I have taken Oliver back to school.
Unbelievably, this project has occupied the entire day.
It has occupied both of us, because Mark is not doing any rural broadband until Wednesday. Oliver is only one small boy, but he has kept us busy all day.
The first event was not Oliver’s fault. It was a huge pile of ironing, the consequence of Lucy’s birthday party last week. This is such a tedious result of lovely times. I wish that Princess Diana’s crumpled wedding dress had managed to bring about a new and enduring fashion for creases. I do not generally pay much attention to fashions, but I would have seized that one with both hands.
As well as the smart clothes, there was Oliver’s school uniform. I ironed it whilst Oliver rushed off the the barber’s for a haircut and Mark organised sausage sandwiches for a late breakfast.
We ate breakfast together when Oliver came back. He had had a happy time visiting his old colleagues at the barber’s shop, and thinks that he will probably be going back to work there again at Christmas, so it appears that it is only me who is incapable of holding down gainful employment.
They had discussed things that interest gentlemen, like computer games, and they had considered what Oliver had learned during his employment with them during the summer. Oliver explained that his most valuable new skill had been a thorough appreciation of when it is inappropriate to swear.
I was interested in this. My own take on children and swearing has always been fairly simple, and could be summed up as ‘not in front of Grandma’.
It appears, however, that appropriate language has been the topic of some discussion in the all-male sanctuary of the barbers’ shop, and some swearing is considered worse than others. The worst and least admissible swearing relates to people’s size, shape and colour. It is perfectly all right to use words which merely refer to sexual acts or anatomy, pretty much at any time, even in front of girls, although Grandmas were not mentioned.
Oh brave new world. I am very glad that these educational opportunities have presented themselves to Oliver. I would not have been able to teach him these handy social skills. I learned to swear in the nineteen seventies. The rules were different then.
Oliver dived back off upstairs to continue his mission to rid the world of zombies, and Mark cleaned his shoes whilst I mended his school uniform.
I do not know what he does with this. There were three enormous new tears in his woollen jumper, which had to be darned. The hem of one of his trouser legs had come down. Also one of his shoelaces had knotted itself into impossible clumps which required some painstaking unpicking with a needle.
Darning is as unfashionable as making rude remarks about people’s size, shape and colour. I do not know anybody apart from me who does it. I do not think that any of my own daughters would know where to start.
I thought that I made a reasonable stab at it, and when I finished you could hardly tell where the great jagged tears had been. Mark does not tear things like this even when he works on building sites, perhaps school has upset one of its maintenance men and he is deliberately knocking nails in for only three quarters of the way.
Mark dispatched Oliver for a shower. I did not have time to do any of the interesting things that are engaging my attention at the moment, like manufacturing Christmas presents. I would have liked to spend the afternoon pottering about, contentedly creating things: but as so often happens, time slipped away from me.
It slipped a lot faster because actually I went back to bed. This is not quite as shockingly idle as it sounds. Monday night is a very late night in a taxi, and if I have not had a sleep I am even ruder to customers than usual, because of feeling tired and unreasonable.
By the time I woke up it was time to go. Oliver and I had a happy drive back to school across the sodden fells in the dark. He is getting frustrated with the restrictions of prep school now, and is looking forward to moving on.
This will not be very long in coming. Time is charging along like a frightened destrier.
The next time we see him he will be a teenager.
He will be almost grown up.
