Lucy has gone at last.
As you know, she was supposed to go yesterday, but when Mark discovered that the water pump on her car was leaking she had to stay until it was fixed.
He has replaced the water pump and the timing chain and the fan belt and the cam belt, so I am not looking forward to our Autoparts bill, but her car is all right. It has got fresh supplies of oil and water, and round knobbly tyres. She has got fudge and frozen dinners and bread and cheese and chocolate. She is as nurtured as we can manage for a little chick who has been cruelly booted out of the nest into the cold world.
I was very sad to see her go, and have been exercising considerable self control in order not to keep telephoning her to make sure she is having a nice safe drive down the motorway, because of course this would be utterly counter-productive. In any case she would not answer because she is a police officer now and does not do wicked things like that.
On the positive side, it is nice to have my parking space back.
She has spent much of the day cocooned in her bedroom doing her police officery homework. Oliver did his Geography homework in the next room, and an industriously hushed silence filled their floor of the house for the afternoon.
I was downstairs, but I did not like to interrupt with hoovering or anything noisy, so I listened to a play on the radio whilst I hung up washing and made some swirly bread. I did not think I would like the play, because it was lots of English actors pretending to be Americans. This usually irritates me very much, because they never sound convincing, no matter how hard they squint and roll their vowels, but today the play was by Arthur Miller, and it was so good that I forgot to be annoyed and just listened instead.
It was nice to have something interesting to hear, because I have been madly busy with tiresome manual labour all day. I am trying to organise our lives so that we can go off beyond the Wall to see the wildlings, and have been sorting out jumpers and counting socks and other about-to-depart activities.
I have booked the ferry this very evening, mostly thanks to yet another generous subsidy from my parents. You won’t be at all surprised to hear that I did not even think about saying politely: oh no, you don’t need to do that at all, good heavens no, the very idea.
Of course I absolutely never do this. I always finish up gasping with the blissful relief from whatever pecuniary horrors are besieging us at the time, and being cravenly grateful, whilst all the time being cross with myself for not having yet become a plutocrat in my own right.
One day when the school fee years are over, perhaps.
Anyway, the ferry crossing is now booked, and it looks as if it is really going to happen.
We are going to sail from Scrabster on the far north coast on Wednesday morning, after we have dropped Oliver off at school on Tuesday night. We had thought that we might sail from Aberdeen, which is not very far from Gordonstoun, but there is no boat from there until late on Thursday. This is too much hanging about for our liking, so we are going to carry on and drive north, although unfortunately we won’t see very much of the top corners of Scotland on the way, because it will be dark. I don’t mind this really, because if it is clear the stars are somehow much brighter in the north.
We might even see the Northern Lights. They appear in Orkney every now and again.
It is very exciting.
The weather forecast has issued dire warnings of rain, and snow, and high winds. Funnily enough, I don’t care in the least. We have got plenty of warm clothes, indeed, I have ordered some new vests from Marks And Spencer for this very purpose. Teenagers and young people take note, this comes to us all. When I was nineteen I did not in the least imagine that one day I would have a preferred style of vest, or that I would shun dresses which would not accommodate wearing it underneath.
We are going to have a beach holiday in the snow.
It is going to be absolutely brilliant.
