Well, I think my poor website might have recovered.
It might not as well. I have spent some considerable time on the phone to a chap from the website provider today, who made very helpful noises and indeed I can now get back to you again, however it keeps sending me messages telling me that there is a problem and I need to take urgent action.
It is less than specific about what the urgent action might be, chuck a bucket of water over it all, perhaps, or call the emergency services. I don’t know. I have sent the chap an imploring email but he seems to have inconveniently gone home. We will see how we get on with this one.
In the meantime, in the interests of economy, I have decided not to waste the beginnings of last night’s post, and have included it here, and simply carried today on underneath it.
So yesterday…
In the end it was half past two in the morning when we stopped.
I had not had an afternoon nap, and hence slept for the last few hours, but roused every now and again to see a whirl of snowflakes and feel the van rocking in the high winds.
We made it, however, and when we woke up this morning we were safely in the shelter of the woods, a little distance from the beach, not far from school.
We had to hurry up then, because Ted rang to tell Mark all about the effects of calamitous storms on their rural broadband network, and it was more than obvious that we were entirely in the wrong place as far as Cumbria’s rural broadband was concerned.
We had got to get back, because there were some very upset aerials.
This suited me, because I have got another class tonight, and did not much fancy trying to explain my creative ideas over the presumably equally traumatised Scottish rural broadband network, via my incompetent flat computer from a corner of the camper van.
We abandoned Oliver in his immaculately ordered bedroom, to put his washing away in his immaculately ordered drawers, and came away.
It is always so hard to say goodbye to the children. I wonder if any parent every, anywhere, feels as though they have done enough.
Fortunately our shortfalls in this department were compensated this morning by a phone call from my father telling me that they have made another contribution to the school fees, thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness.
Gordonstoun has instituted a new one-way system around campus, which at first we failed to notice, and then thought we might as well ignore. This is because they are building some classrooms. We had never thought much about the absence of classrooms, and always just assumed that everybody was so busy having cold showers and hiking up mountains that they did not need them, but it appears that they have decided that it is time for a change. They will probably not be finished until after Oliver’s time, so won’t trouble him greatly, maybe they are trying to attract a brighter sort of rugged outdoorsy type.
We occupied the whole of the rest of the day trailing back through Scotland, which today was drenched in sunshine.
This sounds lovely but was actually somewhat tiresome. Brilliant sunshine on top of yesterday’s snowfall was the stuff that headaches are made of. The sun was circling low over the mountains, and bouncing joyously off wet roads and acres of untouched snow, and we squinted irritably into the glare for much of the day.
We got home with an hour or two to spare, and managed to get everything unloaded before my class started.
I am sorry to tell you that I was not exactly at my brilliant incisive best tonight either. We will draw a veil over that.
And now it is tomorrow, and you have hardly noticed the gap because you have been segued almost seamlessly between bits of deathless prose, what a marvellous thing the written word can be.
I did not spend all of today on the telephone to the internet people. I spent some of it on the phone to Elspeth and some of it on the phone to Number Two Daughter, and some of it emailing other students on my course, and some of it going for a very sodden sort of walk with the dogs.
It was not raining. It was simply that it has rained so much lately that really I would have made faster progress in a canoe.
It was a good walk for all that. The dogs were glad to stretch their little legs again, and catch up with all the splashes of wee on the fenceposts. I renewed my acquaintance with all of the other morning walkers, which meant the whole thing took ages, they do not call it passing the time of day for nothing. I think I might have promised Lucy’s hand in marriage to the son of a very nice lady acquaintance who seems to have good prospects, he is an assistant manager at Screwfix, how very useful.
In other news, much of the conservatory had disappeared underneath a colossal pile of washing, sometimes my life can be very repetitive. There are all the sheets from the children’s beds, and their towels, and all of the linen out of the camper van, which needed doing this time. At the time of writing I have done three loads and there are two more to go.
In other news, I have been asked to do a Zoom interview for the Masters’s’ degree. This means that they have not exactly rejected my application out of hand but does not mean that they are offering me a place, so I am trying not to feel hopeful. It will be a forty five minute interview during which I will have to analyse a text, discuss and criticise my own writings, and remember not to wipe my nose on my sleeve.
I am not confident of any of the above.
At least it will be more exciting than laundry.
