We lit the fire last night.
It had started to feel cool in the house at nights, not cold, although there hasn’t been any heating in it since May now, but definitely a bit more of a chill than was entirely comfortable.
Since the children were coming home from their centrally-heated boarding schools today we thought it would be a good idea to warm the place through. Also it has just been Equinox, which I now know is when the day is the same length as the night everywhere all over the world, twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night, and so from here on in we can consider that we are in the quarter of year which finishes up at midwinter.
Therefore we lit the fire. I thought happily that I would be able to bake bread now if I wanted to, of course this is a non-starter in the summer because there is nowhere for it to rise, you have got to have a fire and a nice warm spot. Obviously then that is what you are supposed to do at the Equinox, like having a pumpkin at Halloween or a glass of sherry at Christmas. At the Equinox you are supposed to light your fire and then the sandwich-making season begins.
It was very peculiar to get up this morning and wash in warm water, a vaguely indecent feeling somehow. Since the fire heats the water we have to splash in cold water in the mornings when it is out over the summer, which works as a handy supplement to the coffee to wake us up if we have worked late. We did buy an immersion heater once, but it is still in the box, we are going to put it in when we get old. It will also be nice not to have to heat big kettles of water for the kitchen washing up as well, how miraculous to have it gushing out of the taps.
Once we had had our warm washes and emptied the dogs this morning things all got a bit rushed, because Oliver’s school sent us a text message inviting us for coffee before we collected him, and we recalled that other parents would be present and therefore some upgrade in our personal presentation was called for.
I am hopeless at dressing up because of having no idea at all what is an appropriate thing to wear, being unable to match colours, and fidgeting terribly if anything is in the least scratchy. In the end we settled for shirts and jackets which turned out to be far too hot for the very much warmer weather that the children’s schools seem to have booked for the term, by the time we had been there for fifteen minutes we were pink cheeked and uncomfortable enough to peel our jackets off, which was very splendid.
Oliver greeted us ecstatically, and talked happily and enthusiastically all the way back to the car, at which point he rediscovered his long lost computer and became monosyllabic for the rest of the journey. Aysgarth has long had a headmaster with an aversion to information technology, which has been marvellous for Oliver, who I suspect would have forgotten how to talk if permitted to have a computer at school.
We met Lucy and her grandparents in a pub not far from her school, where we had an enormous, splendid, very cheerful lunch. I had a second glass of wine rather close on the heels of the first, and felt wonderfully relaxed and happy, partly because of the wine and partly because of the holiday feeling of eating out and having the children with us. I wished we had come in the camper van then, because I was longing for a little snooze afterwards, but we only had the car and had to plough on back to home and then work.
It is lovely to have the children back at home. They are both looking so well and happy, both so cheerful and funny and relaxed. I didn’t at all want to go to work this evening, I would have much preferred to stay at home and listen to them: but of course work is what makes it all possible, so we don’t mind really.
We left them warm and sleepy in the house and went off to earn some money.
We have got them all weekend.
