I am on the taxi rank having just eaten the most magnificently trouser-button-popping dinner.
I have spent the day cooking.
Of course this is not only for my own personal rotund benefit. It is because all my little chicks are back in the nest and performing cuckoo impersonations with enthusiasm.
Five people can eat a very lot.
We have used an entire jar of coffee today alone, although it doesn’t help that we all have three spoons of it in every cup, which encourages the jar to empty rather quickly. Oliver doesn’t drink coffee yet, preferring drinks which will dissolve his teeth, which is the only reason that a jar can actually be made to last the whole day, things are not going to improve.
We needed it this morning. In the end we made it into bed just before ten o’ clock, and to my astonishment the next time I opened my eyes it was still ten o’ clock.
I felt hugely recovered from the personal traumas of the day before, and by the time I had consumed a decently strong morning coffee I felt quite enthusiastic enough to embark on the second half of the parenthood project, which was to feed them all.
By this morning I had completed the Washing Challenge. Unfortunately it rained, and so everywhere warm and even slightly airy in the house is now draped with football socks and lurid shorts from Dubai and grey woollen socks and all manner of underwear: but everything is washed, and most things have been ironed, and in a day or two everything will be safely packed back into bags and trunks ready for next term.
The next thing was the catering.
It is about to be Easter.
The most significant thing about Easter from my somewhat detached point of view, is that it is a magnificently extended Bank Holiday.
It is double time in a taxi for huge chunks of it.
This means that we need to spend as much of the holiday at work as we possibly can. Double time is not much help during the day when all traffic moves at painfully slow admiring-the-scenery sort of pace, but at night when all other cars have been switched off, it is splendid.
Seven quid for a mile is a brilliant starting point.
The implication of this is that on a double time day I do not want to be spending an hour making picnics and tootling contentedly around the kitchen.
I need to throw things hastily in my bag, collect my car keys and a clean handkerchief, and dash out of the back door as soon as I can manage in order to drive as many miles at seven pounds each as I can possibly achieve.
I will not at all have time to be preparing elaborate catering arrangements for the children. They might only want beef burgers and waffles, but this leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling in my conscience and so can only be permitted either when I am busy or when I have got my conscience tied up in a sack and bundled under the stairs out of the way.
I have occupied the day manufacturing healthy and wholesome foods which can be microwaved in our absence.
I made an enormous pan of soup. It is thick and spiced, and made with a dozen tomatoes and brown sugar and double cream, red wine instead of water, and lots of other vegetables to add weight and solidity.
Oliver stuck his finger in to taste it and made the most awful face, so maybe he won’t eat much of that. He didn’t like the chopped melon, either, or the bowl of nuts on the table for hungry moments, and retrieved a bag of Wotsits and some fruit pastilles from the tuck drawer.
I made a giant bowl of Chinese rice.
This is the most colossal lot of messing about. I fry lots of different meats in their own sauces, sweet and fruity for the pork, salty soy and oyster for the chicken, chuck them into the mixing bowl with vegetables and nuts and add a panful of rice fried with eggs, which were duck eggs today.
When it was done it smelled gorgeous. Oliver came down and sniffed and said: “Do I have to eat it?”
He had beef burgers and waffles for lunch and then buzzed off to Harry’s house for pizza later on.
We took Chinese rice to work along with a pudding of yoghurt and strawberries and nuts, which I didn’t even bother trying out on Oliver, who doesn’t like yoghurt and nuts, or strawberries unless they have got a lot of sugar.
If my conscience wants him to eat better then it can persuade him all by itself.
Alternatively it can stay in its sack.
