It’s London one, suburbia nil when it comes to secondary schools and staggering home

No news is good news, so perhaps you can tell from my silence that things have been O-KAY. We’ve settled into a sort of middle-class miasma of work-home-school punctuated with family gatherings and plans for pleasant, middle class social events – World Food Day is on the horizon, Tom’s friend from back home – Ava’s godparent she’s only met once, but bless him, he always remembers a present, – plus wife and kids coming for Sunday lunch in October; a visit to see my mother on the South coast when she returns, finally – for good – from Florida. Last night, Sam came to pick up the dog, and we drank wine at the pub opposite and dissected his new job. It’s all good, I s’pose.

As I write, Ava is perched on the kitchen counter while Tom bakes a cake for tomorrow’s birthday bowling outing – a four tier spectacular from the Asda magazine – all food colouring and spangles. We’re recently returned from checking out a school outside London – tempted by how much more in bricks and mortar we can get for our money and the Outstanding Ofsteds at top ranked states – but we arrived late after an impromptu lie-in (just sleep, natch) too late for the tours around this might vaunted institution offered by half baked teens, eager and spotty and white; so we saw only a sprawling piece of declining Victoriana, higgledy piggledy gothic classrooms embossed with mid 20th century outbuildings. Yes, the playing fields, acres of them, were nice, but then Jonah’s just not that into sport, and it all looked a bit crumbly and apologetic, making me appreciate the investment and diversity back home in London.

The period villa we’d had our eye on looked nice on paper but it was slap bang on the outskirts of the sort of arterial town I spent my teens trying to escape, and the traffic on the way home didn’t half seem a faff to negotiate, getting back in to town.

Why would we move then? Things are okay where we are, aren’t they? Jonah’s just joined scouts with surprisingly sweaty enthusiasm, and the pressing need to do, with immediate effect, oft-spurned crafts in hope of gaining his first badge.

Ava, catching his interest, scored a place at Beavers – no waiting list for the younger group, thankfully; the first after school activity either of them has willingly done without a fuss. Let’s see how long it lasts.

But it felt sort of homely and wholesome to be carting them to a public building on a Friday night, where friendly do-gooders forced me swallow my habitual cynicism and crack a smile, while we discussed quaint sounding banalities like subs and hikes. And it was surprising how many faces I recognised among the parents picking up their kids.

The newly reopened secondary school up the road got rave reviews from a mum I knew from Diddi Dance back in the day, although I bristled at her description of the strict – and rather pointless, I think  – uniform policy: teenage boys expected to do a 360 to prove they aren’t sneaking in contraband socks. We don’t need inner city discipline in Hackney village, thanks. It’s not *real* Crackney, I seethed, flapping like an unnecessary chicken, thinking of the local new-build’s Ikea-coloured sister school on Hackney Downs, whose legendary prison yard tactics and military anti-gang enforcement have seen it win awards and much publicised Oxbridge entries as well as Michael Gove’s personal approval.

All this has my heckles raised in dubious anticipation of trouble, should precious, free-range Jonah get a place there in three years time. The chance would be a fine thing, given our distance from the school, in any case. The more likely alternative is one of the many vast academies nearby in the local urban sprawl, each publicly funded and heavily regulated, rather than the small refurbed local, like a little Oxbridge Hogwarts perched on the edge of the park. The mum told me politely to pipe down – that Montessori principals and positive enforcement go out the window at secondary level and it would be detentions and homework wherever they end up. Better regulation length haircuts than metal detectors.

The flame-retardant uniforms of Bishop Stortford weren’t exactly floating my boat either, but then I spent my adolescence in brown, so perhaps the 17-year old inside me still has issues she needs to work through. At least, here in Hackney, they let them wear perennially trendy black, even if skirt lengths are measured with a ruler. Better to sit on our terrace and become millionaires in a decade, than move out to the sticks, cash-in early and drop out of the rat race forever.

We returned to the village (as the estate agents call it) where the kids still go to primary – state, outstanding, no uniform and first name teachers. Although we were priced out of it two years ago when we needed a bit more space, and moved last year to a cheaper road beyond the park.

With refreshed eyes: everything look gentrified and chichi compared to the suburban mishmash we’d just fairly swiftly left. Ava, dressed in a rabbit suit a year and a half too small, had a party for which she was only a half hour late. We popped back later to grab her with a better-late-than-never wrapped gift for her schoolfriend from the independent toy shop at the heart of the village, having had lunch and browsed the sale rail, half cut from lunch, at the smart little clothes and gifts boutique that reeks of Dyptique candles.

It was a pleasure, and I now realise, a privilege to be able to cross the road from out old house to eat at little independent Portuguese restaurant where Russell Brand takes Jemima for their tea (or did until she gave him the boot), one of perhaps ten such eateries that proliferate in the locale, patronised by traders, designers, PRs and ad execs who prop up the micronomy of the new East End, to meet a friend I’d texted just ten minutes before, one of many who live within staggering distance from my house. I’d get fed up with choosing between a half timbered Chinese and a Prezzo every time I wanted to eat out, scratching around for acquaintances from the local array of school mums, and driving to get to a decent pub.

We ate: me, ordering a kids portion and too many sides; partly because, for once, I could (and I’ve been on salad and Kefir all week). The tables have turned, financially, and my friend, who once irritated me with her habitual largesse when my own pursestrings were pulled tighter, now suddenly out of a job, was meagrely ordering the basics, and vocally worrying about the price. We discussed secondary schools – only three years away – and I became a caricature of a middle class wanker by baldly stating that Jonah could go private if he didn’t get into into the newly upgraded local. I hated myself just a bit as the newly found financial confidence spilled out of my mouth, souring the atmosphere, while my friend – temporarily broke – silently supped more wine. In any case it was a lie. We might now just about be able to stretch to one, but two would cripple us, whatever I may privately think about educational privilege. (And who knows, I could be always be preggers, the amount of times I’ve collapsed into bed this month, forgetting to take my pill) And I so want to go part time. I know I’m lucky even to be able to consider it.

Yes, things are fine. But we’re paying for it in other ways. Tom has more plans to work away, and I, deeply appreciative of my salary and decent working hours – am nonetheless bored and resentful of my working life’s lack of fulfillment. But I guess fulfillment is a luxury for someone richer than me, privileged though I clearly am. In the absence of bigger dreams, I daydream about being able to upgrade my wardrobe  – until so recently purchased for pounds on Roman Road, with a half decent trip to Marks & Spencer, accessorised by standout pieces from the Mint Velvet catalogue. It’s enough, I guess, that I keep up appearances of grooming – the outward measure of success – and jeans that actually fit, even if inside I’m dying slightly. It is a comfortable, anesthetised, middle-class, London suffocation after all, which has to be better than suicide in suburbia.