and non-uniform days lay before him.

I eventually got the bottles to the baby and made it to school on time, only to discover I was 40 minutes early because I had misread my timetable.

Because I will probably never be early for work again, I found an excuse to pop down to the office and walk around the school repeatedly, so as many colleagues as possible would see me.

Even at 40, I still yearn to be the best girl in the class, and I am determined to reinvent myself as a punctual person as we barrel headfirst towards having two school-going children on the roster.

Getting children to school on time is nothing short of heroic when so many obstacles frustrate our attempts to be punctual — not least coat zippers refusing to close, American retirees refusing to stay in their lane, and an array of Paw Patrol bags that would rival Noel Edmonds’ gameshow Deal or No Deal in terms of their arbitrary contents.

If you make it to work on time, every parent deserves a little sit-down, preferably with a cup of tea. Because you need something to soften the blow when you realise you’ve accidentally brought your son’s Paw Patrol lunchbox to work.