Swift

We have been looking out hopefully for the swifts.

They usually arrive around now. Last year they were a bit late, and didn’t get here until around the eighth of May. The year before it was around the fifth: but it must be any time now, and I have been popping my head out of the window and scanning the skies every few minutes all day.

They are an important part of the rhythms of the year. They tell you that the season is really changing and life has moved on, like the bluebells, or crossing the last things off the packing list for school in the first days of September, or Windermere Christmas lights being switched on, or the first credit card statement coming in January. The weather is warm and promising, it can’t be long now.

We thought we might have caught sight of one lone traveller this evening, and hastily put jerseys on and went dashing out to the park to see if we could hear them calling, but either it was a solitary athlete or we had mistaken it. Maybe tomorrow.

Mark has spent his afternoon making a wooden ledge to sit around the top of the flower bed in the conservatory. This has been starting to be urgent, because the wall around it was really narrow, and  we had got so many plant pots sitting on it that they have been overbalancing and toppling into the flower bed whenever the sofa has accidentally  been shoved backwards or a dog has become a bit over excited.

This problem has now been resolved. Our pumpkins are safe once again. I am sure you will be relieved to hear this.

We have had a short day, because we did not need to leap out of bed this morning. Oliver has got to be in school every day apart from Sunday. I am jolly glad we do not have the normal children-at-home arrangement and need to do this all of the time, because it is a wearisome fuss, I can jolly well tell you. You have got to be out of bed, whether you want to be or not, and faff about in the kitchen making chocolate spread sandwiches, all so that he can be fed and dressed in time for Chapel at half past eight.

Chapel. I am sure it is all very lovely, but for goodness’ sake, do these people not drink, or something? There was the option of attending a chapel service this Sunday morning as well, but we ignored it and stayed in bed. There are some things that I am just not middle-class enough to achieve.

I have continued with the decluttering activities in my office, and have still not finished, although my filing cabinet is almost empty now.

It has been quite entertaining. I have unearthed loads of old photographs. I have attached one, for your amusement, which was taken of me many years ago at the Bowness Taxi Drivers’ Christmas Party, when Mark and I were only just starting to go out with one another.

It is quite a rascally photograph, because it was a long time ago, and Mark looked at it and sighed, and thought he would put it up in his shed, by way of fond memories.

Oliver looked at it and flatly refused to believe that it was me.

It wasn’t my dress. I had borrowed it from Number One Daughter. It is barely a dress at all. These days my underwear is considerably more substantial than that garment.

It amused me to think that I was entirely convinced that I was a real grown-up, when there is clear photographic evidence that I wasn’t.

How times change.