We have been considering our current challenges.
I am contemplating the purchase of some knitting wool.
It will not be long until the winter is upon us and I will be able to occupy quiet moments with some creativity. This will be the quiet moments that are not filled with writing diaries and stories, painting Christmas calendars, making cakes and chocolates or boiling our own soap.
I am considering it with great caution because wool is jolly expensive.
This wool is not as expensive as my usual preferred knitting wool, which is hand-plucked from the stomachs of unfortunate Mongolian goats, but it is still pretty jolly expensive, and makes a nonsense of the idea that it is somehow cheaper to make one’s own jerseys. There is another variety of knitting wool, called vicuña, which I have eyed with interest and curiosity, but which I shall not be purchasing, because it is worth rather more than gold. A single scarf knitted from it retails at about three and a half thousand pounds. It would be awful to spend three and a half thousand pounds on wool, go to all the effort of knitting a scarf, and then accidentally leave it on the bus.
I will not expose myself to the possibility of such calamity.
In the meantime I have got the Wool Purchasing Page open on another tab of my miraculous computer, and keep flicking back to it, pensively.
I will have to think about it.
This has not been the only challenge presenting itself for resolution, in fact, because we have been finalising the children’s holiday arrangements. They are off to Canada in a very few weeks, as you know, and all sorts of considerations have now arisen, such as, how they might get there.
Obviously they will be making the bulk of the journey by air, which is long ago booked and paid for, and not by us, which is even better. The next bit is to get them to the airport and back again, which surprisingly proved rather more problematic and almost as expensive.
Oliver starts school two days after he lands in London. Obviously Gordonstoun is a jolly long way from London, as I imagine the Queen could tell you, and so Mark suggested that we followed their example and dispatch him up there by air.
Since we do not have an aeroplane of our own we had to arrange a seat on somebody else’s, and since he will not be taking his entire forty tonnes of luggage to Canada and back with him, we will have to take it there ourselves.
Hence Oliver will be catching a flight from London to Aberdeen and we will be meeting him there. Flying is wonderful. It is double the distance but less than half of the time.
We booked a train to take him down there in the first place, and some travelling insurance in case of peril. This felt very responsible because I think insurance is the most shocking waste of money and do not tend ever to purchase any that is not utterly forced on me. Worry is much cheaper, and tends to disappear with time anyway.
The rest of the day was spent measuring bags and frowning thoughtfully. You can only take bags with you that will fit underneath the seat in front in our Brave New World, use of the overhead lockers costs extra, and so space is at a premium. We have lent them our Kindles for the journey, because of space economy, and also our own travelling jackets, which are magnificent affairs made of enormous zip pockets. These are uncool but will mean that they can practically manage without suitcases.
It is a very exciting adventure, and they are flapping around in suitable appreciation of the magnificence of the event, wondering about spare underwear and sun hats and shorts.
I am glad it is not my problem.
I have got myself into quite enough of a tizz contemplating knitting wool.
