I am really struggling to write this.
This is because I have not yet set out for work, and the internet service in our house, which might or might not be called the Bandwidth, which sounds important but may not be the right word, is utterly and completely overloaded.
I do not know what the children are doing, but suddenly I press a key and look at the screen and a little while later the letter appears. I would be faster with an old-fashioned cast-iron typewriter.
Upstairs I can hear explosions from Oliver’s room. I can’t hear anything from Lucy’s room, but I think she is writing to the CPS about some crimes, and very probably watching vampires on Netflix at the same time.
Lucy is looking very grown-up. She has bought some very pretty new dresses and I am entirely impressed.
Oliver is looking very grown up as well. I can tell you now that he has had a wonderful time at school. They had several days without power when the terrible storm smashed its way through the Scottish highlands, which they occupied with playing ping pong during the days, and poker in the evenings. They had no heating and no light, so lessons were cancelled, and eventually the Headmaster shoved them all on buses and dispatched them all to the nearby RAF base for showers. They had to clean off the grime of several days’ powerlessness in five minutes scrub each.
Oliver said that it was fine, and ignored my horrified clucking. He has been in the school play, which he said was ace, and showed us some pictures. There is one of him with his arms around some girls. He thinks that this is embarrassing but Mark said that it is a good sign that he does not suffer from the currently fashionable gender confusion which seems to be sweeping through our young people at the moment.
We all went for a walk across the muddy playing field with the dogs this morning. Well, it was the first thing in the day, but it was not morning, it was two o’clock in the afternoon. When I checked the clock as I got into bed last night I noticed that it was 5:38, and hence we did not get up early.
When we did get up I explained my ongoing Christmas flap to the children and asked if they would help me to organise our lives before next week’s pantomime. They both said that they would, but Oliver has got so much homework, and Lucy such a backlog of crimes, that I am not holding my breath.
We had scrambled eggs and single malt for breakfast, after which I would have liked to go back to bed, but of course I didn’t. Instead I faffed about with washing for ages and ages, because there are a lot of dog paw prints needing to be removed. Some of these were on our sheets from the camper van, and had made me very cross indeed. Somebody went for a muddy walk and then jumped on the bed when they returned.
We will not point fingers. The dog in question already knows that it did a terrible thing.
All of the dogs are in good spirits now, because of the endlessly-bountiful Christmas tree. All it needs is a decent sort of tug and a lolly will actually come off in your mouth. You can retreat to your cushion in front of the fire and crunch it up to your heart’s content, leaving plastic wrapping and bits of lolly stick all over the place to be blamed on somebody else later.
They have already spread sticky chocolate wrappers everywhere.
Between these and the paw prints and walnut shells we are going to need a jolly good hoover again tomorrow.
Ho hum.
And so to work.
