It has been the sort of day when collapsing on to a quiet taxi rank seems like a relief.
As you know, after work last night I rushed off to Lancaster to collect Lucy. She has had a week of supervising intoxicated Irish people, and she and all of her security guard colleagues had been brought back to Lancaster on a coach.
It had obviously been a busy festival, because they all staggered off the coach in exhausted silence, quiet and numb in the grey dawn light. Lucy told me afterwards that she had had lots of attempts at liking Guinness, but still doesn’t. Some of the other pirates seemed to have succeeded rather better, and there had been an exciting almost-fight on the coach.
We got back home at about six, but of course it wasn’t over then. There was her sodden tent to be unravelled and hung out to air, thank goodness for the new conservatory on a wet morning. Her mud-encrusted washing needed to be loaded into the machine, her mud-encrusted sleeping mat wiped clean, and her mud-encrusted boots to be put to dry.
It could not all be dumped and luxuriously ignored, because it was not a homecoming, but a turnaround. This very afternoon, at half past two, she had to leave again to get the coach for the next festival, which is called Boomtown, and is in Winchester, bearing with her a scrubbed clean and mud-free set of kit.
The last thing I heard as I crawled into bed was the clock striking seven.
Mark was up first, and hung her washing up.
As we were having coffee, Lucy emerged, yawning and suntanned.
She had had her formal offer email from the police and there were some forms to be filled in before she buzzed off festivalling again.
She had copied this to me and I thought that she had another four weeks to get the form back.
When we looked again there were two letters, one with a vague comfortable future date of some time in September. The other one said, rather threateningly, that if she really truly wanted the job, she must return her signed Offer form before the day after tomorrow.
It also said, terrifyingly, that her start date was not at the end of September but the beginning, in fact the day before Oliver starts at Gordonstoun.
You cannot imagine the dominoes of worry that began to tumble in my brain at this point. Think, signing lease and all paperwork for new flat, plus purchasing all furniture and removing it to Northamptonshire, whilst all the time driving to Scotland laden with new sleeping bags.
We jumped out of bed and started processing paperwork.
There were loads of forms. There were pension forms and death benefits, Official Secrets declarations and promises about uniform. They wanted bank details and next of kin details and National Insurance details and previous employment details, as if they didn’t know all of these things already.
We printed them, and filled them all in and Lucy signed them. Then we scanned them all and sent them back.
It took ages.
We were just scrawling the date on the last one when we realised that the crucial Offer Form, the one which must be signed and returned on pain of unemployment, was not among them.
We panicked.
We rang them, and surprisingly, possibly for the first time ever, they answered the phone.
“Oh, we don’t do that any more,” they said, vaguely. “That’s an old style letter. You don’t need to bother about that. Just get the forms back to us when you can.
It turned out that they were making it all up completely, including the start date.
I can understand why people say negative and unkind things about the police sometimes.
After that we dashed about the kitchen stuffing newly-dried clothes into her rucksack. They hadn’t dried on the drying rack, and Mark had rushed round to the laundrette with them. He cleaned her boots whilst I made travelling sandwiches and Lucy rolled up her bedding.
Oliver came downstairs and volunteered to help, but he couldn’t, really, so he offered to do the flapping for us. He twirled and flapped and wagged about on our collective behalf to save us the anxious bother, and we could all just get on with packing.
We made it in time.
Lucy collapsed on to the coach and I went to collect the camper van tyres from the giant in Morecambe.
After that I came home and we went to work.
I am very glad indeed to be here. I don’t need to achieve anything except earning a living.
Thank goodness for that.
Have a picture of the sea.
