We have been obliged to email Gordonstoun and tell them our travel arrangements for half term.
I have been putting this off, because as you have probably noticed, our travelling arrangements are a little hazardous to say the least. Mark has got about three days to get the camper van bashed back together, because he has got to go to work on all of the other days. I do not know how he is going to manage it.
He is optimistic that of course he will do it, but he is always optimistic about this sort of thing, and it inevitably ends up in a frantic last minute panic and a subsequent domestic.
I have been suggesting alternatives but they are not encouraging. Probably he will have nailed my taxi by together by tomorrow lunchtime, and so after we have earned some cash at weekend, I will be buzzing off to Cambridge until Thursday. This will be a Good Thing because it means that I will completely miss the last minute panic and swearing and leaving oily overalls and muddy footprints everywhere because he is just too rushed to take care about his domestic arrangements.
When I arrive home at about eight o’clock on Thursday evening, he will have finished the camper van and put it through the MOT which I have thoughtfully booked for him. He will have made up the beds and filled the water tank, and will probably have cooked a nourishing dinner for us. I will park my car, have a quick shower, and we will set off in the camper van, ready to drive a further three hundred and fifty miles before collapsing into exhausted sleep in the woods by the beach. We will collect Oliver in the morning and make our way happily home before going back out to work for the evening.
If he has not finished we will have to go with Plan B, which is to fling some quilts into the back of my taxi and dash off in that. His taxi is not in any kind of fit state to drive three hundred and fifty miles, it will be doing very well to get through the weekend. There would be no hotels open to admit us at three in the morning, which is our likely arrival time, and so we would have to sleep in the back of the taxi.
I do not like the sound of Plan B at all. Mark has tried to be up-beat and positive about it, but I have put a very firm damper on any sort of hopes that it might be an exciting and acceptable alternative. First we would arrive, at the King’s old school, of all places, looking ghastly, exactly as if we had been sleeping rough, in fact. Second, there would be no coffee, and thirdly, what are we supposed to do about needing a wee in the middle of the night? Actually, to be absolutely brutally specific, what am I supposed to do about needing a wee in the middle of the night? since this is unlikely to pose much of a difficulty for Mark.
Mark does not like the thought about me being very cross about bathroom arrangements, and has agreed that it would be much better if he fixes the camper van. He keeps doing bits to it, in between replacing the cam belt on my taxi, and the conservatory is filled with the fumes wafting off newly painted bits of camper van. It is a very anxious time.
I explained this to Oliver’s housemaster, who wrote me a cheery letter back saying that it was not a problem, and that Oliver had a perfectly functional pair of boots and all-seasons sleeping bag, and he would point him in the direction of the A9 and tell him to keep his eyes open for us whilst he walked.
I was relieved about this, hurrah for Gordonstoun, what a splendid can-do approach.
In other news, I have shaved the dogs’ heads. They look entirely ridiculous, because it is still far too cold to remove all the rest of their fur, but hair was just starting to poke in their eyes, which was dreadful. There is nothing as horrible as irritated eyes. Rosie is so relieved not to have sore eyes any more she has been galloping joyously all over the kitchen, but she looks even worse than usual. This is sad, because she is coming into season and no other dog is going to think she is beautiful.
Poor Rosie. Not that she was in with much of a chance anyway.
