Mark repaired my car yesterday.
I was so busy going on and on about my problems invading York that I forgot to mention this when I wrote my diary last night.
Anyway, he drove out to the scrapyard at Ulverston and bought another window for ten pounds and put it in. He said that somebody has mended the door once upon a time, with the wrong kind of bolts. Every now and again these bolts throw the window off its little sliding track, and then it explodes.
This is not an enjoyable experience, I can promise you. I am glad that I am not a possible target for an assassin, because it is quite bad enough when the window explodes unexpectedly in your lap, without being shot as well.
Mark has replaced both the window and the bolts and says that the window should never again have a surprise explosion, so I don’t need to worry. I am very glad about this.
Since I had a car with a full complement of unexploded windows I was able to drive over to North Yorkshire to collect Oliver for half term today. This seems to have come around very quickly indeed, it hardly seems like five minutes since we were dumping him off there with instructions to learn his spellings and remember to wear his vests.
I found him in one of the corridors, having waited patiently for him beside a row of old black and white pictures of rugby teams. I spent ages watching energetic boys bouncing past me bellowing their delight at being free, and exhausted looking teachers making surreptitious ‘let’s go to the pub’ signals at one another, and then Oliver turned up.
He looked to be in the peak of robust good health, covered in freckles with a grin from ear to ear, and a rucksack which no longer dwarfs him. This is because he is now Year Three and not any longer a little squirt of a new boy. He is exactly halfway through prep school, he has got another two and a half years left to go.
We made our way out through The Boot Room, because Oliver wanted to find Matron to give her a hug before he went home. I have not been in The Boot Room before. It is the room where boys store their rugby boots in between matches. It is full of wire pigeon holes, each of which contains a pair of mud-encrusted rugby boots. The smell was really quite astonishing. I am very glad I have only got one boy. To have three hundred must be quite exhausting, and Matron has gone up in my estimation yet again.
I had brought a bag of tuck with me, which he devoured on the way home. In between mouthfuls he told me enthusiastic and incomprehensible stories about people without Christian names, and about what Sir said, and about how he scored a goal in football. Oliver scored the goal, not Sir, obviously. He told me about what happened in the dorm, and the Warhammer Club, and about how he had read absolutely all of his new books and would need some more.
When we got home he ate some more tuck, and then a plate full of fish fingers and waffles, and then more tuck, and then a large bowl of rice and some sausages. I left him rummaging in the tuck drawer again, hunting for crisps. I think he must be growing. I am very glad I do not have school’s catering to do. They have a very nice Indian chef, who is constantly trying to interest the boys in spicy foods, without success, and the entire school goes for the sausages and jam roly-poly option. I have eaten his curries, they are superb, and wasted on boys anyway.
Once we had established our catering arrangements for the next few days Mark and I went back to bed. This is because it is not easy to stay full of chirrup until five in the morning if you have been up since eight.
It is lovely to have him home.
The picture is the camper van which now has a bumper, complete with a very useful number plate. This is not the number plate for our van, so it will have to come off: but it is the number plate for the engine, which will be brilliantly useful when we need to order parts.
It is really getting there…
