It has been brought to my attention that I have got to concentrate on real life more.
Mark was just making our morning coffee this afternoon, when Oliver appeared, with his school shoes, which he had thoughtfully brought downstairs for cleaning.
“Thank you,” I said, “although you don’t need those until Wednesday.”
Oliver, who has met me before, looked at me suspiciously and asked if I was sure it was Wednesday, so I checked the diary, and to my astonishment it said that he would be going back tomorrow.
“No, we don’t,” said Oliver, firmly. “They told us at school it definitely wasn’t Monday because it’s always Monday except this time.”
Eventually I was driven to examine the school calendar, which is pinned to the notice board, but which is in such microscopic print that I never, ever look at it.
I found my glasses and squinted.
“Goodness,” I said. I didn’t really, use your imaginations. “It’s this afternoon.”
Oliver came and sat in our bed whilst we had coffee and we all contemplated the event gloomily.
Eventually we decided that we just had to bite the bullet and get on with it, and so we got up. Oliver went to have a shower, an activity which he has entirely avoided during the holiday. I ironed his uniform, and Mark cleaned his shoes. Then he borrowed Lucy’s nail clippers and trimmed his own nails, which he can do now because he is grown up. Once you have an eleven year old you are not required to do nearly as much polishing as you did when they were eight, I am not sure if I am glad about this.
He is certainly not the terrified eight year old we dumped in boarding school all that time ago. He has become a civilised grown up with a preferred style of handkerchief, a taste for choral music and an easy grin. If you got him to shower more often and diluted the passion for zombie massacre he might actually turn into a decent sort of chap in the end.
We had a relatively cheerful drive across to school, discussing his current enthusiasm for composing rap music, and wondering whether school would approve of music if it was good, even if it happened to have rude words in it. Then suddenly we were there, among dozens of excited boys, and the holidays had come to an entirely unexpected close.
He dived off into school in the ebullient company of Son Of Russian Oligarch, and I chugged back across the fells without him, considering the plot for the sequel to the novel that I haven’t got finished yet.
I didn’t go home. I went straight to the taxi rank, because of paying for the whole thing and not having earned enough money this week yet. Mark was there, and we had a little china cup of lovely chai from our flask and felt contented.
I am going to leave you there and carry on trying to write my book. Much as I like writing a diary I am hoping and hoping that I will be able to really finish a really real book, and that somebody will buy it. That would be ace.
Keep everything crossed. Last few chapters to go.
The picture is Oliver at school bedtime. He is no longer a frightened new boy squirt.
