I have managed to dry almost all of my washing.
This is an important achievement, because today was Clean Sheets Day.
I took a moment to reflect, as I wrote those words, on the way my life has become just one long non-stop thrill ride.
Ah, the imaginings of youth.
I am feeling cross with myself, because I am on the taxi rank. I put a bag of Oliver’s clothes together to bring with me, in order that I could pass a merry little afternoon sewing in the name labels in between customers, by means of adding an extra frisson to the thrill ride.
You will not be surprised to hear that I forgot all about them and they are still sitting on the desk in my office.
This is most frustrating. I have got a huge pile of school things filling up my desk, all of which need something doing to them, either a repair, or a name label to be stitched on. The pile is starting to slide off in to the floor, and I was hoping to start clearing it this evening.
It will not be very long now before school reopens, and the available time for this activity is starting to run out.
I can hardly believe that the summer is drawing to its close.
I do not think that we will manage to make it back to school in time for the first day. This is because the first day is Bank Holiday Monday in England, and we will need to be at work.
Bank Holidays, if the government can manage to restrain their current passion for cancelling things, are amongst the most lucrative times for taxi drivers, not least because of the opportunity to charge double fares. We can not afford to lose all of Sunday and Monday to the long journey up through the mild winter that suffices instead of August in Scotland, so we think that we will not bother and set off on Monday evening after work.
This will not matter because he will not be doing lessons. He would have been having an Induction Week. This means several days of youthful idling about at the beginning of the term to give parents time to post everything that their children have forgotten, like their maths books, calculators, bicycles and most of their uniform.
Lucy will be taking her bicycle back with her as well, because she will be so close both to work and to Tesco that she will be able to achieve everything on a bicycle.
We have spent some time arguing with the estate agent today, who despite having sent her an email last year, assuring her that she only needs to give a month’s notice, has invented a Do Not Buzz Off clause in the tenancy agreement. Basically this means that they would like to charge her some massive fee intended to cover the cost of advertising for a new tenant.
I understand why they would like this. I would like it as well if I were an estate agent.
All the same, since they would have to advertise it whenever she moved out, we are unconvinced by the justice of this. Lucy is inexpert at being argumentatively middle-class and so I telephoned the estate agent to disagree myself.
The matter is still under discussion, since there were several wearisome points of disagreement, but I imagine that they will be reasonably charitable in the end.
I hope so. Lucy is already wagging about in a state of advanced anxiety about it all. It is the sort of thing that makes moving house so horribly stressful, and I am very glad we have become too old for such shenanigans.
Number Two Daughter has moved into her new Canadian residence this week, after their Incredible Journey across the smoking wilderness.
I talked to her this evening. She is choosing between a job digging gardens and driving snow ploughs, or one installing solar panels. It all sounds very grown up, her life is becoming quite as thrilling as mine.
I am going to stop off at home and collect my sewing.
It is all happening here.
I thought that I had not shown you a photograph of the conservatory for a while, and so I have included one today.
It has become very full.
