Full dress uniform

There is a veiled sense of chaos at our house, which gives way frequently and without warning to calamity.  I suspect it will intensify as the children are hijacked by various maturation hormones and any semblance of calm is jettisoned for the next 10-15 years.  

We are awash with cortisol.  It's just the way it is.  

So yesterday's events were not without precedent, but for the soothing ministrations of the gallant District Commander in full dress uniform.

I have never before had a man in uniform on hand in a time of need, and I have to say, I like it.   Calm, well-mannered and so totally in control, I can appreciate how the polite or genteel women of yesteryear found such encounters 'thrilling'.

Certainly my poor mother rallied after a nasty fall, as before her on bended knee, holding her hand, the recently arrived District Commander ran through an injury checklist.  This, after he had swooped her off the ground and settled her on the sofa in one effortless manoeuvre.  His starched white handkerchief was duly prized.

Richard Gere and Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman
via www.listal.com

Meanwhile, in a 'the person you need is Nanny McPhee' moment, three girls were running around in various states of undress, while the boy-child seized their discarded uniform items, favouring shoes, and started throwing them at us.  And the dog, oh god, the dog... like a Muppet on a pogo stick outside the dining room window, barking incessantly because someone had breached the property boundary and was INSIDE. 

Would you like tea?  I asked, extracting the boy-child's honeyed fingers from our younger visitor's school blazer, the District Commander's granddaughter.

He even appeared to contemplate the invitation, as if we could and would simply sit down, charming and composed over the tea cups.

You have to love a man who can make you feel every inch like a woman in full possession of her faculties when, clearly,  I am but wafting around in a delusional haze.

I am pleased to say, my mother is okay and was rather taken with the silvered alpha male and his unbelievably shiny shoes.