I am settling down to sleep at the end of an incredibly long and busy day.
It really is bed time this time, in fact it is so much bed time it is after eleven o’ clock, and my eyes are closing with sleepiness as I write.
We are in a very lovely hotel called The Deanery in Ripon, it is beautiful and odd and painted in creamy shades of grey. The floors creak and the ceilings slope and the lady on the desk was sweet and kindly and helpful and forgot to ask us to pay so we had to go back and volunteer.
Outside it is Victorian melodrama foggy, heavy and damp and muffled, with pools of street light gleaming wetly in the gloom.
We have been to the candlelit carol concert in the magnificent cathedral, which is on the other side of the cobbled road and towers over the quaint little hotel.
Oliver was singing in the choir for the concert.
The cathedral was as crowded as local councils will ever allow any public building to be, we had to book seats. Tiresomely when they came on sale we were having a minor financial crisis, and by the time we had saved up enough the only seats remaining were the special sort reserved for peasants behind the great stone pillars.
I thought I would mind this, but when it came to it I didn’t at all, because although we couldn’t actually see the choirs at the front, what we could see absolutely fantastically was the rest of the cathedral, and I had a splendid view of rows of carefully-groomed parents, all bobbing excitedly up and down trying to catch a glimpse of their offspring.
Of course we sang our heads off, Lucy and I giggling and competing to out-bellow one another. There was a reading from The Wind In The Willows, which is one of my favourite books, and gorgeous echoing boys’ singing, and a solo so lovely it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
My parents had come with us, and my father dozed peacefully at intervals between standing up to sing our bits, probably in consequence of the enormous and rather good dinner we had just eaten at the Royal Oak.
They are staying in the same hotel, where we met in the afternoon for an excursion around Ripon. This did not hold our interest for very long except for a rather splendid little shop which sold maple-and-whisky flavoured candles, which we liked a very great deal.
After that came the dinner at the Royal Oak, where we ate so much that I couldn’t actually finish my pudding, rather to my regret, because it was ace, chocolate and marmalade and cream.
We just caught a glimpse of the boys jumping excitedly off their coach and dashing into the cathedral on our way back, although we couldn’t see which one was Oliver.
It was the end of the concert before we saw him. I went round to the other side of the pillar to see if I could see him, and jumped up and down and waved in an undignified sort of way until eventually Oliver noticed me and waved back.
It was lovely to see him. He smelled uncharacteristically clean and fresh, explaining that Matron had obliged them all to shower before they left, and I hugged him and sniffed his clean hair happily.
It was dreadful to say goodbye again, even though it is only for another couple of days. I would have liked to kidnap him and take him home, but of course he had to go back to school with the others. It is jolly hard to lose your children so much, although I must concede that it is peaceful.
One more carol concert to go and then we will have him back home and be all together again.
I am looking forward to it very much.
