I have just got off the phone from a long chat with Number One Daughter, who was having the sort of moment that makes parents collapse on to the sofa and drink too much.
Number One Son-In-Law has gone off to work on oil rigs leaving Number One Daughter in sole charge of Ritalin Boy who is being a poo. I am very sympathetic but a long way away and unable to offer anything other than encouragement, which secretly is something of a relief. I am not very good at small children, despite having had four of them, and indeed Oliver has the distinction of being the only newborn baby ever anywhere on the planet who preferred his father to his mother to such an extent that he cried non-stop when left alone with me and only ever wanted to be cuddled by Mark.
Today has been sunny, and warm and still. Mark and Oliver went off to the farm where Oliver shot tin cans and charged about with his cousin, and Mark addressed the difficulty of the camper van.
The camper van celebrates its thirty fourth birthday this year, making it considerably older than Number One Daughter. This is very old in vehicle years, a bit like dogs, who age seven years for every calendar year, making it about two hundred and thirty eight.
In consequence it is getting a bit frail and crumbly. Actually that is an understatement. The entire front end is slowly disintegrating into a brown powdery dust. He has taken the panels off and removed the string that was holding the battery in, and then spent the day bashing all the dead bits off and starting to rebuild it with some handy bits of tin he has got lying around.
We want to go away in it this Sunday, so that we can have a leisurely wander across and maybe visit York before we collect Lucy on Monday morning, but it looks as though it is not going to be a quick fix job, actually bit by bit really he is building a new van, and he says that it is going to take him most of the rest of the week.
This meant that I was at work on my own, which was very pleasant. I have reached Book Three of Clockwork Vampires Ride Again, and have got to the point where I want to know what happens. Of course I already know what happens as I have looked at the end, I think I have mentioned before that I like books better without the benefit of suspense, but the whole thing is so confusing I am not sure that I understand it all anyway.
At the moment the heroine is in love with two people, so obviously one of them is going to die, but I can’t work out which one it is, which is irritating and making me skip read and keep flicking to the end to try and find out the bit where you find out. I will be glad when I get back to my library book, which is a study of the workings of the Houses of Parliament and undemandingly interesting without any troublingly exciting bits.
Halfway through the afternoon I had some exciting news arrive.
We have been offered an allotment.
It is amazing what passes for excitement when you are fifty, but I was excited, and so was Mark when I rang him and told him, and as soon as we had some time this evening we went for a quick dash up to the allotment sites which are not far from our house, to have a look.
We have been on the waiting list for an allotment for ages, and I was both thrilled to be offered one and cross when I saw what a mess somebody has made of it. They have inexplicably covered the whole lot in stones with a few gaps for weeds and planted a blackberry bush.
I kicked the stones about and was rude about it, and grumpy, but Mark was determinedly cheerful. He thought we could soon chuck the stones over the fence at the bottom and he could use them for hardcore for a track at the farm, and bring back muck in the bags afterwards. I know he is right, and he even said that he would do it all himself, but I know that I would feel both guilty and idle if I let him, so I am going to have to spend August chucking thousands of stones over the fence into a wheelbarrow and trying not to think about carrots being about fifty pence for an enormous bagful in Booths.
I suppose it will get me fit.
