I am newly-exercised.
I have been to the gym and for a swim even though it is Saturday and the children are at home and I have got lots of other really important things to do.
I am telling you this especially for the benefit of Number One Son-In-Law, so that if he should be reading this he will discover that he need not despair of me just yet. I am still undeniably fat and lazy, but I am a fat lazy person who has been on a rowing machine.
I woke up this morning with a gloomy sinking feeling, brought about by the depressing knowledge that I would have to renew my fitness efforts today after yesterday’s wonderful idleness.
Perhaps I should say that for the sake of scrupulously accurate recording, the previous paragraph ought to begin with the sentence: ‘woke up this afternoon’. I do not wish to fib to my readers.
Once I had woken up, and drunk coffee, and rediscovered the children, we had something of a family meeting. Oliver’s school report had arrived. We all read it thoughtfully, and considered its implications.
It said that he is trying hard and is lovely.
We all thought that this was not good enough. There are no marks at all to be had in Common Entrance for general adorability and sincere efforts. Also we thought that the adorability was helping to conceal some of his less effortful moments from his teachers. He is a great deal cleverer than he looks.
He confessed to less than maximum effort.
A programme of educational support was decided upon. He and Lucy spent the rest of the afternoon at the kitchen table, laughing and calculating angles. After a while Mark joined in. I made picnics and dinners and listened. I do not have to know maths for anything in particular, except the Inland Revenue, who do not care about acute angles and congruence, so I could listen without needing to feel challenged.
This occupied their whole afternoon, and they all enjoyed themselves so much that they thought they would do some more soon. I was very pleased about this. Oliver is going to Gordonstoun, but it would be brilliant if he scores some phenomenal Common Entrance result that would make Eton sorry to have lost him.
In the end it all had to stop because everybody was hungry, and Harry was coming over to take up holiday residence. Mark went out and cleaned the taxis and afterwards we thought that perhaps another sleep might be a happy thing to do with the end of the day.
I think perhaps I have got some sort of sleeping disease, because despite not having got up until one, I collapsed into bed at half past four and descended into instant oblivion. I am becoming a sort of elderly Sleeping Beauty, without the beauty. This doesn’t matter because I have got the sleeping bit wrapped up so nicely. I did not want to get up when the alarm went off to encourage me to go and do strenuous things in the gym.
I got up and went, though, because after all of my family’s determined efforts at self-improvement I felt that I ought to do my own bit, although I would be fibbing if I said that I could detect very much improvement yet.
I found that there was a number on the rowing machine that got bigger the harder I pulled, although since I wasn’t wearing my glasses I was not at all sure what the number meant. It went up and down all the time, and I managed to get it up to a thousand once. I had no idea what the thousand was, but I was very pleased with myself all the same.
I have been sitting wearily on the taxi rank ever since.
I haven’t taken a picture.
Have a picture of Windermere.
