Onwards and northwards

I am writing to you from the front seat of the camper van.

It is dusk, and we are chugging slowly up through Scotland. We are long past the Wall, and we are in the country of the wildlings.

It jolly well looks like it as well. As I write we are passing a castle, squatting solidly beneath the great purple mountains and the white-blue sky. There is a lot of sky.

The trees here are well into autumn, the foot of every mountain is wrapped in their golden haze, and we have just passed a silent lake, with an island at its centre wrapped in its own little blanket of mist.

Above us there is a huge flock of starlings, swooping and circling in their amazing patterns. Before anybody emails me about it, I know perfectly well that they are called a murmuration, I just thought that it would be showing off to write it, so I didn’t.

A trickle of smoke is snaking up from every chimney, and a flock of geese have just flapped over our heads, calling their rusty cries to one another. I have tried to take some photographs but we are going too fast and I am rubbish at photography anyway, they are all blurry. You can have one of the better ones, of the misty lake. The goose one just looks like a smear of bird poo on the windscreen. We are at the end of the world. It keeps astonishing me to realise that there are other people here as well. It is the wilderness.

It was about three in the morning when we set off, after the anticipated middle-of-the-night flapping about trying to decide what I might wear for dinner and Parents’ Day.

These are importantly smart events. You cannot possibly turn up wearing paint-smeared jumpers and your favourite worn-out sheepskin boots. It is all right when you are Mark. He just has a smart jacket, now retrieved from the dry cleaner and looking pristine, and virtually any combination of shirt and trousers will be fine, as long as they are ironed. Also they have to be what they call Shooting Fit, because otherwise they are too short in the back and get tugged out of his waistband whenever he moves his arms about.

I couldn’t decide in the end, and so I just brought everything. This sort of thing is such a trouble, because as you know, I have no sartorial abilities whatsoever, and I really don’t know what looks nice. I agonised for ages over a purple dress and a yellow scarf. I could wear this combination with brown boots, but I have no idea at all if this is likely to be peculiar, so I have just shoved it in the wardrobe and hoped that I will be inspired on the day.

I have got a turquoise scarf and a brown scarf as well. You have seen the purple dress before, there is a picture of me wearing it in Blackpool a few entries ago, do you think it might look better without the hat?

I am sure I will have thought of something before tomorrow night, although sometimes I would not be at all sorry to have the sort of religious belief that allowed me to wear a burka. I could just keep my comfortable Tigger jumper on underneath then and nobody would ever know. I would not need ear rings or to worry about trying to put the same make up on both eyes, and it would be easy, at least until it came to dinnertime. It is not a costume designed for easily eating spaghetti. You might have to bring a picnic and just eat it underneath.

We did not get very far, unsurprisingly, before we were sleepy. We stopped on the top of Shap fell, in a lay-by that we like because you can see for miles and there is a footpath through some fields where we can empty the dogs.

We set off straight away this morning, but we still seem to have been driving all day. We have eaten two bags of jelly babies and a whole box of grapes. I am trying not to eat any more because I do not want any digestive disasters to interfere with my civilised middle-classness at Gordonstoun, you can have too much fibre in one day. Also we had mango and banana curry for dinner. I made this in readiness a couple of days ago, and it was divine, but suspect it might not help.

You will be pleased to hear that there is barely a trace of our rascals in the camper van. Of course we have talked about it and thought about them a great deal, in between listening to the story on the CD player, but I don’t feel especially upset about it. They were not wicked, just completely incapable of managing to organise lives for themselves.

Years ago somebody once said to us: “What’s it like to have the perfect life, then?” and we were astonished, because at the time we thought our lives were exhausting, stress driven lurches from one crisis to the next.

It shocked us, and suddenly we saw from the outside, and we realised that he was right. We do have the perfect life. It is jolly hard work sometimes, but it is pretty good anyway. After all of our adventures this week we are still here, chugging up the Scottish mountains, off to get our son from one of the best schools in the country. We have got home made chocolates in the fridge and a box of wine on the shelf. The dogs are curled up at our feet and everything around us is clean and fresh and smells of lavender.

We are the most fortunate, happy people I think I have ever met.

Life is utterly brilliant.