I'm taking back my house now my teenager is back at school

Years ago, when I was sitting in Brother Guy’s detention torture chamber, I never imagined I’d feel anything but opprobrium for high school – and then I had a child. 

That child turned into a teenager and high school became the love of my life.

Six weeks is a long time for your son to be holed up in his bedroom over summer and, to his credit, he’s been out and about, played a lot of cricket and spent some time at the beach. 

The flip side to all that activity is that when he stops he just wants to stop. When teenagers stop, they are world champions at it. 

My son currently holds the Under 16 World Record for lying on his bed, and although I’m sure many parents would dispute that claim, I’m here to tell you that there are times when I have to check for a pulse or at the very least turf a shoe at his head to see if he is still with us.

So, it’s with great excitement – spookily the exact inverse amount of excitement every teacher is feeling right now – that I welcome the coming of the new school year and reclaiming my house.

I’ll take back the streaming services, the fridge, the Barbecue Shapes and my addled mind.

I’ve made a list of all the things I’m going to do around the home when old sonny boy dons the blazer and black shoes and heads back into the happy halls of harmony this week.

Number one is to buy a face mask and it’s not because I’m scared of the coronavirus. No parent should attempt an entry into a teenager’s bedroom without the proper safety equipment. 

I had a friend who wandered blithely into her child’s room after the relatively short Easter break one year and almost passed out. Rookie mistake. If you can get your hands on one of those hazmat suits, do.

Then I’m going to buy a new vacuum cleaner. My vac is great but I just don’t think it has the suction to cope with the challenge of six weeks-worth of Milo granules and toast crusts so expertly concealing themselves in the carpet.

I’ve attempted to enter the shrine of shoes, the temple of T-shirts, the jaunty jock jumble intermittently since mid-December – sure, I’m a bad mother, but I’m not that bad – but in the end when the living dead are Netflixing themselves into oblivion, there are better places to be; curled up in a ball in the corner of your own bedroom is one.

Next on the agenda is attempting to wrangle a fridge that has been in such an “open-shut me” state for so long that it seems as though it’s strobing. 

The old icebox has become reminiscent of an annoying neighbourhood car alarm that just never goes stops.  I have developed fridge tinnitus – it’s a thing – I hear beeping even when the door is firmly shut. It’s doing it now.

Finally, I’m going to luxuriate in the comfort of my own home, knowing that my hostage taker is sitting in maths or health or advanced flirting and won’t be back for six hours. 

I love my boy to bits but like the harried housewives and mothers of old, I’m off for a Bex and a little lie-down.