We gave up working before we should have done last night.
This was because we arrived on the taxi rank just before six, and by half past eleven we had made about thirteen pounds each.
We had got to get up at half past seven this morning so we gave up. We left the other five taxis sitting forlornly on the taxi rank and sloped off, trying not to look as though we were just losers who lacked staying power.
We went to bed early.
I still felt as though the sky had crashed about my ears when the alarm went off, and we sat numbly in bed for ages, scalding our eyes open with tarry black coffee.
Mark had got to dash off to the farm to carry on with his shed-emptying activities, and I was going to Yorkshire to get Oliver, who has got an exeat this weekend.
I like the drive to Oliver’s school. It crosses one of the bleakest fell-top wildernesses in Cumbria. You can’t listen to the radio up there, and so it gives me plenty of high-speed musing time. I needed this because of Christmas coming up and also because of wishing to ponder our financial affairs. It is always good to consider these things carefully every now and again.
I like Oliver’s school as well, which is thoughtful enough to provide coffee for waiting parents. This was enormously welcome, because it was still before lunchtime, and I settled down on one of the worn wooden benches with a sigh of happiness to watch milling crowds of tweeds and pearl earrings, all hovering expectantly outside the changing rooms.
I didn’t get chance to finish my coffee in the end, because Oliver was one of the first to appear, bounding joyously across the yard and wanting to go, now, straight away, so we did.
It is so different to have an almost-grown-up boy in the car. When he first started boarding school he was full of enthusiastically incomprehensible stories about dorms and tuck and people called things like Willoughby-Wentworth. He is almost twelve now, and a senior, and gravely responsible.
Today he talked about Common Entrance exams, and how much he is looking forward to the Gordonstoun headmaster coming next week to preach in Chapel, and about aid projects in India, and wind farms in Ireland and the new songs the choir is practising for Christmas. One of the latter is in a minor key. He is much taken by its melodic charms and sang it to me so that I could appreciate the unexpected lifts and dips in the treble.
It is lovely and a bit sad all at once, he is so grown up and sure of himself, with opinions and interesting observations. He held the door open for me when we got home and asked politely if I needed any help in the kitchen.
After that he ate six chicken pieces, an apple, four doughnuts, some crisps and a bar of chocolate, so I imagine we can look forward to another growth spurt and trouser purchasing excursion before too long.
I cleaned my taxi out whilst he investigated Jack Septic Eye on YouTube, and then cleaned the bathroom whilst he contemplated games that he might find acceptable for Christmas.
I had just finished scrubbing black mould out of the plug hole when somebody banged on the door, and it turned out to be one of Oliver’s friends from school who has recently moved to the next village.
This was rather splendid, because the only contact with school that Oliver ever has in the holidays is with somebody called Gandy who sends him pictures of piles of poo on my Messenger account.
The boys dashed off to play at Virtual Reality Star Wars, and his friend’s father stayed for a cup of tea. We have spoken to one another at various school functions, and I like him. He is an artist and illustrator, which seems like a gloriously self-reliant way to earn a living imagine being so good at drawing that people give you money for it. It is nice to have become neighbours.
Fortunately I have done some tidying up this week, and so did not need to feel horribly embarrassed about dog paw prints and cobwebs. I could make a gracious offer of tea in a clean cup, and listen to his stories with interest.
It is terribly difficult to have casual acquaintances. I am always longing to ask them interesting personal questions about the things I really would like to know, like what happened in his marriage and what he feels about relationships now, but of course I can’t. I have got to bite my tongue. Like Eliza Doolittle I have got to stick to uncomplicated topics like the weather and everybody’s health.
I managed this until Mark came home, after which our new neighbour left and we permitted ourselves a little snooze before work.
We were late for work then, but it didn’t matter.
Nobody is going anywhere at the moment.
