We are on the taxi rank again.
It is raining, and quiet, and last night seems like a strange dream.
It is a peculiar sort of life sometimes. Today it is like being Cinderella on the morning after the ball. We have woken to all the usual difficulties of life crowding in and the warmth and magic only a memory.
We did not mind this, because enchanted memories are the only sort of wealth truly worth having in the end, and last night had given us an especially splendid one.
It was an extraordinarily happy night, rich with laughter. Curiously, at the end of it I found myself wishing that we were real friends, rarely have I enjoyed the company of strangers so much.
By great good fortune we hadn’t drunk enough to be hung over this morning. We woke up curled next to one another in our warm little camper van and looked out on to a chilly world with bright blue skies.
We dressed in woolly jumpers and scarves, and drove the couple of miles to Oliver’s school. We were just climbing out of the van when a tall, blue-and-white robed choirboy came tearing across the path to meet us. He hurled himself on us, and we hugged each other excitedly.
He is twelve now, it was his birthday on Friday. We had emailed him and sent cards and a book, but reserved his birthday present PlayStation game, because of it being unsuitable to be unwrapped at school.
He was due to read the prayers. He explained that he had been practising, and promised not to display cynicism with even the smallest glance. Then the bell began to toll, and he dashed off, leaving us to find our seats in the school’s pretty little chapel.
I am sure I have mentioned before how much I like Aysgarth school’s chapel. It is candle-lit, and brightly painted, with patterns enough to make our camper van look dull, presumably to occupy the attention of bored small boys during long sermons. The music master is one of the world’s unsung heroes, he plays with a passion and a focus that I suspect may be completely wasted on eight year old boys, but which makes almost every visit to school a joy for the soul.
It was Sunday, and the chapel filled with boys and masters, and a handful of parents at the back. We all bellowed the hymns cheerfully, and the Gordonstoun headmaster gave the sermon. This was an improbable ghost story about Gordonstoun’s days as a castle, with a predictably encouraging moral of hard work being the Best Thing, Chaps.
Oliver read the prayers with an air of sincerity so palpable I had to look somewhere else, and then it was over: and we retreated to the living room for coffee.
The two heads and their wives were busy being polite to parents, so we thought it tactful not to interrupt. In any case, we had Oliver, so once we had drunk sufficient coffee to wake ourselves up, we said brief, and regretful farewells, and sloped off back to the camper van, passing the chapel on the way where the music master was still playing, all alone.
We abducted Oliver. School Sundays follow a predictable pattern of Chapel, free time, Sunday roast lunch, then an activity. Today the activity was to visit a trampolining arena, presumably so that the boys could all charge about and bounce themselves into exhaustion before bed.
We excused Oliver from the roast lunch so that we could drive him up to the trampolining arena ourselves, stopping for a take away on the way. Oliver was pleased about this, not being fond of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. He is not at all like his father in some respects.
We went to a place called a Drive Thru MacDonald’s, which we couldn’t drive thru because of the camper van being too tall, so we went inside to order.
I have only been to a MacDonald’s once before, and apart from thinking that it must be a profoundly terrible place to be employed, think that they are quite good as long as you don’t actually have to eat in one.
It was a cheerful headache-inducing riot of primary colours and computer screens and noise. We had to order by pressing pictures on a huge screen, which I liked doing very much. When we had finished we just put Mark’s credit card in to the bottom of the screen, and we had done everything before we even got anywhere near the counter.
We took our dinner to eat in the camper van, and actually it was perfectly all right. I have heard people say rude things about MacDonald’s, but I thought that twelve quid for a pile of beef burgers, chips and some unidentifiable battered things was really jolly good.
We were starving because of having got up too late for breakfast, and Oliver was starving because of being twelve now, and we all wolfed the food, in the silent way you do when eating has become an urgent concern. Then we leaned back happily on the seats to drink tea, and Oliver told us about school, and we all marvelled about how nearly Christmas it has become.
Eventually the rest of the school turned up, of course, and he had to go, bounding off happily without a backward glance.
You won’t be surprised to learn that we had a little sleep on the way home.
There is only so much excitement you can manage in one day.
