When we finish work tonight we are going to leap in the camper van and dash off to Blackpool.
We do this every September.
My father has a short and solitary holiday in Blackpool every September whilst my mother buzzes off doing something girlie with her friends.
My mother does not much like Blackpool.
We like Blackpool very much, and I do not see why my father should have the luxury of uninterrupted solitude for a whole week, so we are going to go and join him for a day or two.
I am looking forward to this very much.
Hence I have spent the entire day getting ready. This was not as rubbish as it sounds, because we did not get up until lunchtime, and when we did get up, we had just about managed to get dressed when the doorbell rang. It was the father of Actual Head Boy, who had very kindly brought some outgrown clothes for Oliver. We always think that Oliver is enormous until we see him next to the rest of his class, several of whom are now taller than I am.
We had tea and a happy gossip with him. Actual Head Boy is doing brilliantly well at the moment, and has got some nail biting exams coming up, because his future school has an entrance bar, you have got to do massively well in Common Entrance if you want to go there, and Actual Head Boy is hoping for a scholarship. I listened with huge sympathy, Oliver might not have passed his scholarship, but at least everything is settled and we are not waking up in the middle of the night worrying about things any more. There are difficult times coming up for lots of the boys, I am not at all sorry that for Oliver, at least, the worst of the pressure is off.
Once he had gone Mark went outside to pave the yard, and I bathed the dogs.
We did not in the least want to spend a couple of nights in the camper van with un-bathed dogs. Apart from being flung unceremoniously in the lakes several times over the summer, they have not been abluted for ages, and it was beginning to show. Roger, especially, was beginning to hum like the string section of an orchestra.
They were horrid, and the water turned brown.
I dried them, and trimmed their fringes, and wiped the bathroom carpet.I liked them much better when they were scented with Boots Strawberry Shampoo.
After that I visited the library, and Sainsbury’s, and turned my hand to catering for the next couple of days.
Of course I could do this perfectly well in the camper van, but when I am on holiday I do not want to be labouring over a gas ring and wishing that I had remembered to bring the garlic.
I cooked spiced potatoes and curried chicken. We can warm them up in the oven.
Mark filled in our stolen hole with brick paving, which you can see in the picture. It is looking splendid.
He had to dash off in the end, because he has bought a Thing from a man in Liverpool, and he had got to go and collect it. I think that I have mentioned this. It is a heat pump out of which Mark intends to create a heating system for the conservatory.
Part of the specification for owning a conservatory was that it had not got to cost us anything to run, because we have not got any more money for anything extra, and so Mark has had to invent a heating system. He is inventing something with a back to front air conditioning system and a solar panel. It will blow cold conditioned air into the log pile and warm air into the conservatory. It will be powered by a solar panel on the shed roof.
Obviously when the sun is shining we will not need a heater. The solar panel will not run the heater directly. It will run other things and then with the left over electricity that we have not used on having showers we will heat the conservatory.
I went to work.
When I go to bed tonight I will be in Blackpool.
I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this.
Have a picture of a hole full of bricks.
