Week 2 of Back to School and for the Smalls the unfortunate reality of having to go in FIVE DAYS A WEEK has set in once again. Welcome to the rest of your lives, kids! Anyway, everyone is exhausted and a bit ratty.

This includes me.

I find that random RAGE is actually a general side-effect of middle-age.

Here’s five things that have annoyed me this week:

1. School communications

After a halcyon year of dealing with only one school’s insane levels (and contents) of communication, I am back to receiving missives from TWO schools across multiple platforms, multiple times a day.

Many of these begin with the biggest school comms lie of all: ‘As you are aware’.

Let’s be really clear: no, I was NOT aware, and I will likely remain perpetually confused about what day PE is on, who needs to take an instrument in, what donations for resources I’m supposed to have made, when after school clubs actually start, how much is on lunch accounts, which permission forms I’ve forgotten to fill in, and who has to dress up as a bloody Roman.

Also, I’ve already lost the reading diary.

2. Phones

The start of secondary school has meant the advent of the phone-life for the Big Small.

I began with good intentions about restrictions, screen time and supervision, but despite these – like everyone else – I have basically said goodbye to the Big Small ever wanting to play with any other toy ever again, and indeed to her even acknowledging my presence once she is basking in the hypnotic blue light of her new God.

The main theory, of course, is that as they get more independent and are out and about before and after school, the phone will offer reassurance about their whereabouts. Spoiler alert: it won’t. They won’t bloody answer the thing and the tracking app never works. OR you will receive 50 messages from them in under 4 minutes demanding to know YOUR whereabouts, usually while you’re in the middle of an important meeting, out with your mates, or undergoing a gynaecological exam.

Both of these things are enraging.

At home they will be glued to it continually, get into farcical What’s App misunderstandings even with the limited number of contacts you allow them, and make borderline inappropriate videos of themselves.

Since the Big Small has had a phone, I have had to have several conversations I wasn’t really terribly ready for, including what counts as age appropriate content, what is ‘sexy’, how to recognise emotional manipulation, being aware of what’s in the background of our photographs (there is a small group of 11 year olds who are never going unsee that image of me mostly in a dressing gown), how to safely confront racism (plus the whole history of why white lives matter isn’t a thing), and swearing etiquette.

In short, I wish the bloody things had never been invented. No phone contains enough head exploding emojis to sufficiently express or justify this sort of horror.

3. The weather

I’m British. I am obviously a bit disgruntled about the weather at all times.

4. Perimenopause

I continue along the super-fun path of trying to find out why I’m feeling rubbish, in a roulette-style game I like to call ‘Is it long covid, thyroid, perimenopause or cancer?’

Next up: various wands and cameras inserted into places which, I have learned, ARE NOT ALWAYS COVERED BY MY DRESSING GOWN. I can’t wait. And frankly, if I don’t feel annoyed about it, and the unfairness of being a middle-aged women vs being a middle-aged man, or the injustice of having to battle to be believed about my own body, or the travesty of an NHS so crippled it can only fire-fight and not prevent – then I’ll have to start feeling WORRIED.

As I’m about 98% worry/neurosis at any given time anyway, I don’t think I’ve got capacity for any more. Ergo, annoyance. It’s actually a healthy displacement activity.

5. Toothpaste cars

I’m sorry, I’ve been holding on to this for some time, but it now has to be said:

MINT GREEN, POWER BLUE AND MUSHROOM BROWN/BEIGE ARE NOT APPROPRIATE COLOURS FOR CARS.

Especially when they are MATT colours.

For the love of all that is holy, these are CARS – not kitchen cabinets or bathroom paint options from Crown.

Come on, automobile designers, get a grip.

I will accept matt white, red and black, or metallic silver, blue of any shade (I’m not unreasonable), red, green or grey. I don’t much hold with gold/yellow whether it’s sparkly or not, but after that I NOW DRAW THE LINE.

I have no idea why these particular shades should anger me so, but they do.

Probably – again – they are a scapegoat. Because there is so much else big and little to worry and rage over, from climate change to playground dramas, the degradation of women’s rights worldwide to flour weevils (don’t even ask), all of which are so wildly and overwhelmingly out of my control that the feelings they engender have to go SOMEWHERE that’s comparatively manageable, generally benign – and suitably distracting.

In short, every middle-aged girl has got to have a spurious-rage hobby, or hobby-horse.

I welcome all new ideas.