My son is not yet tainted by the scourge of private school envy

Children in the leafy provinces of middle England perhaps retain their innocence longer than many others in the world. Even so, in the end it goes, bit by bit. First, they give up Bluey and start watching gamers on YouTube. Then they ask awkward questions about what sex means. And by the time they answer every enquiry about their day with the words “your momma!”, the battle is over.

My son, at eight and a half, has reached that sad stage. Where once he would tell me he loved me “so much!”, now he will stare at me dead-eyed and mutter “I hate you”, before running off with a high-pitched laugh.

But in between the bravado and the banter, the posturing and the pushing, there is still an occasional glimpse of that sweet wholesomeness that is gradually worn away by the reality of our peculiar world.

In recent weeks, the grounds of the independent prep school on our road have had a makeover. Over the summer, there was some hefty landscaping, with small diggers and dumper trucks and bricklayers doing their thing. Then various items of play equipment were installed: shiny slides, climbing apparatus and log walks. Finally, during half-term, came the soft landscaping. Trees were planted in small groups; a couple of beech hedges went in, along with a lovely herbaceous border. Some black-plastic-wrapped structures were opened to reveal themselves as tunnels of willow. The whole thing is rather magical.

Every day we walk past the splendid sight, on the way to my son’s own school, which is delightful and very good, but not bewitching. As the work at the prep school has unfolded, my son has watched on in awe. When we went by soon after the half-term planting had been completed, he exclaimed at the beauty of it all. “Those children are so lucky!” he said.

And of course, he is right. And yet it was said without any malice, or resentment or really even envy. I explained that you have to pay to go to private school. “And we haven’t got enough money for that,” he replied matter-of-factly, again without any apparent angst.

He’s broadly right about that too, though in truth, we could probably do it if we took out a bigger mortgage, stopped paying into our pensions and sank all our savings into the kids’ schooling. Some people would too, but moral qualms and risk-aversion mean that we won’t. I decided not to explain all that to my son – he’ll get political in his own time. And anyway, we’re soon going to chuck thousands of pounds at some 11-plus tutoring in the hope he’ll get into the nearby grammar, so our moral compass is at least partially compromised.

Instead, I thought fondly of this fleeting moment of childish innocence, and wished I could be more like that – less envious, less huffy about the good fortune of others; less of an arse. After all, the planet is a dark enough place without middle-class, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road people like me feeling unreasonably cheesed off because the neighbours down the road have a new Audi.

In some ways, things are easier when the kids behave like monsters. At least then you can get back on the parental high horse and tell them to remember how fortunate they are, or how they weren’t brought up to behave like this (spoiler: they were, even if not by design).

It therefore came as a relief when, barely hours after my son had been charmingly enchanted about the private school kids’ new playground, I asked him what he’d had for lunch and, without even looking up, he shot back: “Your face.”

An idiotic, unpleasant chump that he may be, I loved him for that too. Innocence lost? Perhaps, but innocence is probably overrated.