It is over, and I am back on the taxi rank, where no adventures are to be had at all.
It is so quiet that I can practically hear the doormen breathing outside the pub on the other side of the road.
We are in the depths of winter.
Of course the train strikes are not helping, and nor is the advice from the Government that people ought not to drive in case they bump into something and need to go to hospital, but probably I think people are just staying at home and saving for their electricity bills. Certainly that is what we ought to be doing, not least because Oliver has bought himself a new computer for Christmas.
In fact he has not bought himself a new computer. He has bought himself a pile of bits. He is busily screwing them all together as I write, plugging graphic cards into thermally pasted processors and fitting fans into towers. It is keeping him very quiet, and you will not be surprised to hear that Mark has not been able to resist rushing upstairs to join in. I am going to have a very peaceful Christmas at this rate.
Nevertheless it means it would be sensible to start saving up for the electricity bill, because my understanding is that it has got sufficient computing powers, and hence energy requirements, to be running Microsoft. It is all looking very thrillingly technical, and even I am looking forward to the exciting moment when it turns into a machine that will play Undead Killing Zombies in High Resolution technicolour.
I have not been engaged in anything half so creative. I have been doing laundry, because as always we have come home with sacks of it, like a sort of cross between Widow Twanky and Father Christmas.
Of course we checked out of the lovely Midland Hotel this morning, after having thoroughly filled ourselves with roast salmon, cheese, Greek yoghurt and French bread, with a small side order of slices of melon, followed after a small pause by eggs and bacon, sausages and hash browns, and washed down with black coffee.
We did not eat anything else for quite some time afterwards.
The hotel had left a pile of fruit and chocolate in our room, and we did not even eat that, despite looking at it longingly and wishing for more stomach-availability. There was also a lovely note, from the duty manager, who is one of the nicest people you could hope to meet, telling us that they were pleased to welcome us back again. I don’t suppose that is really true, because the Midland has lots and lots of new guests every day. I expect if they remember us at all, really it is only because of shocking things like the Nerf Gun Wars on their otherwise dignified and heavily-muffled corridors, and because of Ritalin Boy sliding down the bannisters and climbing up them again, and all of the other things that make a large noisy family into wearisome guests.
We did not want to leave.
We had a dreadful moment when we did leave, because somebody had broken the window of Lucy’s car in the car park, presumably hoping to steal some of the interesting-looking bags she had in the back. I imagine they must have been disappointed to discover that these consisted of cat litter and her cardboard boxes to be recycled, because they did not steal a single thing.
Lucy rang a window-replacement company to try and get a new one, but they told her it would cost five hundred pounds, so we ordered one on eBay for twenty pounds instead, and Mark will fit it when she comes up for Christmas.
The concierge kindly gave us some tape and Mark covered the window with plastic, so she was all right after all, and in the end she got home perfectly well.
We went off to collect the dogs, who had been dispatched to the Dog Jail of a boarding kennel. They were very pleased to see us, and have been in a state of completely exhausted trauma ever since, so I suspect they have occupied the two days since we saw them in barking their heads off. I have not looked at the dog accommodation, which the owners assured me was warm and welcoming, but Roger’s gaze has been filled with reproach, so maybe there really were warders and drug wars and your kennel was spun every now and again in a search for contraband.
Certainly they are all following us around wherever we go, which is very irritating indeed, especially when I am trying to go up and down the stairs, which have seemed to be filled with dogs whenever I have embarked upon them.
I am hoping not to have a dog-and-stairs related calamity.
It would be very awful to be in need of an ambulance.
