We are in the camper van.
There are only two of us again, and I am torn between terrible bereft-of-children sadness and relief.
The relief is not exactly about seeing the back of the children. It is an awful lot about having managed to keep them alive for a whole eight weeks and then having sent them back to school with almost a full set of uniform, and shoes and bedding and everything a child might need. Also we have managed to pay for another term of school. In short, although it has been a close-run thing, we have achieved parenthood again.
Taking a boy back to school seems to have been a frantically exhausting undertaking.
The day got off to a terribly sad start when Number One Daughter telephoned us miserably with the appalling news that their happy, much loved little dog, known to all of you and to us, as Fat White Poopy, had been killed in an awful misadventure with a train.
We were terribly upset, and very sad for them all.
We threw everything into the camper van and set off, not for school, but for Sports Direct in Kendal to replace the lost things.
Then Mark drove whilst I sewed name tapes in, and Oliver realised that he had left behind his controller for his Playstation.
He does not take this back to school but uses it on the journey, as a last echo of home to come with him. His Playstation is his best thing and he was heartbroken.
We stopped.
To our happiness we realised that we were in a place where we had long wanted to turn around, beside a driveway with a very grumpy notice warning of CCTV and prosecutions for anybody who turned their vehicle around in it. We have wanted to do this so much that we have even considered turning round there and then coming back again.
We drove back to Kendal to buy another one.
Fortunately Oliver still had a voucher for Game shop left over from last Christmas. He has been saving this for an emergency, and this was the emergency.
Once he was restored to relieved happiness we set off again.
In the meantime Mark took the mournful poopy-funeral music off the CD player and put some brighter music on.
Slowly the day started to get better.
We stopped on the top of the Yorkshire moors to have a last time together. I made bacon and egg sandwiches for us all and we talked sadly about Fat White. Then Oliver wrote a letter to Gordonstoun thanking them for having him, and I washed up and Mark emptied the dogs, and it was time to go, because predictably, we were late.
School was like school, bouncing energy around every corner. Oliver’s new dormitory is in the attic, because he is a senior now, so I was very glad to have Mark to help with the luggage.
Matron hugged Oliver, so it was a good thing that he had had a thorough shower, and we went to the school shop to replace the torn jerseys. Then we hurried back to the camper so that I could sew the name tags in the jerseys in the place that Oliver prefers them, instead of wherever Matron, who has about four hundred to do, finds the easiest.
Then he was gone, diving into the crowd of tweed jackets and disappearing, like the last mouthful of tea into the washing up water. Mark and I drove slowly back and talked about children and poopies and life.
We did not go home, but down the motorway to Blackpool to meet my father, who is having a few days of doughnuts and sea air whilst my mother has gone off to see some friends.
By the time we reached him it was our usual visiting hour of the middle of the night, but he still managed to be pleased to see us. We drank a large glass of wine and felt gloriously, dizzily drunk.
We emptied the dogs on the sea front and staggered back for a shower, in a sort of jug-and-bucket way.
We are in bed.
We are in Blackpool.
The world is not all sad.
