This article is taken from the November 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Hector returned from school today, asking what “a PJ” was. Assuming he meant pyjamas, I began hastily searching the Boden app for new nightwear, his question having alerted me to the fact that he’s currently sleeping in foul Minecraft onesies on rotation, but is due to attend a sleepover at Claridge’s next week. I know!

He protested that PJ couldn’t possibly mean pyjamas, given the way his “friend” Alessandro used it. This kid is one of the turbo brats in Hector’s class, whose dad is some kind of tech mogul and whose mother is a former Victoria’s Secret model.

Asked Hector for the context, now frantically scrolling Jack Wills, and was told that Alessandro had said that they were meant to spend half term in Florida, but that his mother had changed her mind so they had “re-booked the PJ” and are now off to the Seychelles instead.

Poor Hector had invited ridicule by asking if the PJ was “a precious jewel”. Seriously! No, but actually seriously, I do worry about his verbal reasoning. How on earth is he going to get into Habadashers’/Highgate/City if he can’t even deduce “private jet” from the above comment? Hardly takes a genius. At this point, I fear we’re looking at North Bridge House. Maybe even Portland Place.

Will, true to form, failed to understand my concerns about Hector’s “cognitive ability”, “processing speed” and “social communication” — i.e. failure to register that the only course of action around a child like Alessandro is grinning assent. Even though his mother is tackiness incarnate.

I’ve been thrown into existential terror that we should move to effing Balham

Side issue, but related, should I get Hector’s eyes tested? I don’t mean in the glasses sense, I mean for “visual processing” — apparently the best indicator of a child’s all round ability. Genuinely, everyone’s obsessed with it.

Will also couldn’t understand my anxiety about Portland Place. Or my yearning to have one of our children, at least, go to a standard issue high achieving school? Is that too much to ask? Instead we’ve got both girls at their variations on Bedales.

Felt this parental failure all the more acutely this week, on reading some new survey by Ivy Education (me neither) ranking best private schools in the country. Westminster was top, of course, with Dulwich, King’s and Alleyn’s also up there. The rest weren’t in London — a side note, what and where is Concord College?

Anyway, having always subscribed to the belief that everything is better north of the river, I’ve been thrown into existential terror that we should move to effing Balham. Except, this would represent such a volte-face with Will, I can’t speak of it. Moot point anyway, given Hector’s reliable mediocrity.

Speaking of indulged children, earlier in the day I had to endure a haircut alongside a mother I recognised from karate classes, treating her stylist to a long tribute to her daughter Seraphina’s ice skating skills (shoot me) and her dilemma over where best to host a skating party in March, and whether Somerset House was “too done”. Said event being five months away … and a sixth birthday party.

Then we had to hear about her determination that her daughter must not be “put off sport” as she gets older — citing multiple surveys and podcasts, and with a full iPhone showreel of Seraphina’s sporting prowess.

Ended up feeling distinctly twitchy about Minnie and Lyra’s lack of interest in P.E. Thankfully, hairdryer drowned out Seraphina’s mother’s hopes and dreams, leaving me free to read GQ and avoid eye contact with my own stylist.

If only one could switch on the metaphorical hairdryer more often.