The day has not gone quite according to plan.
As I think I explained yesterday, today was earmarked for a picnic and cricket match in Yorkshire, run by the Old Boys’ Association of Oliver’s prep school.
This meant a fairly frantic morning, because we worked late last night, and a hasty dash over the A66 in the camper van, where we found, to our horror, the cricket ground deserted and not an Old Boy in sight.
Some phone calls eventually led us to the headmaster of the prep school, who told us that he in his turn had just been told that the match had been cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch.
It turned out that we were not the first parents to be making puzzled and grumpy telephone calls to him from the empty cricket ground. Obviously school had not been running the match, and so there must have been some contact problems somewhere, and we had not managed to find out.
We were not exactly surprised, because the last night at work had been one of the wettest I have ever known. To put this into context you might recall that in the Lake District that is really wet, because rain is our major domestic product. It rained so hard that with the windscreen wipers on their fastest setting I still could not see out, and the rain was bouncing off the road to knee height.
There was a massive, sodden, miserable queue on the taxi rank. I had to go as fast as I could. It made for an exciting evening.
We had wondered about the rain and the cricket, and checked our emails several times before setting off, but eventually concluded that Yorkshire must have been having better relations with the Weather Gods, and set off anyway.
It was a tiresome moment, because we were in Yorkshire miles from home, and we were not quite sure what to do. There was not enough time before work to go and see one of Yorkshire’s thrilling visitor attractions, even if it had not been for the discouraging bat flu rules.
I think I have mentioned that we are not going anywhere at all where one is obliged to be Test Tracked And Traced at the door. The danger of a subsequent compulsory holiday is too great, and would, I think, spoil any pleasure otherwise to be had from the occasion.
We contemplated this for a little while. We could not go for a walk, because Mark’s feet are covered in terrible splits and cracks at the moment, and we did not especially feel like having a picnic by ourselves, so in the end we went home.
Obviously Oliver was very sad not to see his old friends, and I was sad on his behalf, although I must confess that on my own behalf I was secretly a bit relieved.
This was because, as you know, although I like nothing more than evenings spent with friends, on the whole I am hopelessly rubbish at big social gatherings, where people mingle and mix and drift between one group of chattering acquaintances and another. These are gripping to watch, because people’s faces tell you all sorts of unexpected things when they are too busy to notice you are looking, but terribly confusing to join in. In any case I am aware that I am a disappointing conversationalist, and although I would have liked to see everybody and hear all of their public-school stories, I was not entirely sorry to be excused.
We made our way home, and actually it was rather nice. It is two years since we have made the journey into Yorkshire, and instead of the A66 it became Memory Lane, and we thought of all the times we have taken Oliver that way, ever since he was a terrified eight year old, white-faced and anxious about his first term in boarding school.
Oliver laughed a great deal to remember it now, because he was very happy there, and thinks that it was the best thing he could possibly have done. It is easy to think so now that he is tall and supremely confident, but he has learned to be that way through having been small and scared, and being brave anyway.
We arrived back home and had the very great pleasure of a lot of nice picnic things to be taken to work, which was another silver lining, so on the whole the day was a nice one.
I didn’t take any pictures. Have another picture of the conservatory.
