It has been a day stuffed to the seams with unremarkableness.
Obviously I shall tell you about it anyway, but dearie me, it is not very interesting. Mostly it was things like washing my flip flops, which is important to do but not really a page-turner, and going to Sainsbury’s for carrots and mangoes.
Sainsbury’s didn’t have any mangoes, so we had to go to Booths to purchase some ethical ones, but there must have been a run on mangoes, because Booths did not have any ethical ones left. They had a small pile of very unethical ones, which were wrapped in plastic.
We could not tell what they would be like, because of the plastic, which is probably why it is there, and they turned out to be squishy, and a bit sour. Instead of going in our picnics they will have to go in curry. This is quite a positive outcome because mango curry is magnificent, made with bananas and coconut milk.
I am cross about not having any mangoes for dinner, though. I thought that perhaps they might be getting out of season, although it is difficult to tell what the season is for anything any more.
When I was a child you could not buy things all the year round. They were only there at special times, which was when they were actually growing. I once went to a party thrown by Andrew Lloyd Webber, at which he provided strawberries even though it was November. We all nudged one another and marvelled, and whispered, admiringly, that he must have had them flown in specially. I can still remember the astonishment of the smell of them, strawberries in the winter.
I do not know what you would do now if you wanted to show off at a party. Strawberries would not work any more because you can get them in Sainsbury’s at any time, usually for two quid.
Mangos in August, perhaps.
I was sad not to have them. This is the twenty first century now, and so I had an uncomfortable feeling of being somehow deprived this evening, and accidentally ate too many chocolate buttons to make myself feel better.
Fortunately this evening does not last very long, because it is Sunday, and I expect that we will be home by about half past one. We finished very late indeed last night, and whilst we counted our night’s plunder, Oliver told us about his adventures of the evening.
He is very deeply enmeshed in his new computer game at the moment. It seems that most of the other players on his team are American. This means that the times when it is all happening in computer shootout world are, for Oliver, the middle of the night, and when I eavesdrop from the bottom of the stairs, the voices coming from his computer are not the bell-like youthful public-school tones of his Aysgarth friends. They are Deep South, and unhurried, and mellow.
When we finally staggered back home he took a break and bounced downstairs to relate the stories of his online universe existence to us.
This is rather like living a completely different life, side by side with the real one. He has joined the online game cyber-version of the military police, and is very pleased with himself. In order to achieve this lofty aspiration he actually had to take an online exam to see if he knew the online laws. He failed this the first time but passed last night. In consequence he spent the rest of the night putting cyber handcuffs on to his fellow players, and revelling in his new status.
We all collapsed into bed at about half past five.
I am quite sure that this is not the way that respectable families are supposed to carry on. My recollection of the extremely few parenting manuals that I have read is that you are encouraged to compel children to go to bed at ten after a respectable consumption of fruit and vegetables, washed down with a little low-fat milk.
I do not care because it fits in nicely with our own timetable. It would be beyond irritating to have a child in the house who wanted to be fed at nine in the morning. Oliver thinks that two in the afternoon is a good time for breakfast, so we do that. Also he likes chocolate spread sandwiches, not vegetables, although he can be persuaded to eat strawberries and bananas occasionally.
Fortunately he is not interested in mango.
The picture is some newly-chilly dogs.
