I woke up this morning shivering with sweat from a horrible nightmare.
I had spent my sleeping hours trying to get to Oliver’s school play on time, but been thwarted at every turn by everything from immovable traffic to the clocks being inexplicably an hour slow, and it was Mark’s fault.
I was relieved to wake up and find that it was Not So.
Mark said that I had been traumatised by this week’s motoring adventure, and that it would be all right.
It was all right, but only just.
I had got so much to achieve today that I jumped out of bed before ten o’ clock. I am beginning to regret this decision now, now that it is the middle of the night and I am still several yawning hours from the day’s end.
There was laundry and tidying and things to be polished and sausages to be cooked, and all manner of earth-shaking labours to be accomplished, and I rushed round accomplishing them all. We had got to go straight out to work tonight after Oliver’s play, and so everything needed to be beautifully straight and organised and ready before we went.
Mark went out to crawl about underneath cars. I don’t know what he was doing.
We were so busy that the time flew past, and before we knew it, it was three o’ clock, and we should have been getting ready to set off.
I threw everything into bags, and we dashed upstairs to shower and make ourselves look presentable. This is quicker if you are a man. Not only does Mark not have to faff about blowdrying his hair, he does not need to stand in front of the mirror for ten minutes, wondering if his trousers make him look fat.
In the event the tidying up was wasted anyway, because we were in such a rush we left towels and hairbrushes and socks and rejected ear rings scattered everywhere, like the debris after a receding tsunami.
When we did finally dash off, we got stuck in the most awful traffic jam in Kendal, and life turned into my horrid dream, except that we weren’t late. Mark used to race cars, and out his foot down so hard I was clinging on to the seat, and we were in plenty of time after all.
We found splendid seats in the middle of the school theatre, next to Actual Head Boy’s father, whose company I like, which was an extra bonus.
The play they were doing was ‘Oliver!’ which as we all know is the musically retold version of Dickens’ sad little yarn about the misadventures of horribly poor, starving Victorian children.
The boys from Oliver’s school are not horribly poor or starving, but cheerful and energetic, and bounced about the stage like a sackful of rubber balls emptied from a third floor window.
Oliver was playing Mrs. Sowerby, the wife of the undertaker to whom the character of Oliver is briefly apprenticed.
One of the things about an all-boys school is that obviously the female parts are played by the boys, and they were really jolly good at it. Not a single boy was in the least bit giggly, or embarrassed, and it was brilliant, like watching theatre in Shakespeare’s time.
It made me realise for the first time that actually young women and boys are completely indistinguishable, no wonder some people get mixed up. One boy’s unfamiliar undergarments made him fidget a lot, and there was some difficulty tripping over long skirts, but Oliver was a remarkably convincing harridan, funny and confident. I felt proud of him in that motherly sort of way that is ridiculous, and a bit embarrassing, when other people are doing it, but evidence of your children’s perfection when it is yourself.
They were all really good. The boy who played Nancy brought the house down, despite not being in the least effeminate in life, he plays rugby and is one of Oliver’s zombie killing allies . You can see them all in the picture, which was taken after they had taken their bows, the boys in the middle are the stage crew. Oliver is in the bonnet on the far right hand side. Actual Head Boy was Mr. Bumble, and he was brilliant.
I was sorry that we had to work tomorrow night, because I would have liked to have gone again, it was ace fun, but of course we do. We hugged Oliver as hard as we could, to last until Wednesday, which is the end of term, and said goodbye, reluctantly.
It is not long until Wednesday.
