Well, we made it.
Not to France yet, obviously, but out of Windermere, which is pretty good going given the state the camper van was in this time yesterday.
It was half past two in the morning before we set off. There was a brief and ugly domestic when I discovered that whilst he was tinkering about at the farm he had failed to notice that his horrible muddy dog had got into the camper van and on to our beautiful clean bed, which I thought was grounds for divorce but in the end he just put fresh sheets on it and I grudgingly agreed to give our relationship another go.
We showered ourselves and the revolting farm-covered dogs, who made the water go a rich brown colour, and set off into the night. It was a really blustery Autumn night, squally winds blowing rain showers leaves hard across the road all round us, and eventually we pulled over at about half past four and slept somewhere on the top of the fells, listening to the wind.
We swept the camper again when we got up, and it felt fresh, and I felt better, and we chugged happily down through Richmond and Catterick Garrison to school. I like Richmond, which seems to have been very patient about having a thousand excitable soldiers on its doorstep, and about tank driving practice slowing the traffic down all over the back roads, and wish that Number One Daughter would get herself posted back there so that we could go and see her more often, and Ritalin Boy could go to Oliver’s school.
We joined the stream of four-by-fours through the village to school, the camper van looking a bit reminiscent of a decrepit elephant unexpectedly joining a herd of sleek cows on their way to the milking parlour, and there was our boy, tall and grinning and freckled with floppy hair and such bright eyes, looking like an extra from Brideshead Revisited and bursting with school to tell us about.
We stopped at the services down the road to hear who was likely to win the Dorm Cup, and to admire the punctured bits of cardboard from his rifle practice, and to be pleased to hear that he is almost good enough for a pen licence, and to sympathise about rugger being cancelled because of weather, and to be supportive about tuck being cancelled until somebody owns up to pinching some. He agreed that he still did maths and English, although he couldn’t actually recall anything to tell us about them.
After that we drove back to school for the things he had forgotten, being his flute and his tweed jacket, and then we were really away.
We pulled into Lucy’s grandparents’ drive this evening with a huge sigh of relief, because we are camping here tonight and sailing from Hull tomorrow. Grandad sharpened the camper van knives for me, which Mark has not got round to doing, and Nan had cooked us the most splendid dinner, hot and filling with gravy and real vegetables, Mark and I both had three helpings, and then cake, of which Lucy had three helpings, and then the sort of quantity of wine that makes you think it would be an amusing idea to spend the evening doing a fitness programme on a machine called a Wii, pronounced like the accident you have when you are old with too many children and cough unexpectedly.
It was the most ace fun, it turns out that I am completely unfit and the machine explained that it thought I was a couch potato, possibly because I was laughing so much during the balancing exercises that I fell over. It is a long time since I have laughed so much that it hurt badly. Mark is marvellously fit, Lucy is unfit with good balance, and Oliver is too thin, all of which we knew already.
I laughed until tears rolled down my face, and then suddenly was yawning so much that the evening had to come to an end, but it was a brilliant, lovely start to the holiday. I am full of dinner and nice wine and brilliant company and happiness.
Life is just wonderful.
