This is a short entry because I am tired and have had too much to drink.
Also my fingers are sore from scraping grout into cracks between tiles. I know you are supposed to use a scrapy thing for this task, but fingers were easier and now mine are sore, with some little cuts in the ends. This is making typing feel not very nice.
I have not really had very much to drink, but having started off my evening feeling tired, after that the drink did not help.
I think that I am tired because school has finished today. It is now half term.
Obviously I have got absolutely no contribution whatsoever to make to Oliver’s education, apart from the very obvious financial one, and indeed whilst he has been being home educated that has been pretty much exactly my input.
However I have managed to get up early and make his breakfast in order that he is fed and presentable in time for chapel.
I like chapel. I can listen to him singing the hymns upstairs in his bedroom. I joined in this morning, because I can sing again now.
The thing is that we have managed a whole half term of early starts and encouraging of home education and Duffus House challenges and not having any money, and somehow this feels as though we have achieved something. It is more than plain now that school is not going to reopen until September, and actually we had a letter from them this morning explaining this. They also added, to my enormous satisfaction, that in future their school uniform will be coming from Lucy’s old school uniform supplier, which helpfully sews all name tags in for you, I will never again have a summer of punctured fingers and bloodstained PE shirts.
Oliver is very relieved that it is all over.
Mark went off to the farm to cut firewood today, and I stayed by myself to carry on with the grouting. This is difficult and I had not finished when he came back, so he did the rest of it whilst I painted the door. By seven o’clock we had still not finished, so we gave up and had a glass of wine instead. This does not matter because we do not have anything else to do and tomorrow we can get on with it again until it is finished.
I am getting all sorts of things done. Today I have cut out a tablecloth for the conservatory. This was once an old camper van curtain. I might sand down the table top and varnish it, which would mean that I did not need the tablecloth, but if I have a tablecloth it means I do not need to bother wiping the table. These things count in a busy life.
I have attached a photograph of the conservatory, which is very quickly becoming a jungle. You can just about see Mark but he is fast disappearing behind a mass of enormous green things.
Lucy has taken to the idea of gardening. She has been very pleased with the success of her tomato and lettuce plants, and rang up tonight to tell me that she has applied for an allotment.
I am very proud indeed, what splendidly interesting children I have got. She thinks that she would like to grow herbs and vegetables and flowers.
Mark says that if she gets one we can take her down a trailer full of farm muck.
It might have to wait until you are allowed to visit your children again.
I am going to have an early night.
Seer you tomorrow.
