Squash

I have had an enormously busy day.

Mark went off to the farm this morning, and left me with the depressing realisation that I had got a living room full of teenage luggage and nowhere at all to put it.

Putting the children’s end of term luggage in their own bedrooms is not at all an option. I love our house very much but the interior design was done by somebody whose clear intention was to create a new record for the maximum possible number of rooms that could be squeezed into a terraced house.

This means that although we have got lots of bedrooms and bathrooms, they could all accurately be described, even by the most eloquent of estate agents, as titchy. Our room is the only one large enough for a double bed, and even then you have got to get in and out carefully in order not to bang your knees on the drawers. Lucy’s room has got a bed, a desk, some drawers and a chair, and there is not enough space left to put a rug on the floor, never mind a small mountain of luggage.

Normally this is not a problem at all. At the end of term I usually enlist both children and Mark to help with hauling all the luggage up to the loft, where I can leave it in its unprocessed cluttery state belching odd shoes and pairs of tights with ladders in and stray cricket balls, and slowly sort it all out over the course of the holidays until eventually I have restored it to pristine order in time to be lugged back down again for the beginning of the new term.

However this holiday is different.

I had an email yesterday from Number Two Daughter who I had thought was diving somewhere off the Dubai coast, telling me cheerfully that she would be flying into Manchester on Wednesday morning and would be coming to stay until November.

I am not sure that rapture was quite the word to describe my feelings. Of course I am very fond of Number Two Daughter, however she comes with a huge stack of luggage of her own, which includes a collection of snowboards and skis.

I refer you back to the previous paragraphs detailing the smallness of our house and lack of available storage space.

When we have got a visiting daughter in residence the loft space is employed as sleeping quarters. At all other times it is a repository for everything that can’t be squished into the rest of the house, which is quite a lot.

I had got to resolve this problem.

Lucy and I carted several loads of things over to Save The Children in the village, and filled our dustbin and one or two of the neighbours’ dustbins with lots more.

We emptied her luggage of garments that required washing and dragged the rest, quilts and pillows and books and boots up to the loft. After a lot of very ruthless chucking out I had got a small space in one corner and the luggage went in there.

This left five colour-coded piles of washing on the living room floor which would have to be laundered and dried and then made flat and then somehow shoved into the luggage corner in the loft. I put the first lot in the machine and thought I would worry about the rest later.

I made the bed up in the loft, and made a separate pile for the other bedding, which Harry has when he comes to stay the night. I squashed it in the corner with the luggage.

I hoovered and wiped and threw open the skylight to blow away the musty winter air. I shook the heavy quilt and brushed the stairs and the rugs, and when I heard Mark coming home I realised that my head was aching so much I thought perhaps it had cracked around my ears, and retired downstairs for coffee and a small wallow in self pity.

Mark said encouragingly that I looked ghastly, and it was probably because of having too many things to worry about all at once, and recommended drugs and sleep, which is what I did, after which of course I felt a lot better.

I came downstairs in the middle of  the evening feeling hugely refreshed, to the very happy discovery that he had made the flask of tea and some picnics, and gone off to work.

My bag was packed with sliced fruit and salad and chocolate and nuts and was waiting on the table. This was a lovely thing, because it is splendid to feel looked after, and I felt at once hugely grateful and very happy.

I buzzed off down to the taxi rank with renewed energy.

I have got a tidy loft with room for everything.

I am going to have three of my four children at home.

I have got a husband who loves me.

I have got a very nice picnic.

I am jolly lucky.

We took the picture the other day, walking over to the farm. It has got nothing whatsoever to do with this diary entry, it is there because I have already photographed luggage on more than one occasion and thought it would be dull to do it again: so you have got a much more aesthetically pleasing picture of a tree which has nothing to do with the text. Imagine you are watching a French film if you like, which is a similar sort of experience.