The tannoy on the boat wasn’t working this morning and the early call for breakfast didn’t happen.
We had all slept for rather a long time because of having been giggly in bed after the light was switched off last night, with Lucy pretending to count sheep and me telling her that the collective noun for sheep was ‘sheepies’ and that a flock of twenty was known as a ‘sheepish’, and an awful lot more similar wittering until eventually we all nodded off to sleep
We were woken up by Mark saying: “So what time is it, exactly?”
This was a good thing because it meant we hadn’t sunk in the night, although there had been a dramatic moment when I was woken up by a terrible grinding, crunching sort of noise and was entirely convinced for a moment that we had hit an iceberg, but we hadn’t, and I think it was just the captain getting in the wrong gear or something, which I do myself in the taxi every now and again, which is always embarrassing.
However, it was also a bad thing because the answer turned out to be half past eight, although none of us had the first idea if that was English or French time, and anyway the hour changing whilst we were arriving in France last week has completely confused me and I still do not at all have the first idea what time it is.
Anyway, I had some idea that we were due to dock at around that time, and a glance out of the window confirmed this, and after that it was a mad rush and an indigestion breakfast, not at all the usual tranquil affair with a second cup of coffee. We threw everything in the bags and belted out to the camper just as the first cars were pouring back in to the UK, and realised that it was raining.
It was raining a lot. We drove back past rain-sodden, muddy fields and poor wet people looking tired, and miserable, and pinched, until eventually the skies brightened and everybody’s spirits along with them.
I am not great at navigating, and we got lost around Beverley, and drove round and round in circles until we realised that our compass was pointing towards the magnet under the bonnet in Mark’s hydrogen exploder rather than to actual North, which was what was confusing the issue, and we sorted it out then. We went to Nan and Grandad’s to pick up the dogs, who had forgotten who we were and barked at us.
It was nice to see Nan and Grandad, who said, probably untruthfully, that the dogs had been no trouble whatsoever, which I think must have been a fib, because when they are at home they are a complete nuisance, the dogs, not Nan and Grandad, obviously, who made us coffee and listened patiently to half-told incomprehensible stories of What We Did On Our Holidays until it was time to make the last leg of the journey home.
It took ages. There was mist in the valleys below the great Cumbrian fells, spiralling up the sides in little tendrils, and as we came down from the passes towards Kendal everywhere was grey, and damp, and some of the trees were already bare, and we felt the autumn chill.
In the end we didn’t get back until it was dark, which seemed to happen in the middle of the afternoon anyway, and then we spent an awful long time unloading and piling things up in the living room, and then a lot longer still putting them all away and sorting the washing out.
Of course we got it all done eventually, and now I am once again on the taxi rank, looking out at the rain, because of course it is Friday night and we have spent our money, and now we need to be at work.
It is nice to be here.
It was lovely to come home. Mark lit the fire, and everywhere smelled familiar and homely, and I discovered that before I left I had kindly cleaned the fridge and the sink and the bathroom, as a nice thing for me to find when I got back, so everywhere was gleaming white and cheerful: and I remembered that actually home is beautiful as well.
Mark wound the grandfather clock up, and the children helped carry things upstairs, and we managed to get the first load of washing done and hanging up above the fire to dry before we set out to work, and there is another lot in the machine which I can hang up when I get home, so we are already on the way to being organised again.
How splendid to be home.
