I am on the taxi rank trying to earn enough money for Lucy’s next driving lesson.
Lucy has been told that whilst Oliver’s goal is to pass the Gordonstoun scholarship exam during the holidays, her goal is to pass her driving test. With this in mind, we have booked her a slot to do her theory test in a couple of weeks.
She heard this news with abject terror.
She has had some driving lessons whilst she has been at school, but seems to have become terribly worried about the whole thing. She said dolefully when she came home that she thought perhaps she was a public menace, and should remain a pedestrian. We explained that being a public menace does not deter most people from driving, and that she should just jolly well get on with it.
In the end we rang the chap who taught Number Two Daughter to drive. He has not been teaching driving for ages due to an excitingly complicated personal life and an intermittent career as a coach driver. He still wears his coach driver’s uniform on and off anyway, because it means that he can get free meals at service stations, and he prefers to be paid in cash.
This is a man with whom we can do business.
As it happened he had a cancellation this morning, and another one tomorrow, so we dispatched a trembling Lucy into his care and protection for the morning with assurances that all would be well.
Whilst he was gone, Oliver and I addressed some of his examination issues. He was practising a maths paper but was stuck on one of the questions. I looked at it helpfully but it turned out that I was equally stuck, so we gave up and did some tidying up instead. They have almost finished painting Lucy’s room, and we are getting ready to do his next.
Whilst we were tidying up we talked a bit, mostly about things that worry us. We both confessed fears that hold us back.
I am not going to tell you what they were, because in the end we created a Secret Pact.
We both resolved that we would do better.
The rest is a Secret.
We marked the Secret Pact and New Beginning by deciding that Oliver would go and get his hair cut. There is nothing like a haircut for marking a new start. I like to do that myself. You shed your old self along with your hair. I could not have one today because I had one only a couple of weeks ago, and do not yet have enough hair to be symbolically discarded along with my Old Self. Anyway my haircuts cost forty quid and Oliver’s is only a tenner.
We went together to the barber’s shop, under a large umbrella, because Windermere has managed to acquire an exemption from the heatwave that is sweeping the rest of the country, and it has rained so much here for the last two days that I have not even managed to dry my washing. We splashed through puddles and around disgruntled tourists and up the hill to the barber.
We explained to the barber that Oliver was having a New Beginning, and needed a new hairstyle, but not one that would make him look like a rascally oik when he goes to Gordonstoun.
The barber hummed and hawed a bit, and in the end handed Oliver over to a youth with some earrings in his lips who promised that he would sort it out. Then because I am a girl, and superfluous in the barbershop, where the talk is not even as interesting as something for the weekend, but is all about computers and engines and football, I buzzed off and left them to it.
When Oliver came back he looked splendid. The sides of his hair were short and the top long, although not enough to make him look as though he might be contemplating a career in villainy, and he was very pleased indeed.
He had also got a new job.
He is going to work at the barber’s. Not cutting hair, because the barber is not that reckless, and in any case he is not tall enough to manage the tall chairs and the shaving.
He is going to be a shoeshine boy.
The barber is going to set him up with a little seat in the corner of the shop, and he is going to polish gentlemen’s shoes whilst they have their hair cut.
He is very pleased indeed with this development.
I am pleased too. I think that employment is the very best thing that young people can be doing in their holidays. He will have his own money, and he will have to get up in the morning, and he will be able to spend all day talking about football and Far Cry Five Computer Game, and engines, and he will grow and grow in confidence until he is not a little boy but a young man.
Harry came round to play yesterday. He has become a foot taller and is now the possessor of a deep voice. This was most disconcerting. He is younger than Oliver. We will not have a boy for very much longer.
Lucy came back shortly afterwards, also very pleased with herself.
She had enjoyed her driving lesson very much indeed, and the instructor is going to try and book her a test, because he thinks that she will be fine, and not a public menace at all.
She was beaming and cheerful, and thought that she might sand her shelves down by way of celebration.
She has got another lesson tomorrow if I can earn enough on the taxi rank tonight.
The picture is Mark’s working boots, buffed and polished to a state of gleaming beauty by a practising boy.
We are on track for a successful summer.
