I'm expending huge amounts of effort with the schools, and getting absolutely nowhere.

Today's sequence of events:

Call the primary school, to see what they have to say about Sophie's application. The phone rings endlessly; clearly no-one is there.

Walk to the school. Yep, there really is no-one there.

Call the high school, to see whether the head teacher has looked at the letter I put together for Stephen and Emily. I am excited when the secretary actually answers the phone, but alas, the head is only getting in on Monday, so he hasn't looked at the letter, which she has put on his desk.

Resist urge to point out that since school starts on Tuesday, surely coming in on Monday is cutting it a bit fine.

Secretary suggests I chase up our applications through the LEA - the county administrators in charge of school placements. The people who infuriated me so much last week.

Call the LEA. Am told that this is the wrong department; I need to speak to someone at another number, who, unfortunately, only gets in to work at 2pm.

Wait until 2.10 to phone. Navigate through annoying menu options and finally get through to an extension that nobody answers.

Call again at 2.20. Get through to same extension; this time get recorded message that tells me that the person I'm trying to reach is away from her desk or busy on another call (or still on bloody holiday, that's my guess), and to either call back later or call the first LEA number I tried. No option to leave a message.

Gah.