My morning exercise

I hate the school run in the morning. Every morning it is an obstacle course for us to run and it makes me sometimes wish we lived where we used to when we lived two minutes from the school.

After leaving our house the first part of the walk is usually uneventful. Then we have to cross a semi busy road with no proper crossing right near a bus stop where there is often a long queue of university students, being that we live on the east side of the city. So after we dodge the buses and students we get to where the real dangers lie. The road leading up to the school gates. What annoys me first of all is people's inability to walk their children a few blocks to school, but their disregard for the safety of other people's children really annoys me. People park on the zigzag lines right next to the gates or up on the pavement on double yellows to save them a few feet of walking. This makes most of us walking our kids in to have to walk on the road where there are other parents looking for a parking space close enough so they don't have to walk far and not really paying attention enough to slow down. If that isn't bad enough if there are not any cars up on the pavement there is always dog poo. People know this is a school, but they still won't clean up after their dogs. The thing I don't get is not only do the owners leave the poo there, but so do the street cleaners. At my sons old school someone came along every day and cleaned up dog mess and made sure there were no leaves or rubbish that the kids could slip on. Here the street cleaners never seem to clean and I have never seen them doing anything, but sitting on a bench eating their lunch.

I can't do anything about the rude people parking their cars in the wrong place, but I thought I had a chance to do something about the dog mess on the pavement leading to the gates about a week ago. I saw one of the cleaners and I walked up to him and said Hi. With a Polish accent he said ‘Hello'. I went straight into apologising for bothering him, but that there was a lot of dogs mess on the road in front of the school gates and would it be possible for him to clean it up as it had been there for three days at that point and we were all getting sick of dodging it to get to school. He said "OK" and went on his way. That afternoon the poo was still there so when I saw him again the next day, I reminded him about dog poo and said the name of the road, because I didn't actually remember it the day before and again he said "OK" and went about his business. Again that afternoon it was still there with a fresh pile to torment me. Livid, I rang the number you are supposed to ring when there is a big mess that needs to be cleaned and complained. Turns out, the man barely speaks English and had no idea what I was talking about, but I was told that the mess would be cleaned up. A week later and it is still there and I have just about given up hope of never having to constantly ask the boys to watch where they are walking and making them hold up their legs so I can look at their shoes.

This Monday was the worse though. The heavens opened up a few minutes before we left the house leaving us completely soaked by the time we got to the end of our road. It got harder and harder until my rain hat was soaked through as well as my coat, shoes, shirt and trousers. The kids looked just as bad and we were all shivering and dripping by the time we started our morning obstacle course. Then to add insult to injury a car speeding down the road hit a puddle and a wave of dirty leafy water swamped over us and I stood there almost crying, dripping and cold and made a decision. That's it!!!! Maybe I should start getting a ride in the mornings; it would be safer that way.