I am in bed.
We are in the camper van again.
This is because of taking Lucy back to school.
The thing was that we had got to get up really early, at nine o’ clock, which is rubbish after a busy Saturday night and then not going to bed until five.
We chucked everything in the camper van and set off. It is an awfully long drive over to York, especially when you have not had very much sleep.
We met Nan and Grandad at the pub for lunch.
The lovely thing about doing something very often is that you know exactly how to do it and there are no troubling surprises. We meet Nan and Grandad in the same pub every time. This is splendid for lots of reasons, because we all enjoy each other’s company very much, and have a happy time. Also it is without difficulty because we know what things on the menu we all like to eat.
When you are tired and a bit confused this is a really good thing. I did not have to wonder about anything. They serve chicken with bacon and cheese and barbecue sauce, and I know that I like this very much.
We had a glass of wine and chicken cooked with bacon and cheese. Then we had pudding.
We needed a little sleep after that, but of course we had got to take Lucy to school first.
She is in the sixth form now, and a real grown-up. She is allowed to do anything, and has a nice study bedroom in a part of the school called, rather optimistically I thought, Cloisters.
A man in a suit ran after the camper van as we drove down the drive.
We were unloading by the time he caught us up and discovered that actually we were allowed to be there after all. He explained that there had been a fair in town and that he had thought that perhaps we were part of that and had become lost.
I liked the idea of being an escaped fairground ride, but we explained that we weren’t, and were really middle-class people in disguise. Lucy has the sort of accent that makes this sort of claim believable, and so he let us off, although he did watch carefully to make sure that we left.
We pulled into the next lay by and went to sleep.
This is of course the very magnificent thing about the camper van. Oliver stayed in his bunk and played on his Playstation, and we slept.
When we woke up I thought. would like to go and see my friend Kate, whose house we pass on the way back, so we rang her and suggested it.
I had not thought this through.
Kate is far too polite to say no, and by the time we arrived at her house it was a quarter to eleven, and Kate was waiting for us, looking sleepy.
This is what happens when you do not live to the same clock as everybody else. It is the sort of thing that happens to us in the mornings sometimes, when people think that it will be all right to deliver letters and telephone to see if we would like a refund of PPI.
We drank a cup of coffee and apologised, and drove away to find a lay by.
We are here now.
I am in bed.
The picture at the top is Lucy. We are missing her so very much.
