The Boywonder went off on tour with the prestigious Bromley Youth Concert Band to Slovenia and Venice this morning. He had to be at the Music Centre in Southborough Lane at 3.45. It was hardly worth going to bed so I stayed up following the increasingly upsetting #SaveLennox thread on Twitter. He hadn’t even set his alarm so I had to go and pull him out of bad at 3.20. His sister was up and dressed, tearfully wanting to see him off on the 10 day concert tour.

The Boywonder was invited to join this top wind band only this academic year and subsequently didn’t play for half of the year when he was told to go off and finally spend some time correcting his embouchure. Perhaps it’s for this reason that he doesn’t feel fully settled into the band, but he sees himself as an “underdog.” He initially refused my offer to buy him a dress suit, preferring instead to wear a black blazer and trousers. But at their final pre-tour concert last Sunday, all the boys ,without exception, were beautifully kitted out in dinner suits so, on Monday I took the Boywonder’s father’s dinner suit to be dry-cleaned overnight after its outing to the Boywonder’s Year 11 prom and then managed to order a brand new one from John Lewis. Their service is marvellous, and they had delivered the new dress suit, two dress shirts, two bow ties (ready tied and James Bond-style self tie) and black socks to the Bromley Waitrose by 11.30 yesterday morning. I was astounded by this efficiency, and really grateful.

Unpacking the shirts, I washed them, carefully tumble-dried them, ironed them and hung them up ready for packing.

Having irritably despatched the boy at stupid o’clock this morning, I came home for some sleep. Later, as I rounded up the family washing, I noticed his beautiful new dress shirts still hanging up in his wardrobe. The Boywonder, in reply to my frantic text messages assured me that he had already packed 5 “perfectly good” white shirts, These are clearly shabby old shirts that he has worn over the last few years at school. The shabby chic gene must be hereditary. I then set about obtaining a quote from DHL for them to be couriered to Lake Bled. £107! He will have to make do without them, but I do sometimes wonder about the efforts to which the Boywonder goes in order to achieve his perfect level of mediocrity.