I am on the taxi rank, and it seems to be an awfully long time since I was here last.
This is because it has been such a very full day.
Last night we did not work until the very end of the night. This was because today was Lucy’s school carol service in York.
Over the last few Christmases we have had several occasions where we have worked all night, then driven to Yorkshire and sung in a carol service, or similar school event, gone out for lunch, driven home and then tried to work all night again.
This year we decided that we have really grown too old for such shenanigans, and that sooner or later one of us would finish up in a ditch after we had fallen asleep behind the wheel of our taxi. We had got to choose between the carol service and our income.
This, as you can imagine at this impecunious time of year, was a shockingly difficult choice, but of course we went to the carol service. This was because eventually we will make some more money, and soon our children will be grown up and gone. Then there will be no more carol services.
We parked the camper van in a lay-by near Lucy’s school so that we would be there, and ready, in time for the carol service in the morning.
It is such a good job that we have got the camper van. I would not like to sleep in a lay-by in the back of a taxi.
It is easier and quicker to drive at night. Nobody is trying to take their children to school or to go Christmas shopping or not to be late for work after they have overslept. If you drive to somewhere at one o’ clock in the morning it is very unlikely that you are going to get stuck in a frustrating sort of queue anywhere.
Even finishing work at midnight we had not really managed to have enough sleep, but it was nearly enough, especially helped along by really strong coffee.
I love the school carol services.
At Lucy’s school parents sit on the balcony and look down on the girls in the chapel below.
We were on the front row.
As they get older the girls sit further and further back in the chapel. Today I could easily have had a nasty accident, leaning perilously over the balcony trying to see Lucy underneath it.
She saw us and waved. Now that she is a grown up and not a third year she does not have rebellion during carol services, and sings along with everybody else.
The littlest girls on the front rows looked so tiny, and we looked and marvelled that anybody could send such small children away to boarding school.
All of them are at least three years older than Oliver was when he started, of course.
It seems such a heartless thing to do, until you do it. After that you work yourself into grey hairs and high blood pressure just to keep them there, no matter what, because they are shining, and happy, and because you know that nothing else could ever make them so brave and keen and determined.
Also school feeds them properly and switches off the wi-fi, so you know that they are being properly brought up even when you are not paying attention.
Both schools have got truly brilliant choirs. You are not allowed to clap during the carol service, but I was longing to, and at one point had to hold on to my hands tightly in case they did it by themselves.
We sang loudly as well, or at any rate I did, because I quite like the annual exercise of my vocal cords. Bellowing is probably a good word.
I am not exactly sorry that our carol service days will be over soon, because as I have grown older the highest notes have become further and further out of reach, and the lowest ones are impossible. I am sad about this, but at least it means that I will be saved from a truly embarrassingly tuneless old age.
Of course eventually it was over, which was ace because of being able to hug Lucy and dive off to the pub with Nan and Grandad, but sad because it was the last.
When Lucy’s school holds the carol service next year we will not be there.
I am so glad we have had the chance to do it.
