We have a boy.
He is a white-faced and exhausted boy, but a boy nevertheless.
I think it has been a long and difficult term, on account of being stuffed full of GCSE exams. At the very moment of the conclusion of the last exam, school ensured his continued attention by immediately commencing rehearsals for a rock-music enhanced version of Macbeth.
I was astonished to discover that this turned out to be really very good indeed.
We watched it last night. It was performed outside, for the fifth and last time, in the school’s glorious garden, with the sun slowly setting behind us. Apart from the rock music, the players wore troubling black make-up, rags, and sloshed around great quantities of blue paint for blood, which seemed entirely appropriate under the circumstances.
Fortunately we had taken deckchairs and blankets, because halfway through it started to rain.
It rained really hard.
The audience fidgeted and shivered, and this was the moment where the whole Gordonstoun ethos burst forth, because not a child on the lawn-stage betrayed by a single twitch that they were getting utterly soaked to the black-and-blue daubed skin.
They were really, truly splendid. I could not have been more impressed. They stood rigid and motionless as the guard, fought one another into icy wet grass with their bits of Birnam Wood, and danced and sang as though they were Paul McCartney hoping that he could get back to his helicopter before he needed to visit the bathroom.
It was good anyway. It actually was, really quite powerful and inspired. We saw Macbeth in York a couple of years ago, and this version was quite considerably better. In the end a double rainbow bloomed in a glorious arc above the stage and the sun returned. We sighed with happiness and clapped until our hands ached.
It was over. Weeks and weeks of anxiety were finally finished. Oliver wanted to have dinner with his friends, and had been too busy to pack anything, so it was almost midnight before we left, and he collapsed into his camper van bunk where he slept for almost twelve hours.
He emerged this afternoon, still blue and grey in patches, and has been alternately eating and sleeping ever since.
It might be a little while before he is fit to do anything else.
We had had a lovely day up until that point anyway. As it happened the Scottish sun was having a day out on the northerly beaches. We woke up in the woods, where we had a leisurely breakfast and then ambled along the mossy woodland paths back down to the beach.
We spent hours there, trousers rolled up to our knees, splashing through the surf whilst the dogs rushed about hunting for tiny crabs and seagull poo with which to anoint themselves ready for a return to the camper van carpet.
It was such a glorious day that we didn’t care in the least, because it is wonderful to have sand squishing between your toes and the salt seaside smell mingling with the dark scent of cedar wood . We walked and walked, until we were hungry, when we went back to the camper van and decided that we would make a visit to Duffus Castle.
Duffus Castle is an ancient ruin about a mile away from school, built on a small hill which promptly collapsed under its weight, so that half of the castle fell off. There are no entry restrictions such as the willingness to part with cash, and we walked around the moat and scrambled up the steep hill to inspect the sad remains of ancient architectural misjudgements.
There was nobody else there. The dogs charged up and down the hill, and we poked around it for ages. Obviously it was fascinating, as these things always are. It must have taken absolutely ages to build. Mark has been building a new compost bin in his garden and it has taken him almost a fortnight, and this was six-foot thick walls with murder holes and insanitary bathrooms and massive holes for oak beams.
It was with some reluctance that we stopped pretending to be medieval nobility, and dragged ourselves away to shower and change before presenting ourselves at school, looking tidy and middle class.
We left the dogs in the camper van, because they were exhausted and filthy.
I might give them a bath tomorrow. They seem to have missed the cedar-wood smell and just acquired the decaying seaweed one.
We are home.
