Non stop action

It has been the most action packed of days, and in fact I have been so busy that I am sitting at the computer writing this whilst Mark has his shower. It is daylight…

We cut the working night a bit short yesterday, but it was still almost four when we dived hopefully into bed, and six when the alarm went off a couple of hours later.

Mark got up, heroically, to make coffee, which had got to be black because it turned out that the milk was off, and we steamed our gritty eyes open with horrid black coffee, and then tried to make ourselves look smart.

The point of this exercise was of course Oliver’s school speech-and-sports day, for which we had to present ourselves, looking polished and self-assured, at school in North Yorkshire by ten o’ clock.

We managed the ten o’ clock bit without too much trouble, but I caught a passing glimpse of myself in a mirror on the way, and was discomfited to notice that the person looking back at me looked decidedly blotchy, with livid red eyes and a slightly unhinged expression.

Fortunately I worked out years ago that people are too busy worrying about their own turnout ever to give a thought to mine, unless it is dramatically misjudged, like wearing a ball gown to a football match or something. As long as I can manage a smile, and have remembered to brush my hair, I have discovered that nobody takes the least bit of notice.

Nobody would have noticed even if I had turned up dressed as Coco the Clown, in the end, because the whole event was so very splendid.

Oliver was waiting for us, more freckled than I can remember seeing him, and full of the excitement of the summer. We hugged each other until he started to complain about being squished, and settled down to listen to the concert, which was ace.

The school takes its music very seriously, and the concert was fantastic, energetic marches and rousing trombone blasts, some wonderfully squeaky boys in kilts playing a fanfare of bagpipes, and the choirs singing Vivaldi’s ‘Gloria’, which is one of my favourites. We clapped until our hands were sore, and sighed with the happiness of glorious music, and Oliver grinned and cheered and pointed out where he sits when he plays with the junior orchestra.

After that came the speeches, which are always fairly jolly at Oliver’s school, and we laughed with the well-being of good music and having our boys next to us: and then we had coffee, and the boys had sausage rolls and revolting-looking enormous sticky doughnuts and changed into their shorts for the races.

The Sports Day is the end of the sporting competition held between the Houses, being mostly the races and also the tug of war.

It was brilliant, the boys ran their hearts out, hurling themselves at the finish tape with desperate eagerness, losers bravely choking back tears and winners bouncing with elation. They clapped each other’s shoulders and shook hands in the sort of ‘jolly well done, old chap’ way that looks unspeakably noble when coming from a defeated eight year old: and by the time it came to the tug of war it was a dead heat and the whole school was bubbling with excitement.

It was magnificent: the teams hauled and tugged and heaved whilst teachers and parents and thrilled small boys crowded closer and closer, bawling excitedly and jumping up and down. We yelled our heads off, and the boys grew red faced and hot until the winners finally dragged their opponents to collapse over the line, and the shouting erupted into joyous victory howls, I can’t remember such a wonderful sporting moment.

We didn’t stay for the picnic in the end. We had brought one, but Oliver thought that after a very great deal of school really he would just like to go home, and we had got to work, so we buzzed off discreetly whilst everybody else was getting their hampers out. We bumped into one of the teachers clutching a carrier bag full of beer in the Tesco’s up the road whilst visiting the bathroom on the way back, and we all grinned sheepishly at one another and thought that we would never mention it again.

Mark and I were so tired by then that we had to take it in turns to drive and sleep on the way home, and when we got back we tumbled into bed and passed out instantly, for a very short couple of hours before more horrible black coffee, because we still hadn’t bought milk, and then work.

Of course it was the night of the visit from the magnificent Status Quo, and you could hear them perfectly from the taxi rank, which was rather nice, because it meant I didn’t have to sacrifice my hearing for the next few days. Then they finished, and thousands of people burst into Bowness all wanting taxis, and the queue was so long that once or twice it started to fight itself and I had to rescue the youth from behind the desk from the Beautiful Me Holistic Loveliness Health Spa in rather a hurry.

We worked without stopping until just after three, when it slowed down, and by four there was nobody left and we could make our weary way home.

I am so tired.

However I am pleased to tell you that Mark has now remembered to buy milk.