We were so upset by yesterday’s talk about teenage misadventures that we did not sleep very much last night, and we were still thinking about it when we woke up this morning.
It even made Mark upset, and he does not get upset, at least, not unless people run away from his taxi without paying.
We gave up on sleeping after only a couple of hours, and talked and talked.
We thought that we were mostly troubled because it all seemed so harsh and horrible. It is not nice to think that families all around us, people who are friends, are yelling at each other and not caring that they are making one another unhappy.
The talking lady seemed to think that this sort of thing was normal and all right. She did not explain that if you want your children to come and spend their time with you, instead of playing Fortnite, then you have got to make that time good fun. If you spend it going on and on about prep and rule-making and good behaviour, then they will slope off quickly and shoot zombies that they are pretending are you. You will not make them enjoy your lectures more by switching the wi-fi off.
Really it is not difficult. If you want your children to look forward to coming on holiday with you, then you think what you would all like to do. You take them to Blackpool and eat doughnuts, not to ancient burial grounds to eat tofu. This might be different if you are Actual Head Boy’s parents. He likes historical things, although I am not sure about tofu.
In the end Mark went off to the farm to cut up some firewood, and I wrote a letter to the headmaster, saying that we were not sure about the talking lady’s ideas being good ones. I don’t know if my ideas are good ones either, but they work all right to make us happy, and we don’t have the terrible arguments that everybody else was saying that they had.
It was not at all nice. I do not at all want to start telling school how to mind their own business, but we felt so worried about the talking lady that we thought it was important. She is not from school, she is a person who has written a book.
I wrote a long letter and pressed Send, which is difficult when you have got your fingers crossed. I hope he doesn’t think that we are interfering taxi drivers.
I think probably I did best out of that division of labour, because it was raining a lot. Mark was soaked when he came home.
I felt more cheerful once it was done, and we got ourselves ready for work early so that we could have another sleep, which turned out to be a good idea. We felt lots better when we woke up.
The other thing that happened today was a much nicer thing.
I have got some new glasses, and I have been looking out at a brilliantly clear and sharply focussed world.
We had our eyes tested ages ago, but could not afford an optical upgrade at the time. Last week, since we had started to spend the overdraft anyway, we threw caution to the wind and ordered a new pair of glasses each. Two new pairs, actually, one for reading and one for driving. They arrived this morning, and we were very pleased indeed.
I am not wearing the reading glasses now. I am wearing the old, scratchy, blurry ones. There is a small but distinctly foggy haze between you and me.
This is because I do not want to put the beautiful new glasses on the dashboard of the car. They will be spoiled before the last customer of the night has complained about the absence of a kebab shop.
I wear them to read in between customers. As soon as somebody gets in, I dump them hastily back into their open case, glued to the dashboard for this very purpose, and pick up the driving pair instead. Mixing these up leads to a disconcerting sensation, a bit like being unexpectedly drunk. I have been known to drive for quite some distance before I have worked out what the problem is.
I do not want to misuse my gleaming new glasses in this way. They will be bashed and dropped and scuffed and generally abused before they have even had a chance to develop an irritating loose screw.
New glasses stay in their pristine case and go into my handbag. New glasses are worn on holidays, and for school visits, and for special days.
I am going to take the glasses out of my handbag and put them into the car. The bashed ones out of the car can go in the kitchen, where they can get sticky with butter, and cherries, and cooking ham, and be used for reading recipes.
The ones out of the kitchen can be thrown away, because the varnish on them keeps coming off, and I am allergic to the metal bits. They are painted with nail varnish and plastered with tissue and sellotape. They have outlived their beauty, and can go in the bin.
The problem with this optical Circle Of Life was that when I came to implement it this afternoon, the reading glasses from my handbag were not there.
I hunted everywhere, and finally found them in the pub next door to Lucy’s school.
Lucy has promised that she will collect them for me.
In the meantime I am not going to spoil the new ones. The old ones will last a bit longer.
I am going to go away and see if the headmaster has written back.
