I do like it when the clocks change.
Mark does not, and growls and grumbles a great deal about there being no daytime left for doing anything, but I like it.
I am always less tired in the winter, and think that probably my own slightly off-key sleeping preferences fit in with that clock better., although I am prepared to consider that it might just be because I don’t do as much.
I like the dark, although partly this is because nobody can see if I have cleaned out the taxi or not. I like that everywhere is closed and safe, and that the fire is lit, and that we can stop working in the middle of the afternoon without feeling guilty.
Obviously by this I mean house work, and car mending and garden building sort of things, not actual work, since we don’t start on that until it is dark anyway. As it happened, though, since last night was Sunday we did finish work a bit earlier than usual.
This was not because of the clocks changing, or even just idleness, but because the most determined of drunkards tends to be deterred by the prospect of an early start for work on Monday. By one o’ clock in the morning on Sunday night, almost everybody has gone home.
The ones who are still drinking at that time have never got any cash left for a taxi anyway.
When we got home the children were still up, and we congregated around the kitchen table for a final end-of-holiday party.
It is so good to be all together, the children make me laugh a great deal. They told stories of schools and I told them that I had written to the deputy head, volunteering Lucy’s services as a bouncer, and we remembered the theatre and thought that none of us ever wanted to be a salesman.
We would have stayed up all night, because none of us wanted to leave, except that in the end Mark fell asleep sitting up in his chair, and we realised that it was three o’clock in the morning. We talked all the way up the stairs, and then stood on the landing and talked and giggled a bit more, until eventually we had to go our separate ways to bed.
Today did not start very early.
It was the sad day of being parted again, because Oliver had got to go back to school.
We fed him on the last of the sausages and apple juice, and I mended the most recent massive hole that he has torn in his school jersey, and then he retreated to his bedroom to shoot zombies for as long as he possibly could.
Mark and I went to the bank to pay the weekend’s takings into the overdraft, which is always a good moment. There is nothing quite like seeing all of that negativity dissolving away. The girl in the bank was new, and asked us if we would like to purchase some insurance, which we declined. Nobody who knows us would trouble themselves with that question, maybe when the children have left school.
When we got home the day seemed to have disappeared. Between the oversleeping and the mending and the morning jobs the day had just vanished into the winter air. I made mayonnaise, and Mark glued the washing machine together again, and then it was almost over.
Oliver went for a shower, and Mark faffed about with the screenwash on my taxi, which had stopped working, and then the holiday was at an end.
I took Oliver back to school.
We talked all the way, and he did his chemistry homework, of which I am ashamed to confess that I understood not a single word. Obviously I know that he could have done it at home, but we were in agreement that home time is fully occupied, and he would only have been bored in the car.
I learned a bit about the reaction between sulphuric acid and calcium carbonate and something else, I forget what. He explained it to me and even talked about doing things in the school lab. I imagined him in a white coat and allowed myself to think proudly what a clever offspring we had produced.
You are allowed to do this when you are a mother, especially when your offspring knows more about something than you do. You can imagine them being in charge at CERN if you like. It does not in the least matter whether you have got any sensible grounds for it or not. If anybody wants an accurate assessment of your child’s talents I promise that they will not ask you.
The journey seemed to pass in minutes, which it didn’t at all really, because of tiresome traffic jams all around Kendal, but it was over too soon, and he was back, slipping seamlessly into the rhythms of a winter at school.
We unloaded Spider-Man, and put his things in his locker, and hugged the sort of hugs that have got to last for a fortnight, and then he was gone, off to be a senior boy and the monitor in charge of computers, and to be grown up and hard working and jolly clever until one day he is in charge at CERN.
I set off for home in the icy dark.
It will be exeat very soon.
