The thing about being sleepy is that it makes everything so horribly difficult.
We had a little sleep this afternoon. The thing was that it was a disappointingly little sleep, and we did not at all want to wake up and go to work.
Pulling back the duvet was very difficult indeed.
The thing was that of course today was Oliver’s Italian adventure. He was off skiing with what turned out to be almost their entire school.
You might not be surprised to hear that we decided to make an occasion of it. We all got out of bed, wearily, at eight o’ clock, loaded ourselves into the camper van, and set off, fuelled by ear-twistingly strong black coffee.
I am pleased to be able to report that in fact I had remembered absolutely everything that he was supposed to bring, even the things that I did not notice until my final reading of the instructions late last night, when I was extra careful not to accidentally skip the dull bits.
School was absolutely swarming with excited activity.
The boys had all been instructed to wear their holiday hoodies, which bore the legend: ‘Aysgarth School, The Italian Job’. Even the teachers were wearing them, under their tweed jackets.
Two massive coaches waited in the car park.
Oliver strolled into the crowded hall with his hands in his pockets, to be greeted by yells of “Ibby!” and half a dozen boys dashed up and hurled themselves on him.
Schoolboy interaction seems to be all very physical.
They bounced and wrestled and elbowed one another. We do not often get an opportunity to observe Oliver in his natural environment, and so were captivated. Lucy said that it was rather like watching wolf cubs, all very appealing in a big-eyed floppy haired sort of way, but you wouldn’t want to get your fingers too close.
There were dozens of them. The big ones, who have mostly reached the lofty heights of thirteen, sat together on a comfortable semi-circle of luggage with the superior air of experienced travellers and appeared to be playing some sort of gambling game. Oliver’s class tumbled together, eating their packed lunches and sitting on one another, never still for a moment. The little ones jumped and danced from foot to foot, surely too small to be at boarding school, and one tiny boy clung tearfully to his mother as if he were about to be despatched for sale to the salt mines.
Son Of Oligarch had been given two bottles of water with his packed lunch, and was demonstrating how to drink out of both of them at once, which led to a wet shirt before they had even left the dining hall. Somebody else had brought a tub of Pringles, and one unfortunate youth was being restrained by two other youths whilst a third waved the tub enticingly under his nose and then ran away.
They never stopped wagging about for a single moment.
I might have mentioned this before, but I will reiterate.
I am deeply, profoundly glad not to be a teacher.
Son Of Oligarch’s mother was there, frantically sewing name labels into his ski kit, which made me ache with amused sympathy. She stuffed the last things into his bag just as the bell rang and the boys were firmly instructed to say goodbye to their parents and assemble in Chapel.
Oliver tore himself away from his violent interaction with two other freckled boys and grinned hugely.
“Bye,”he said, firmly, and was gone.
I saw the tiny tearful boy in the middle of a crowd of other tiny boys, grinning and elbowing one another in the ribs, tentatively, because of being juniors. He looked fine. I imagine his mother went home and cried.
We climbed back into the camper van and chugged up on to the high passes, where we stopped for a picnic.
We missed Oliver terribly. It was so quiet we could hear one another breathing.
It was a very still and dignified sort of of picnic, without a boy.
When we got home we unpacked and gave the camper van a thorough clean, which it needed after Blackpool, because of sand and dog paw prints. You might be interested to hear that during this activity I discovered why Oliver had been so misfortunately short of socks and trousers whilst we were packing. I brought them in to be washed.
Then we went to bed for our pre-work snooze.
The picture is rubbish. Sorry.
