It is Mark’s birthday.
Oliver had crept out to the shops yesterday to get him a card, and woke us up this morning to give it to him, and for some birthday cheer, which was lovely. Mark opened his cards, and we had a bit of time with Oliver, and we went right back to sleep as soon as he had buzzed off back upstairs again.
We bought Mark a socket set and a broken cement mixer for his birthday, which was what he wanted. The socket set was one that he has wanted for ages, and the cement mixer belonged to the builders at the back of our house, who were throwing it away.
Mark has long wanted a cement mixer but we have lacked the couple of hundred quid which would have been necessary for the purchase of a new one, so we bought the broken one for thirty quid and he thinks he can probably fix it without too much trouble.
You have got to be Mark to be pleased about things like this, and he is, being at his happiest when engaged in problem solving.
Obviously it is a far better idea than buying him a Rubik’s Cube or other similar puzzle. In fact Oliver has got a Rubik’s Cube, which Mark solved in moments the way he solves most things: by simply taking it to pieces and rebuilding it in the correct arrangement. The headmaster at Oliver’s school has a three dimensional game of noughts and crosses in his sitting room at school, which captivates both Mark and Oliver into thoughtfully tactical silence whenever we have got to go and see him. I can’t think in three dimensions at all, and have got to stick to browsing through the Good Schools Guide and examining his bookcase.
When we woke up for the second time it was lunchtime, and even then it took several cups of coffee before I felt as though I properly qualified as conscious.
Mark and Oliver thought that the very nicest thing to do with a birthday would be to spend it playing Star Wars on the PlayStation together. I thought this would be an ace idea, because it gave me some time without boys in it to get on with my own activities.
On my job list for today was making some new covers for the camper van cushions, which I did, quietly and contentedly by myself, to the music of yells and excited squeaks from upstairs as they shot one another and rode around on imaginary cyber motorbikes.
I cut out cushion covers, which I thought was a perfectly satisfying way to spend a day, and hemmed the curtains and answered some emails from Lucy, who wanted me to buy some things on eBay for her, which is blocked on the school wifi. I duly bought them, and she emailed me back gratefully with a footnote to the effect that she would pay me back one day when she had some money.
This was a surprise, as I had expected an immediate credit transfer, for which in hindsight I had got no grounds whatsoever, certainly past experience should have alerted me to the possibility.
In consequence going to work became a matter of urgency before the bank started adding overdraft charges to our already stretched financial position.
I had promised Oliver that we would make a start on the exciting project of getting his PlayStation to work on his computer before we started work, and we thought we would link Mark’s in as well so that they would be able to play against one another. This sort of project falls to me under the broad title of admin, which is my department in the household list of responsibilities, because it is indoors and does not include heavy lifting.
We managed the link, but setting up so that one user played on one computer and one on another turned out to be unimaginably difficult.
In the end when I did get it set up the computers were the wrong way round, with Oliver’s avatar on Mark’s computer and Mark’s on Oliver’s. Since I had got no idea what I had done to get that far in the first place I couldn’t even undo it and reverse it, and Oliver burst into disappointed tears, for which he said he was sorry and it wasn’t my fault when I was trying my best: which made it unspeakably worse.
I think we got it sorted out in the end: by which time I was late for work and had developed a headache, and Mark had done the hoovering by means of being helpful, which made me feel guilty as well.
Mark says that he has had a happy birthday, which is a relief, and more than you might expect from somebody who has done the hoovering and had a broken cement mixer. Number Two Daughter has arranged a joint birthday night out for us next week, in between our two birthdays, so we will have a proper celebration then.
In the meantime we will concentrate on paying the overdraft.
