Child labour

Mark and Oliver have gone off to the farm to sleep under the stars.

We have been worried about Oliver, who we thought had been depressed due to being one of the long-term unemployed, which of course is not an uncommon condition in this day and age.

He has been grumpy and not wanted to join in anything, whether it is walking the dogs or helping with the housework or sitting listening to Lucy’s stories about Chinese people. Harry seems to have vanished into the ether and Oliver has been having a lonely crisis.

We had a think about it when we sat up in bed this morning, once we were comfortably supplied with coffee and headache tablets.

This was a remarkably pleasant time, comfortable and smug about our triumphant hostliness, the sun beaming gently in through the window, fresh clean sheets and our lovely thick, soft dressing gowns. I drank my gently steaming coffee and felt happy.

After a while Lucy and the dogs came and flopped on the bed as well, and we thought about Oliver. Lucy said that he seemed to be not properly alive since he couldn’t get a job, and we all thought that he was sad.

This was a terrible thing to feel, because none of us could think of a cure, unlike normal unemployability where you can always help somebody rewrite their CV and brush up on their interview techniques, being only nine is a black mark against you that it is difficult to overcome.

We thought that he needed to be an apprentice to somebody, and in an inspired moment one of us suggested Number One Son-In-Law, who doesn’t actually do very much, apart from work on oil rigs, but who is world class when it comes to camping and cycling and weight lifting and generally doing Boy Things, on account of first being a boy, and then afterwards joining the Marines.

As good fortune would have it he is not on an oil rig at the moment,  but in Surrey and not doing anything spectacularly peculiar that would preclude him from any sort of boy-minding, and when approached seemed to think that having Oliver around would be quite nice, much to our relief.

Mark talked to Oliver, who sadly admitted that he was feeling unhappy  and lacking in self esteem and motivation, just like all unemployed people. Mark explained that it was all right to be unemployed at nine, and suggested that he went to visit Number One Son-In-Law and helped to look after Ritalin Boy, which is a bit of a two-man job, and practiced his weight lifting again, about which he became quite enthusiastic last summer during our visit to their fitness-obsessive household.

Oliver was delighted about this prospect, and quite cheered up: and when Number One Son-In-Law suggested that he travelled down by himself on the train and that they met him on the station in London, his joy and terror knew no bounds, as did mine.

We have booked him a first class seat on the London train tomorrow afternoon, and he is having his last home night having camp fires and sleeping somewhere chilly and damp at the farm with Mark, which has made them both happy. I am at work until I have earned enough money to pay for the train ticket, which in my opinion was the preferable option.

Lucy also worked today, and got paid, which thrilled her, she is the delighted owner of wealth beyond her wildest dreams, and also when she finished work in the evening she thought that she would rather walk the mile and a half home than call me to pick her up.

She rang me when she got home, very pleased with herself and having an experience of the sort of euphoria that you get when you have lots of fresh air and exercise and a pocket full of cash. I am very impressed with her, she has become a great deal fitter, and what’s more she is losing lots of weight, this is slightly tiresome because I have just spent three hundred and sixty quid on new school uniform, which will quite probably be yards too big for her by September at this rate.

Lastly, just a short note for the benefit of those curious about the fate of the stand for the dinner table.

Mark made the stand and it was splendid, then he did an elaborate mosaic design for the top in a single piece set in plaster to put in it afterwards. The problem was that the plaster stuff he used was from the bottom of the shed and very old, and hence did not set as fast as it was supposed to.

Rather than mess about with it when I needed him to come and Hoover the bathroom and then wash some dishes in a coming-ready-or-not sort of emergency yesterday afternoon he decided to do a quick fix with some pieces of wood for last night, and then finish it off today, which obviously got shelved when Oliver had his mid-childhood crisis. There is a picture of the temporary fix at the top.

The mosaic is gorgeous, with ivy leaves he has cut out of green glass, but currently sitting in a plastery mess in the shed until he has got a bit more spare time.

I will photograph it when it is done.