Saga

I do not know which has surprised me more, the discovery that I am old enough to be given a subscription to Saga Magazine for Christmas, or the discovery that I love it.

I truly do.

I dipped into it for the first time this morning whilst I should have been doing something else. It is full of interesting articles written by interesting people, like Jenni Murray. This month there are lots of pictures of Chequers, and there was a jolly good article about growing houseplants and getting your garden ready for the spring planting. The Letters To The Doctor were all about gripping things like high blood pressure and arthritis, and even the advertisements were for things that we suddenly discovered that we wanted, like insulation for conservatories.

Not for the first time, I was chastened to discover how easily predictable I am. I am not a wild maverick after all. Editors of magazines for the elderly know me very well indeed.

Heigh ho.

I am feeling light of spirit this evening, because tomorrow is our Day Off.

We do not have to get up early, which by extrapolation means that we do not need to rush about going to bed early. Mark never gets home from work before seven, and on most evenings it is eight. This makes our leisure time somewhat limited when we are trying to go to bed at half past ten.

Oliver finished school at lunch time today, and bounced down the stairs practically giddy with relief. Then he bounced back up again and I have not seen him since.

He will have a short week next week anyway, because it will be Leave Out, which is Gordonstoun speak for an exeat, which is when everybody buzzes off home for an idle mid-term weekend. It is not considered to be an exeat in Gordonstoun because it is so far away from where everybody lives that it would take them the whole weekend just to get home, so they do not exeat at all, but stay in school cluttering up the dormitories and spending their spare cash in the tuck shop.

During the last term they did not have a Leave Out but a Leave in, in case of horrible diseases, and school solved the problem of having hundreds of bored teenagers on their hands by hiring a funfair and a burger stand and some Nerf guns for the weekend.

Oliver said that it was brilliant.

Regrettably he is at home for this one, and we cannot offer anything nearly as exciting. All the same he will finish school on Thursday evening and will not go back until Tuesday. This is especially splendid, because Lucy called yesterday to tell us that she has several university weeks of online learning, and the police have agreed that it will be legal for her to come home.

She will be here on Thursday. Our littlest chicks will be squashing back into the nest.

This means that we will probably have to spend the Day Off thinking about some bedroom rearrangements. Oliver has been using Lucy’s room to work in order to make school different from home. This is easier if they are in a different place.

Lucy will be working in her bedroom now. We are going to have to make Oliver’s room a bit more acceptable as a site for concentration and academic industry.

I am not looking forward to this particular challenge.

I have also been considering a small challenge of my own, because as I think I have mentioned, we are appearing as witnesses in a court case in a few weeks.

This is coming ever closer, and I am having to make the troubling decision about what I ought to wear.

This should not make any difference at all, because I will be telling the Whole Truth etc, no matter what I am wearing. Of course it does, however, because telling the truth, and looking as though you are telling the truth, are two quite different things, as any schoolboy could tell you. Therefore I have been sifting through my wardrobe trying to find clothes which exude honesty and reliability, so far without success.

I will be lucky if I can find anything that still fits at this rate. Wine every night and syrup sponge for dinner are not helping my waistline, but it seems to be such a waste of a magnificent opportunity not to do it. Of course we could always follow the current trend for starting the year with a virtuous bout of Dry January asceticism, but I can assure you that we do not have the smallest intention of doing any such thing. We spend almost our entire lives Not Drinking, because of the taxis, and if nothing else the current policies of isolation have provided us with a magnificent opportunity for self indulgence.

We are not going to waste it.

We will just have to go on diets when the pubs re-open.

Have a photograph of…

the author.