Oliver has gone.
Not exactly back to school. This weekend is the much-anticipated visit to Gordonstoun in Scotland.
Gordonstoun , as regular readers might remember, is where he will be going to school when he is thirteen. This is some time away, as of course he is only eleven, but very sensibly they like to accustom their new pupils to the idea gradually, the way people do with freezers and cold baths before they set off on expeditions to the North Pole.
It is a million miles away, in the north of Scotland. It is so far away that Oliver asked if he needed to change the time on his phone to Scottish time.
We have bought him a telephone in time for this trip. He will be allowed to have it in his present school as well. This is because he is now a senior, but only as long as we take the SIM out, for some peculiar educational reason.
He was both thrilled and terrified, which seemed reasonable enough. Of course he is a seasoned boarder, having been boarding at his current school since he was a tiny squib of eight. He is entirely accustomed to dormitories and dining halls and sorting hats, but of course any new school is bound to be intimidating. Especially it was intimidating because it is bank holiday weekend, and so despite being encouragingly invited, we were trapped at work and there was no way we could come as well.
The original plan was that I would take him to the airport this morning, but over our far-too-early coffee it occurred to us that actually Mark could take him and I could take Lucy shopping for her new school things.
Neither of these options made us feel especially ecstatic, the choice between bank holiday traffic or clothes shopping with a reluctant teenager does not fill the soul with gladness: but it is what we did.
We levered Oliver out of bed and obliged him to re-wash the bits of himself that he appeared to have forgotten during the previous night’s shower. He dressed in his almost-dry clothes and bade me an anxiously tearful goodbye.
I took Lucy shopping in Kendal.
We both loathe shopping.
A couple of hours later Mark rang me from the airport in a state of helpless fury to say that the airline had messed the booking up and were refusing to allow Oliver to board.
I gulped with horror, and Mark hung up to be indignantly middle class at somebody hapless on the check-in desk and to reassure a by now desperately quaking Oliver.
I was distracted and accidentally spent a fortune on a beautifully soft new wool jacket that Lucy was stroking adoringly.
I had to go and have a cup of Farrers Extra Strong black coffee to recover.
Whilst I was caffeine-fuelling my already pounding heart rate into a thundering frenzy of anxiety, Mark rang back to say that he had given the airline an extra forty quid and they had taken Oliver on board.
I was so relieved that we went and spent some more money.
Lucy looked beautiful. She has got to have smart clothes for the sixth form because they don’t have a uniform, and none of her current garments qualified.
We bought gorgeous jersey-knit shirts and silky-soft dresses and fitted trousers and boots.
We staggered home weighed down by prettily-decorated designer shopping bags and Lucy put the kettle on for more coffee.
I went up to my office to telephone the airline. A morning’s shopping had put me in a good frame of mind for this activity.
Of course they caved instantly in the face of my best telephone indignation, and were grovellingly apologetic, promising a full refund and the most loving treatment a small lone boy could have on his return journey.
Mark arrived as I was smugly hanging up, and despite several cups of coffee clearly intended to put hairs on a person’s chest, we collapsed into bed, where we stayed until we were late and then had to rush about getting ready for work.
We are so hopelessly broke now that for once we are quite glad of the bank holiday. With any luck there will be hundreds of people here, all needing taxis, and I will laugh in the face of wool-jacket expenditure.
Oliver forgot to ring us when he got there. He forgot to ring us again after dinner. In the end he remembered as he was getting into bed, and the housemaster kindly allowed him to use the school phone because he was too tired to remember how his new one worked.
Obviously he is absolutely fine.
