Right...
First of all, thank you, everyone, for your kind thoughts. I'm sorry I haven't replied to emails: this last weekend was absolutely fraught, and none of us got a lot of sleep worrying about today.
However, Kai went off this morning - nervous and worried - and I came back from seeing him off to ring the school again with a little more info I'd gathered over the weekend. It's a group of five young thugs, Kai thinks maybe two or three years older than him, cowardly losers who get their kicks from ganging up on a lone boy and making the journey miserable. [Aside to Sue: I checked the rules as specified on their website and they accept that their responsibilities extend to the school bus
"It is ... expected that students will behave appropriately when travelling to and from College, and when on visits, trips or other events as part of College activity.... All members of the College are expected to respect the person, beliefs and property of other members... Persistent or serious breaches of these basic rules of good conduct may result in the removal of the individual from the College.
They do take bullying very seriously.] On Friday they sat around him while one of them crowded him against the window and stared into his face, asking him all the time why he didn't fight back, then started flicking a key on a chain at him. He was terrified - who wouldn't be in those circumstances? - and when he started to cry the bastards all laughed and started taking photos of him with their mobile phone cameras (this of course takes the matter to a whole different level than 'teasing', even if you could accept that the rest was just teasing...)
But what had me in tears this morning was that I found out it's been the same gang who've been harrassing him since he started at the school - and I've been saying they were probably just trying to wind him up, as some kids do, and to try to ignore it.
Anyway... He's talked to his Learning Co-ordinator, and steps are being taken to make sure he doesn't have to suffer them any more (more on that if/when anything happens) - and if I ever meet any of these evil little buggers I swear I will not be responsible for my actions...
On a happier note, the washing machine arrived at 8.30 on Sunday morning [whimper] and... the installer said he couldn't install it. Not his fault; as I'd half-suspected the outlet for the hose had been done by a cowboy who'd chiselled through the cavity wall instead of drilling, and the external pipe was both a tad on the small size and the elbow bend too sharp for the hose to bend around it... Well, I sorted that out after he'd gone by yanking the old pipe out of the hole and away from the wall (it wasn't even properly concreted in, it came apart in me 'ands), pulling through the hose and easing into the straight downpipe. It's not ideal, and we really need to find a replacement elbow bend to make sure the hose is protected, but -
'OORAY!!! - I have a terrific new machine that washes just
perfectly; clothes come out warm and half dry, and it's so bloody
quiet! The old Indesit used to sound like it was taking off - the Bosch I had to keep checking to see it was still working! And best of all, since the installer wasn't prepared to sign off on the installation due to the problems with the pipe, even though he'd done all the other bits, we can claim a refund on the cost of the installation (which in all the kerfuffle of the weekend I've forgotten to do - better contact them now...)
On Saturday Ken took Kai out: an acquaintance of Ken's was driving to Uley to check out some archaeological sites,
Hetty Pegler's Tump among them, and had asked if they'd like to go too. They had a fun time - Kai came back excited, saying he'd visited the most haunted place in the South West ([rolls eyes] or it might have been Britain, I can't remember now) - but didn't arrive 'til 7.30, awfully late for dinner. Still, they had a good time and it was a lovely day, weatherwise, did them both good.
And me, I was hit by the sudden urge to write a short follow-up to
Meet, the
DarkRealm story (password protected in the (other) Zone) that started as a gift-fic to me from Lutra and turned itself, as such things are wont to do in my universe, into a multi-parter. The new chapter,
The Visit, is allowing me to incorporate one of the weirdestly erotic dreams I've ever had, though I've been too stressed to do very much very well over the last couple of days. That should change now.
Again, my apologies for the delay in responding to everyone. It's been a nightmare, but I'm very hopeful that everything is close to being resolved. At the very least, Kai now knows who to go to if the problems continue, and I know the school is taking the matter seriously. I'm going to take Quyn to meet him from the bus today, just to be sure...
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 2:02 pm
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