Grown up and gone

We have had a very short day.

That is to say, obviously, we have had a short day milling about at home. The actual day itself, if you count the time we are at work, is probably just as long as anybody else’s, only happening at completely the wrong times.

We are at work now, and the plan is that when we finish, at some long-after-midnight time in the darkest watches of the night, we will go home and have a glass of wine and some family bonding time with the children. You are allowed to disapprove of this if you like, but I have always been the most incorrigibly night-time person, and it works very nicely for us.

We had a very late night at work last night, overtaking milk floats on the last few journeys, and today, disgracefully, we did not get up until three o’ clock in the afternoon.

We were awake rather sooner than that, but Lucy came to perch on the end of our bed whilst we had our coffee, and we sat and talked for ages.

She has had the most spectacularly busy year. This time last year she was considering what to do with her life and thinking that perhaps a degree in criminology might be a good idea. Now, just a year later, she has a house, a job, some A Levels, a driving licence, and an awful lot of life experience under her belt.

That list does not include the jobs that she has had and finished, like working on the doors of the local pubs and clubs, and spending her summer ferreting illicit drugs out of partygoers’ rolled-up socks. This time last year she was a school girl at a genteel public school. She did not even have her door supervisor’s licence, still less the ability to spot carriers of hidden drugs at a hundred yards distance.

We sat in bed and laughed at the changes she has made, how little and scared she was, in the days when driving carefully around a housing estate with a kindly instructor was a troubling challenge. Now, only a year later, she has driven hundreds and hundreds of miles. Sometimes these took her back to school. Sometimes she set off into the complete unknown, with her rucksack in her boot, ready to pitch her tent at midnight in the middle of some hippie gathering.

She has made the journey south to Northamptonshire on countless occasions, presenting herself at terrifying and rigorous police interviews, for fitness tests and medical examinations, written tests and role plays, until finally they decided that she might possibly be the sort of person they could turn into a copper.

This time last year I did not even know where Northamptonshire was.

After all of that she found a little house and moved into it. Now she is cooking and cleaning and studying and working. She has a stab vest and some handcuffs, some baking trays and an electric mixer, and she is looking after herself with increasing competence.

We are so very impressed with her. She is being terrifically prudent with her salary, saving a bit every month, and budgeting carefully so that her money lasts. I have never achieved this and I am lost in admiration, although admittedly she does not have any children to mess that particular activity up. She takes flasks of coffee to work and makes her own sandwiches, so that she can eat well without spending too much.

She will be going home soon, just another few days and she will be making the long trek back to her tiny house.

Number One Daughter set off today. She has got gym things to do in the south. The festivities are over, and now she needs to hone her diet and polish her muscles back to peak fitness again. Number One Son-In-Law has not gone with her because he is developing some business interests in the north, actually trying to buy somewhere in which he can put a couple of spare kitchens, so he is going to call round again in a day or two to collect everything they have forgotten.

I made some mayonnaise to send back with them today. We had run out, and so whilst I was replacing it I made some for Lucy to take home, and some for Number One Daughter. It is a messy process, and uses loads of eggs, but there was only one lot of washing up afterwards, so it was worth it. Washing splatters of mayonnaise off everything is a grim and oily process. 

There isn’t very much else I can do for them. They are all so splendidly  efficient by themselves.

My daughters have all grown up and soon the last one will be gone again.

How quickly that all happened.