I packed up my headache this morning and went to get Lucy from school.
It is a long drive over the tops of the fells, and it was very foggy. This added a touch of adrenaline to the activity, because there is nothing like the red lights of a cautious person looming up in front of you at high speed out of the gloom to wake you up a bit.
I didn’t mind in the least, because of wanting time to think about my book. Driving is a jolly good time for thinking, especially on the drive over the fells, because I can’t get Radio Four or a phone signal and hence am thrown back on my own internal milling about for entertainment. I have gone off Radio Four anyway and am only listening out of loyalty to Steve Hewlitt and to Clarrie Grundy.
Anyway I drove for three hours through the dense fog and had a very satisfactory time indeed, thinking about murders and wars and executions and invasions.
Nan and Grandad had very kindly offered to collect Lucy from school, and so I didn’t need to bother with the whole shenanigans of explaining again to the school ground staff that I am not really a taxi, at least for their purposes, and my name won’t be on their list of taxis permitted on to the school grounds, because although I might not look like an aspirational member of the middle classes, in fact I am one.
Instead I went to the pub, which was much more restful.
It was especially restful because Nan and Grandad had been held up, and so they were half an hour late when they turned up with Lucy, by which time I had sunk a whole glass of fairly reasonable Cabernet Sauvignon and written half a page of my book. I felt very pleased indeed with this outcome.
Of course it was lovely to see them all. We haven’t seen Nan and Grandad since Christmas and so there was lots of catching up to do. They had been visiting their other grandchildren and babysitting. This charitable gesture won my wholehearted admiration, a week babysitting for Ritalin Boy would drive me way past the stage where drinking would help.
We ate the most enormous dinner, I had chicken drenched in melted cheese and bacon, which was ace, and then shared some profiteroles and cream with Lucy. Grandad told us stories about his days in the prison service, which always completely intrigues me, because I have never been in prison, not so far at least. He worked in a high security prison filled with interestingly wicked people, which I think is jolly brave.
Lucy put her earplug things in on the journey back, which was splendid because it gave me more time to contemplate invading Lancaster, and I mused thoughtfully all the way home. I felt entirely revitalised when we finally chugged into the back alley behind our house: except then I had got to go out to work and people kept interrupting my attempts to write it all down.
I am going to go back to it and have another try now. I still haven’t taken any more pictures, but Number One Daughter posted a very splendid one of her and their two poopies which I thought you might like. They all have muddy paws and an identical expression. Number One Daughter is the one on the right.
