We have got the children at home.
Obviously I mean the little children. Numbers One and Two Daughters are busily doing their advanced-level-big-grown-up things, hundreds of miles from home.
It is lovely to have the little children.
As you know, we collected Oliver last night.
We drove for miles and miles through the frozen Scottish night. Oliver slept, and we listened to stories on the CD player, and we drove endlessly on. Finally we settled in a litter-strewn lay-by near Stirling.
This did not matter because it was dark and we did not care in the least about the view.
We did not care much in the morning either, because we sat in bed drinking coffee for ages. We did not look outside at the piles of shredded carrier bags and discarded coffee cups. We kept the curtains drawn. We can do this and not feel gloomy that we are missing a sunny morning, because of course the camper van has several skylights. We sat in bed and looked at the white-blue sky instead.
It was nice to sit snugly in our warm camper van, in our own home even in the middle of a forbidding wilderness. Oliver joined us for the coffee and we agreed how wonderful it was to have arrived home within the first three yards of leaving the boarding house.
We have had the camper van for practically the whole of Oliver’s life. He was six months old when we bought it, and so obviously he can hardly imagine a time when its thrown-brick aerodynamics and rumbling back axle were not a squat and rusty presence in all our lives.
We had a discovery lately, by the way. I heard on the radio that a batch of the sort of paint we used for painting some of the woodwork inside had attracted a host of very grumpy complaints from its purchasers. Under certain circumstances, if it had been allowed to get hot or damp, some bacteria with which it had been contaminated, gave off a strong and horrible smell of cat wee.
I checked back through these pages and discovered that we had indeed painted the van at the right times to have used the dodgy paint. You might also recall that some months afterwards we were quite mystified as to how cats might be getting in and using the van as a bathroom. We dragged the carpets out, and the underlay. We slung it all in a council skip and bought new ones, but the smell persisted for months.
It was so unmistakeably feline that we could not even blame Roger Poopy, and we felt very unhappy about it. It is not at all nice to think that somehow a cat is managing to squeeze into a locked camper van, completely undetected, whereupon it piddles on the floor and then vanishes into thin air.
Eventually – after a very long time – it faded, but for a time it was ghastly, not to mention frustratingly puzzling.
I did not feel inclined to telephone Radio 4 and wonder how I might claim compensation for the assault on our senses. Lots of other painters had been doing this, which was how I found out about it, but I was just very pleased and relieved to have the mystery solved. It was lovely to know that we had not been carting around undiscovered patches of dried cat wee for the last couple of years.
I had wondered, sometimes.
Oliver told us about boarding school.
He thinks he would like to do more getting up early and going running. Once upon a time Gordonstoun used to do this every morning, but they don’t any more, which Oliver thinks is rubbish. He likes cross country running. He thinks that he would like to visit Number One Daughter in the summer, and become fitter.
He is happy at school. The symbol of Duffus House is a bull, and I have got to buy a House Sports Shirt with this symbol emblazoned upon it. I hope it is cheaper than the last sports shirts, which were fifty five quid each. If it isn’t then it might have to be his next Christmas present, he will have to do topless rugby until then.
Eventually he went back to bed and we carried on with the endless drive across Scottish wastelands, frozen and bleak in the February morning.
We stopped at the garage in Windermere and Mark hosed the salt off the van whilst I packed everything into bags ready to take in to the house. Then we cleaned it all, outside and in, so that it was bright and gleaming ready for our next adventure, which will be at the other end of half term.
Lucy arrived not long after we did. Her car has failed its MOT and Mark is going to do some things to it.
It was lovely to see her. She told us about being a police officer and admired the new kitchen.
You never think of police officers running out of cash with a broken down car and dashing off home to their mum.
I am very pleased to discover that they do.
Have another picture of Scotland. It is of a house that is not at all handy for the Co-op.
