I have been to collect Lucy.
This was a rather nerve-fraying experience. It is not easy to maintain a gently tranquil frame of mind whilst piloting a car without air conditioning through heavy traffic for six hours in tooth-melting heat.
It is very hot indeed. I was frayed by the time I got back.
Obviously it is lovely to have Lucy back. She has now finished her last GCSEs and is home for the summer, apart from a small but tiresome interlude when she has got to be taken back on a Thursday and then retrieved two days later. This is to facilitate Sports Day and Speech Day, and a party for which I have had to consent to her drinking intoxicating beverages.
She wandered out of the exam room looking pink and overheated, partly, I imagine, due to her having chosen to wear her heavy woollen sweater and tights on top of her school uniform. She looked at herself in surprise when I pointed this out, as though it was something that had happened to her in her sleep. Once we were back in her boarding house she peeled the whole lot off in favour of more appropriate teenage attire, which always looks a lot like underwear anyway.
She told me all about her GCSEs on the way back, she thinks that she has probably passed most of them, which was a relief. She thought that she would like to do some exercise and eat healthy food over the summer, and contemplated cycling to the gym and back every day. I am impressed at her enthusiasm although less convinced that it will ever happen. Certainly my enthusiasm for exercise and fitness has rarely lasted past the sound of the alarm clock. Maybe it is some latent gene somewhere and she will grow up to become her sisters. Alas, it has bypassed me.
We got home to the happy discovery that Mark had organised pasta and salad for dinner, thus satisfying all criteria for responsible parenthood. They have both been given at least one meal that contains something green and is not tuck. Oliver left the green bits. Mark made his current favourite joke, about what is orange and sounds like lettuce, the answer to which is a carrot, and makes everybody laugh helplessly every time.
They had spent most of the day sweltering in the heat and building a roof garden on the top of the woodshed, it is a sort of horizontal trellis which sticks out over the top of the path, over which Mark is hoping to persuade the peas and beans and pumpkins to grow. I think this is a happy idea. The peas and beans are already growing in their little seedling pots, we have not bothered about them for ages and they look about ready to fall over. We will get them planted up there tomorrow.
After that we had got to get ready and go to work, we considered a little snooze first, which was tempting, but it turned out to be just too hot. Later on I wished that I had, because by midnight I was thinking longingly of my bed, but it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow is Tuesday, and we are not working.
I am looking forward to it very much indeed.
