06:30: Wake Up, but Don’t Get Up

So I tried the rest of it on him, hour by hour.

06:30. If lying in bed fails, that captain plays something rousing, Seven Nation Army or the Rocky soundtrack, to get out of bed. The other captain is still asleep at 06:30 and on her bike twenty minutes after her alarm, which is not a timetable so much as a dare. Ned tried the Rocky soundtrack on Monday. It woke the youngest, who came down to breakfast punching.

Plan B. If the music has not worked, that captain asks a sister for a quid and buys breakfast on the way. Ned asked his sister. She has started charging interest.

08:30. The school café opens and, in 2020 at least, the school captain’s coffee was free, which she ranked among the best perks of the job. My perk as a parent is the last of the cafetière, cold, at 09:40.

13:10. Lunch, then a society, a rehearsal or a prefect duty. A Latymer parent on Mumsnet in January 2019 wrote that her son had hardly ever had a free lunch period, “but that has always been his choice.” Ned also has a choice at lunchtime. He chooses lunch.

18:00. The pivotal hour. One captain: “I never get work done by 6pm.” The other has a plan for the next three hours: “shower, procrastinate, work, play cello, eat, procrastinate”, and by 21:00 she has usually given up and put Netflix on. I have read every school timetable sent home since 2011. This is the first honest one.

21:00. Still working, says the first captain, then a shower, and then the Rocky soundtrack gets cued up for the morning. This is the only part of the timetable Ned has adopted in full.

So at 06:30 on Friday I stood outside his door and played it myself. He woke up, but did not get up. The youngest came down punching, and my husband asked if I had a quid.