It is a jolly good job that we have decided not to go to London.
Oliver has become employed, as of today, and is enjoying it so much that he does not want to go anywhere at all.
His long-awaited trip to Portugal has suddenly become an inconvenient nuisance instead of the golden dream that it has been up until now.
The barber telephoned this morning.
He had originally offered Oliver a job as a shoeshine boy, but explained this morning that he could not be bothered to organise it, and so would Oliver like to come in and become an apprentice barber.
This does not involve cutting people’s hair. It involves sweeping the floor and making cups of coffee.
Oliver has never done either of these things in his life.
Of course he was monumentally thrilled, and belted off for his first training day as excitedly as a puppy which has been unexpectedly let off its lead in a field full of rabbits.
He came back a few hours later, utterly exhausted and beaming like sunshine on a holiday in the springtime.
He had gone smartly dressed in a shirt and jeans, but they had given him a T shirt with a gold Windermere Barbers logo on the back. This was so big that it reached his knees, but he did not mind in the least. He had swept floors and made coffee and swept floors, and he had a real job, and it was brilliant.
He likes the barbers very much indeed. They are young men about town and are interested in computer games and shooting things and motorbike racing. It is a perfect, perfect place for a boy.
Whilst he was gone Lucy painted his bedroom for him. This was not entirely as charitable as it sounds, because until it is finished he is sleeping on her bedroom floor. His mattress takes up every inch of available floor space, and she has had enough of this.
Oliver’s bedroom is looking quite splendid. It is mint green and blue, and actually looks rather like the dormitories at school, but it is exactly what he wanted, and he likes it very much.
He was too tired to join in with painting when he came home, so they retired to Lucy’s room to practise writing essays for his scholarship exam. Lucy’s current tack is to find the most boring title that she possibly can, and Oliver has half an hour to dream up and write a really thrilling essay.
This afternoon’s title was: “How To Apologise”.
If Oliver can thrive on Lucy’s remorseless education programme, he will do very well indeed.
He wrote a story about a boy whose mother kept making him apologise to his sister. When the boy grew up he went to Afghanistan as a soldier. Terrible things happened to innocent villagers. The ability to make people feel better and to apologise that he had learned as a child became very useful.
I was jolly impressed. This is not half bad for half an hour’s work.
We might be in with a chance at this scholarship.
Lucy said that he had not put in enough description and gave him a seven out of ten.
I was having a better Monday than usual, because of not cleaning the bathroom, although it was undoubtedly hampered a bit by the excitingly torrential rain that occasionally bashed the pavements. This made drying the washing problematic, and after a while the house was festooned with Monday sheets and towels and dishcloths, like the set for Widow Twankey’s House in Act One of Aladdin.
I was about to draw this to a close there, but I must just interrupt myself to add yet another to the list of really stupid things that taxi customers say. This was not to me, but to Number Two Daughter. She took a couple up to Windermere who were moaning about all the walking that they were being obliged to do now that they were in the Lake District.
As if all of the hills were not bad enough, they said, there was the terrible one way system around Windermere Village. Their hotel was halfway round on the way back, they explaîned, and so they had to go all that long one way system walk to get to it.
Number Two Daughter did not tell them that you are not compelled to walk one way only.
She thought that the exercise was probably doing them some good.
