No snow so far.
This is about the only winter calamity we don’t have yet. From being mildly temperate yesterday, today the weather has plummeted into the ice age.
It is terribly cold, and great winds have been howling down from the fells all night. When we got up this morning we discovered a large tree had blown down and was blocking the pavement in front of the Library Gardens. This was shocking enough make us proceed very cautiously on our morning constitutional.
I was not at all sorry to retreat hastily back inside our warm little house, faces tingling as if we had been stuck on the deck of a Hull ferry for a couple of hours. Even the dogs had had enough, and scampered hastily inside and planted themselves firmly in front of the fire.
The day’s project was to get Oliver back to school. He had celebrated his last night of freedom by staying up until about three in the morning and eating all of the lollies left over from the Christmas tree. This morning he did not feel very well.
Fortunately he does not have to arrive at school until the evening, so he had all day to slope around in his dressing gown, which he did. Mark joined him for a while and they played unsuitable computer games in a father-son bonding manner. Oliver is far better at these than Mark. Mark’s only win came when I invaded the bedroom and insisted that Oliver leave his computer alone for a minute to try on alternative pairs of woolly gloves, at which point Mark blew him to pieces whilst he was distracted.
I left them to it, having no interest in computer games and rather less aptitude than Mark. I finished the last of the packing and cooked things and tidied up.
In the end Mark cleaned everybody’s shoes and we had a last supper of sausages and bread rolls, and it was time to go.
There was snow on the high fells, and we had some interesting weather moments.
Oliver talked almost the whole way. It is lovely to have a boy about to talk to, although his topics of interest do not tend to coincide much with mine. He speculated for a while about the effect that eating sweet corn for an entire weekend might have on one’s poo. He told us in some detail about a game he had been playing over the holidays in which a female character insisted upon wearing an off-the-shoulder dress which he thought looked entirely uncomfortable, and he expressed the wish, fleetingly, that he had done all of his prep.
He has been hampered in this effort by the fact that maths prep needs to be done on an interactive website, and the teacher can see not only when you have done some, but at what time you have done it. In our nocturnal household this is not a good idea, if the maths teacher discovered that he routinely started on his prep somewhere around midnight, when of course everybody in our house is still up and fully engaged with life, she might be rather surprised.
We arrived at school in the end, and hauled his bags up the stairs to the dorm. His bed is next to his best friend, which pleased him, and was ready made up with his favourite penguin duvet, looking comfortably inviting.
We trailed around school putting things in their right places, schoolbooks in the common room locker, wellies in the welly room, games kit in the changing room, and Spider Man firmly on his bed.
The moment of farewell is always horrible, and we all hate it. Fortunately we managed to hug Oliver and depart just as he engaged in thrilled conversation with his geography teacher about the splendidly map-like view of the world from an aeroplane.
We departed sadly into the freezing night, boyless and forlorn.
There is just us for another three weeks.
We will be able to do all sorts of things.
Camper van here we come.
