Getting Past Go - The Avalanche Effect

Thursday, September 17 ‘09

Having accepted that passing go was an impossible mission; out of sheer curiosity and for her own amusement Mrs Bennet decided to take note of the unforeseen daily factors against her. Of course there were six factors before anything else came into the equation: a harassed Mummy Bennet and five little Miss Bennets who all needed clothing, feeding, teeth and hair brushing, and finally shoeing - both on their feet and out the door. Having had a few years of school run experience, Mrs Bennet knew it made absolutely no difference as to what time she got up. If she was up at 6am, with all the shoes, coats, book bags, nappy bags and lunch boxes packed and lined up in orderly fashion in the taking off pad – the hallway – she would invariably still be late because at the 11th hour a distraught Miss Bennet insisted she had to have something really urgently and that it had to be found there and then or else her world would fall apart.
Today all was going well. Mrs Bennet had been given a “good girl” sticker for not raising her voice and all five Miss Bennets were in the boarding gate awaiting their flight. It was Mrs Bennet who had forgotten something – vital toiletries – and sped upstairs to find them. With the sheep dog now out of sight, the younger Miss Bennets began to wander and the middle one started to look for a coat.
Whizzing from upstairs, into the lounge and through the kitchen to pick up a bottle of water as she went, Mrs Bennet returned to the boarding gate to find three of her flock missing. One was pulling out all the blankets ready to set up a home, the other climbing on a chair ready to start colouring. A cry from the walk-in cupboard indicated the whereabouts of the other.
“Help Mummy, help!”
Following the shout, Mrs Bennet found her five-year-old hidden under an avalanche of coats. The entire coat rail had fallen off the wall and its contents had spewed onto the unsuspecting child. A bewildered face balancing skew-whiff spectacles on the nose looked up at her.
“I didn’t do anything Mummy. I only wanted my coat not everyone else’s!” she declared.
Wishing the Darcys in the Dirt were back on the scene and wishing Mr Bennet was good at DIY, Mrs Bennet set her child free and spent the next five minutes hunting out matching shoes from underneath the soft mountain.
Five minutes she didn’t have.
But it wasn’t just the clothes avalanche preventing her passing go. The recycle van drove into her close, just as she was trying to reverse off the drive. They had no time for mothers on a mission. They weren’t going to budge until every green box was emptied. And as Scooby Doo van had a rather large bottom and couldn’t squeeze through the six zero space available it had to sit motionless as the minutes slipped miserably by. Mrs Bennet had failed to pass go yet again through no fault of her own.