Oliver is becoming stout.
By stout, obviously I don’t mean portly. Oliver is a million miles away from that. He has had a lifetime of being diminutive and stick-thin. All of my children had a spell of being the smallest child in the school, and Oliver managed it for two consecutive years, even when the new prep school intake turned up they were still all taller than he was.
I do not know how I have managed to have such short genes, but we are hoping that Oliver might escape them. Being small and pretty might be an asset in a lady policeman, it certainly helps people think twice before punching you, but it might not be an asset if you are a chap.
On that subject, Lucy is absolutely longing to put all of her Krav Maga into practice and get into a real fisticuffs street fight now that she is out on the streets doing active coppering, but nobody wants to know. Even the angry drugged chap who was shouting that he was going to take out a copper with him, turned round to Lucy and said: “But not you, pet. You’re lovely.”
Oliver does not want to be a copper. Oliver, at the moment, wants to be an ammunition technician in the Army, with special attention to being a bomb disposal officer. He thinks that this sounds very exciting. I think so too. Also apparently there are a lot of opportunities for promotion.
With this in mind he has chosen to do all of the sciences when he goes back to school next year, and he has been approaching the current exam timetable with absolute joy.
He is busily engaged in his end-of-year-exams, from his bedroom, obviously, and is beside himself at the happy thought that he need never do Latin and History ever again. Well, after the next couple of weeks. He will still be doing lessons about them for the next few weeks, but there will be no prep. I am glad that he has learned at least that much Latin. It will be handy if ever he wants to be Prime Minister.
Anyway, the point I was making is that he has grown since he came home. He has become taller, and solider, and broader. We are going to have to invest in a whole new uniform when he goes back to school, which will be September, it turns out. I bought the last one three sizes too big, mostly because it was the smallest that they did, but it will not be sufficient.
I hope Barclaycard relents before then. School uniforms are very not cheap.
Mark has been out at work all day, which will probably help a bit, and once again I have been engaged in the clearing-up process.
I have restored our house to a dust free state again, upstairs at least, and am feeling contented with my world. I continued the home-improvement project as well, by re-upholstering the arms on my swivelly desk chair. I like this chair, it is where I sit for my authoritative position of command, like being Captain Kirk. Everything important that happens in the house begins and ends here, in my office. I can see up the stairs to the children’s rooms, and down the stairs to the old kitchen, and outside into the back garden. It is a Useful Space.
I regret to say that it is a bit less space age authoritative now that it has flowery velvet arms, but the old ones were plastic, and had worn into scratchy holes.
Fixing them was a messy process involving lots of glue and drawing pins. The drawing pins all stuck together and the glue stuck to everything, most especially my fingers, which got so completely covered in layers of fluff whilst I faffed about that they looked rather like the dog’s paws, sort of brown and hairy. I had to borrow some of Mark’s brake cleaner to get them clean again.
Obviously I messed the upholstery up as well. The arm would not fix back on to the chair, and Mark had to get some new screws and plugs and redo it all when he got home, but that is another story.
The dog is not yet better, but he has not died, so that is good. He is limping a bit and insists on being carried on all the boring bits of the walk. If something exciting is happening, like some especially thrilling wee or a ball being thrown for somebody else, he can manage a fairly determined jog-trot, but the bits where he is supposed to walk along obediently at heel are just too difficult, and he staggers along at a snail’s pace with a martyred expression. We met up with Roger Poopy’s friend Pepper in the park this morning, and as luck would have it, they had some more drugs which they very kindly shared with us, so his pain-free existence is guaranteed for the near future, which should give him plenty of chance to get better.
It is not broken. He will let us poke it and wag it about now. I am glad about that. We are saving up for a new school uniform. I am pleased that we do not need the vet as well.
Have a picture of some self-pity.
