We have had a second day of the camper van.
It was a terrific undignified scramble.
The day was supposed to run in a smoothly organised fashion but obviously it didn’t.
We had just woken up when Lucy came ambling downstairs in her pyjamas to tell us that she has just had her GCSE results, and she thought that she had ‘done all right’.
Further interrogation revealed a splendid set of results, considerably better than mine.
I am dying to repeat the witticism about her results being the same as the person from Liverpool trying to stop a fight, because it is one of my favourites, but it wasn’t even mine to begin with, somebody cleverer than me dreamed it up. I can’t remember who, if it was you, do say and I will give you a well-deserved credit on here.
Instead of getting up and getting properly organised in good time, we all had a leisurely cup of coffee in our bed and celebrated excitedly. Then we rang all of our relatives and told them as well.
What a magnificent moment, GCSEs over and done for the rest of her life. My nerves only have to stand Oliver’s now and we will be done with academia for ever. I think she has been more worried about it than she has told us, because her light-hearted relief was almost palpable this morning, and she has passed the whole day ever since in a dreamy-eyed daze of happiness. I understand this feeling completely, I still get it occasionally when my father pays my overdraft off.
Once we had decided that even her magnificent results did not provide an excuse for champagne in bed we got up, and then slowly remembered that we had got an awful lot to do.
It was the second day of the Krav Maga lessons, which meant a trip to Whitehaven in the camper, hurrah, hurrah: but also Oliver has got a visit to Gordonstoun tomorrow, as a sort of early trial run ready for when he is thirteen. This meant packing and flapping and swearing. There was a lot of the last, especially when I realised that I had not unpacked his luggage properly at the end of last term, and several of the things he was likely to need were wrapped in an unpleasantly whiffy bundle at the bottom of his rucksack.
I shoved them in the washing far too late for them to be finished before we set off, we will have to blow on them all night or something. Then we loaded ourselves and the dogs and lots of useful things into the camper and set off.
We abandoned the children with the softly-spoken Shaun the Krav Maga teacher, they spent the day learning how to elbow a prospective murderer in the nose and kick them in the shins. I don’t really think that they are likely to meet many murderers, but then again, there only needs to be one. Lucy seems to have a naturally violent streak, she is getting very good at it, although now she has passed her GCSEs she is unlikely to need to make a career as a cage fighter or anything.
We went down to the beach at St. Bees again. This time instead of collapsing straight into an exhausted sleep we tootled about hanging curtains and fixing the table. We did lots of useful things and then went for an amble along the beach with the dogs.
I can’t tell you how very happy this made me. We paddled in the sea and felt the wind tugging in our hair, not that either of us have got very much. St Bees is lovely, there is a playground and some nicely cared for grass, and a very clean loo. This smelled a bit, but I didn’t mind, we can all be a bit smelly, especially after eating onion bhajis or lentils.
It was utterly brilliant, tumbling grey water and clumps of seaweed, and children dashing in and out of the water, there is no greater contentment in life. The dogs dashed about and barked at the waves, and we hugged one another and thought how happy we were.
It was brilliant.
We didn’t break down at all today.
What a brilliant, brilliant day.
