We have reached that time of year where tomorrow has started before we have finished last night.
Outside our bedroom window the world turned slowly from midnight blue, to palest grey, to morning pink whilst we got ready for bed.
It is the stillest time, with nobody in it except us, the day holding its breath for the first birds, and it is really very lovely to be a part of it.
The thing about being up and about when the day is still being made is that we miss most of the rest of the day, loafing about in bed.
It was lunchtime before we emerged.
I got ready for my run, and Mark shouted for Lucy to oblige her to get dressed. She prefers not to do this at weekends, and forceful encouragement needs to be applied.
She had to get dressed today, because they were going off to our field for some driving lessons, and it is probably not the sort of thing to do in your pyjamas.
Lucy has had some proper driving lessons whilst she has been at school, but it turned out that the instructor was not especially encouraging. After a few weeks she had become so upset that she was dreading the lessons, and quite convinced that she would never learn to drive at all.
I wrote him a stiff email, communicating my opinions, and her lessons ceased. She said that she was no good at driving and did not want to do any more.
Mark likes driving, having done rallying and racing at times in his past. He said that this was not all right at all, and said that he would do a lesson with her himself.
Today was the day.
I left them to organise themselves and set off on my run, which came to rather an abrupt halt when the senior dog lay down on the cricket pitch and refused to go any further.
He is getting elderly, and rather creaky, and was limping ostentatiously on three legs.
I rang Mark to collect him on his way to the farm. This seemed to work rather well, because when they came back he had forgotten that he had taken sick leave from his exercise, and was gambolling about quite cheerfully.
Roger Poppy was rather subdued without him. His father is possibly one of the most abusive parents I have ever encountered, having no interest whatsoever in his offspring, and growling threateningly when ever he approaches. This distaste does not stop him leaping on his son and mounting him vigorously every now and again, if he was a person he would have been removed to a high security jail by now.
Despite this, Roger Poopy loves him, and tries, hopefully, to bury an adoring nose in his father’s fur every now and again, just to rest his mouth against him and breathe in his smell. This makes his father bite him.
Hence it was a gentle sort of run, with only one dog to bellow at, and a quietly anxious one at that.
Lucy and Mark arrived back a couple of hours after us, having had a brilliant time.
They had been hurtling around the field in the taxi, doing handbrake turns and skidding around corners, and generally having fun. They showed me a video they had taken, but I had to stop watching after a minute, because it made me feel sick.
They were both bouncing with adrenalin-fuelled enthusiasm, and nurturing a small daydream of Lucy not only recommencing her driving lessons, but racing stock cars and Mark becoming her mechanic.
After that they retired to the garden to practice doing Mark’s maths. He has been struggling with this, mostly because he has just not had any time whatsoever to do it. It is not at all easy to learn something completely new in a year, but even less so when you are trying to learn a new job and run an old job and mend a camper van all at the same time.
I cleaned shoes and ironed Oliver’s school uniform, and Oliver played unsuitable games online. He has an online friend called Downsey, apparently because he has Down’s Syndrome. I think this is probably true, because if he is villainously inclined then he is rubbish at it, in all the months they have been playing together he has not asked Oliver for his bank details, or for any pictures of himself in his underwear. Instead they have become friends and allies who obliterate zombies and blast their way through war zones together. The cyber-world is a wonderful place.
In the end we had to go to work, but it has been a very happy day.
The picture is Mark and Lucy, doing maths in the sunshine.
