Digested week: So long primary school, it’s going to be hard – for me | Emma Brockes

The end of primary school signals no more WhatsApp groups, no more requests for volunteering, and no more school gate. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP View image in fullscreen The end of primary school signals no more WhatsApp groups, no more requests for volunteering, and no more school gate. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP Digested week: So long primary school, it’s going to be hard – for me Emma Brockes Plus, Trump pays out to E Jean Carroll, somnolent Little House on the Prairie, and why I’ll be avoiding salad in the US Monday It’s the last week of school and, in our case, the last week of primary school, ever, which I thought wouldn’t be a big deal but now we’re here, I’m sliding off my axis about the cruel passage of time. It’s not about my children, who can’t wait to crack on, it’s about me, me, me. No more WhatsApp groups, no more requests for volunteer service, and the big one, no more school gate. Light of the need to actually leave the house in the morning, I may, finally, be on the brink of formal entry into my Miss Havisham period and look forward to a future of thickening arteries and fresh air free days. The marking of the end has become more pronounced since I was at school, although it’s still a long way off the way they do it in the US, where graduation ceremonies are staged for every school year, starting with nursery and finishing with the end of high school. No one needs to show up to a second-grade graduation, but at my children’s old school, I found the formality of the fifth-grade graduation ceremony quite moving. The fifth graders leaving elementary school wore ties and dresses and the songs were deliberately angled to kill us, and that was before the principal sang a number from Wicked, which even for a school 20 blocks north of Times Square, was sufficiently jaunty to make me wonder why I was leaving at all. In London things have been low key and lovely. Still, something about the universal agreement that this is a very large life transition can make one forget that our 11-year-olds aren’t actually leaving home and will still need micromanaging through college and beyond. A friend with a son in the second year of his degree texts to say her summer will be spent leaning over him to revise for his resits, which, in any other week might be a terrible vision of the future, but in this particular one, reassures me we’re at least a decade off done. Tuesday View image in fullscreen E Jean Carroll had received her $5.6m, a sum held in escrow since the 2023 civil case in which Trump was found liable for sexual abusing and subsequently defaming her. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters E Jean Carroll receives $5.6m owed by Trump after court releases damages Read more Ring the bells, hang out the bunting: Trump has been forced to pay up. On Tuesday, news broke that E Jean Carroll had received her $5.6m ($600,000 of which was interest payment), a sum held in escrow since the 2023 civil case in which the president was found liable