Skinny dippers

This is the most brilliant holiday imaginable.

I am showered and fresh, and sitting in a camper van drenched with heavy, glorious scent, wafting from a jug of elderflowers on the work top.

We are drinking taxi-driver wine, so if this makes less sense at the end than it does at the moment, then that is the likely explanation.

We have had an ace day.

We have been to visit my parents, who laid on a completely magnificent dinner, with home-cooked salmon that melted into thick flakes when you put your fork into it, and salads of every kind, and creamy blue cheeses, and garlic breads, and a fluffy potato omelette cut into savoury wedges, and we ate until we felt mildly uncomfortable.

The day did not start off at my parents’ house, but at Mark’s maths exam. He thinks that he probably got some marks in this one, although possibly not very many, and we have agreed that he could do the course again next year.

Whilst he was being examined I took the dogs for a stroll to be emptied in the morning sunshine, and then tidied the camper van. It did not need tidying at all, but when you are on your own in a sunny Wendy house of course you need to be shaking dusters out of the windows and polishing the taps until everything gleams, and then it is like being in an Enid Blyton story.

It was just like this. I liked it very much.

Once Mark had finished his exam we were free. We are really free, because he does not have to feel guilty any more about not doing maths. This is a good sort of freedom.

He is sanguine about it all, although he does not think that he has passed. Given that he has not had any time to put any work into it at all, really I suppose this is not in the least surprising.

In any case, it does not matter, because what he wants to do is learn how to think like a mathematician, not to get into sixth form, which was really the only reason that I paid attention to my maths at school. I wish that I had known when I was fourteen that maths was interesting and creative, and not just a hideous curse designed by clever people in order to weed out idiots. I was so busy trying not to be identified as an idiot that it didn’t occur to me actually to learn any of it, sometimes the recollection of my own youthful stupidity astounds me.

We stopped a little way out of Kendal and strolled along the canal path for a while, which was where we picked the elderflower.

I cannot describe the loveliness of this. It was hot, and still, and the air was rich with a warm flood of scent, pollen and mown grass and farm and foxes. We watched a family of magpies, parents and newly fledged chicks, bouncing from branch to branch in an elder tree and shouting at one another, and the dogs rushed about, exploring rabbit smells and wondering about squirrels.

Back in the camper van we had bread and olives, by way of a late breakfast, and set off on the journey south to my parents. This was enlivened, as always, by the Game Of Thrones story we have got on CD. We like this, because we have both read the books, and so we don’t need to worry about what happens next. I like stories like this. Suspense is unnecessarily troubling.

At my parents’ house we explored their woodland and admired their vegetable garden. This made me feel guiltily inadequate, as my gardening efforts so far this year could best be described as ‘none whatsoever’, and I resolved to do better.

My mum generously donated trays and trays of little plants, which will help, it is always much easier when you have got something creative to do and you are not just cutting the lawn or weeding, both of which are really just outdoor housework.

Number Two Daughter, and Mrs. Number Two Daughter (Common Law) joined us then, which was ace, they told lots of stories of Canadian travels and of adventures, it is splendid when your children are doing well, you can pretend that it is in some arcane way down to you, and glow with a success that you have done nothing whatsoever to earn.

In the end we had to go, because holidays called, and also we had eaten and drunk pretty much everything in the house.

We went to Morecambe.

The next part of the story is absolutely shocking.

You don’t need to read on

We arrived in Morecambe at half past ten at night, and parked on the sea front just as the sun was setting.

Of course we took the dogs for a walk along the shore, and of course we went for a paddle.

The sea was gloriously warm.

Nobody ever believes that Mark is the reckless half of our partnership, but he is.

It was Mark who said: “Let’s go skinny dipping.”

It was hardly dark, and we are in our fifties.

We were completely sober.

I said: “But…”

He had peeled his T-shirt off before I had even finished the word, and I was not going to be outdone.

Seconds later we were both completely naked in the sea.

It was gloriously warm, and we didn’t get arrested.

Even running up the beach afterwards, nobody noticed us, probably.

It has been a brilliant holiday.