INTRODUCTORY NOTE: The picture at the top is completely unrelated to the writing really, except as a starting off point. It was the view from my office window when I sat down at the desk, and I thought it was so beautiful I took a picture and now I am sharing it with you.
It is a lovely evening, and it has been an amazing sunny day, and the blackbirds have been singing their little hearts out, particularly one misfortunately ugly one in the Library Gardens who has some odd-coloured markings and hence, tragically, can’t find anybody who will love him, no matter how heartfelt and melodic his lovely fluid song is.
It can be a very sad world, even when the blossom is dripping off the trees and the stars are bright in velvet skies and everywhere smells of mown grass and spring flowers.
I am a bit sad today as well, although not at all because I can’t find anybody to love and help me fill my little nest with chicks to adore. In fact the last evening of Oliver’s holidays is finally here, and tomorrow my last little chick is leaving the nest.
I have sewn labels into his cricket cap and cricket whites, and cleaned his shoes and replaced his toothpaste and stuck his name on his tennis racquet, and washed and tidied everything, and packed a little box with surprises for him to find when he gets back. Lucy takes tuck back to school with her, about a hundredweight of it usually, and hence has got plenty of treasure to go at, but Oliver is not allowed tuck, it is a privilege the Head wisely reserves for purposes of bribery, and so in his treasure box there are puzzles and comics and games, and some dried strawberry stuff that he likes to put in his milk at bedtime to make it taste horrible.
He has finally finished his homework. He has had to read to me, or sometimes to Lucy, and once or twice when they were being Intrepids, to Daddy, and he has also had to practise his handwriting every single day. He was very unhappy about this, being of the opinion that holidays should consist of four weeks of total shirking: but we explained that it was a sad consequence of being hopelessly bad at handwriting whilst going to a school which does not at all think that this is acceptable: and also of having determinedly ambitious parents.
He complained terribly about the unfairness of it all, and was further upset to discover that he was instructed to try and find something to like about it, and not to whinge. I helpfully listed all the good points I could think of, about practising handwriting instead of playing on the PS3 but he did not at all want to be cheered up, and just growled sulkily, so in the end I just left him to make the best of it, or the worst of it, as he preferred.
However, it is done now, and we are on the last hours of countdown. We are all going to go and take him together, because there is some kind of parents’ meeting afterwards, where the Head is going to talk about academic standards and we are going to sit sadly and wish that our son had some, and so the whole affair involves some proper preparation.
I have had to pluck my eyebrows, because it would never do to turn up with an untidy face, and have stood looking helplessly into the wardrobe for ages wondering if I should wear a pink shirt and a blue hoodie, or a pink shirt and a black jacket, or a pink striped shirt or a denim shirt, and it is another one of those times when I really wish that I was Mark, who will put on a clean stripy shirt and his tweed jacket and cords, put his wallet and a clean hankie in his pocket and the problem is solved. I have got my newly-mended boots, and will start with them and work my way up, but after that anything could happen.
Finding the colours that look nice together is such a problem. Actually I don’t think that I like the pink shirt very much after all.
I am very glad I am not a blackbird.
