Lucy has gone festivalling, in a flurry of hastily-repacked rucksacks and refilled flasks.
There should now be a pleasing empty gap in the living room clutter where all her stuff used to be, were it not for the detail that a new, if scruffy, fridge, and a similarly styled washing machine are already occupying the space.
I should have cleaned them today, but to be honest, by the time I had finished making travelling sandwiches and stuffing duvets into covers, I had lost the enthusiasm. There was so little enthusiasm in the first place it could have slipped down a crack in the pavement.
They will still be there tomorrow.
Mark dashed off this morning to help rural Cumbria be connected to the wider world, and I tidied up and did neglected but dull things, like sending evidence of our No Claims Bonus to the insurance company. Adulting is not always the thrilling adventure I once believed that it might become, I can tell you.
I scrubbed Blackpool off everybody’s flip-flops and sewed a name tape into Oliver’s jacket, and then to my very great happiness the doorbell rang, and it was our local carrying company, whose delivery-related inefficiencies have been driving me mental.
Of course they promise all sorts of postal miracles online. The problem is the usual one that we have full employment in Windermere. In consequence, the only people who want to spend their days trailing up and down garden paths, fruitlessly ringing doorbells and trying to find somewhere safe to leave enormous cardboard boxes, do not tend to be the cream of the graduation crop.
Hence the chances of getting a parcel to arrive at the expected moment are diminished, usually because the carriers are between delivery men and are desperately advertising in the Co-op for recently sacked kitchen porters.
What tends to arrive is not your parcel, but a fictional email telling you that they have tried to deliver, but were thwarted by your being unexpectedly out. This happens even if you have been standing hopefully on your front doorstep for hours, or at least in our case, been asleep in the bedroom right next to it.
I have been getting increasingly anxious about the arrival of Oliver’s new rucksack and sleeping bag for school, ordered some time ago and, to my horror, dispatched into the carrier’s unloving care last week. Obviously they have been trying their hardest to deliver ever since, if only we would answer the door.
Today they actually rang the doorbell, and I answered the door, and there it was.
The relief, because I have been horribly worried that it might not turn up in time, flooded through me with the intensity of the first mouthful of malt whisky on a chilly night.
I bellowed up the stairs for Oliver, and we dug it out and admired its feather-light perfection. Then we spent a happy hour packing it and repacking it, and adjusting straps.
Even full of all of his gear, it weighs hardly anything, even with lots of water in the hydration pocket. This, in case you don’t know, which I didn’t, is an exciting mystery with a tube. You could put red wine in it if you liked.
He would not let me help him to pack it. Now that he is grown up he has got to do these things for himself.
Obviously I was dying to interfere. I had to sit on my hands.
Once everything was loaded he dressed in his newly-prepared Expedition Kit, including his boots, and hoiked it on to his shoulders.
Then he jogged up the road to the park.
Once in the park he stopped and put the rain cover on, to see how difficult that would be.
Then he jogged back again.
He bounced back in excitedly.
It is brilliant, he said, a million, million times better than the hiking kit he had at prep school. He will be able to bound up mountains with goat-like ease.
I was very pleased indeed. This time next week he will be in the Cairngorms.
There is a picture attached.
