Well, we are still north of the wall.
There are no wildlings surrounding the camper van but there is a howling wind and an excitingly bleak landscape.
We are at Findhorn.
For those of you who don’t know, Findhorn is a small coastal village somewhere north of just about everywhere, occupied by about forty holiday cottages and a hippie commune. I have visited the hippie commune, it was rubbish and they ought to think a bit harder about basic physics and horticulture before coming up with so many expensively useless ideas for saving the planet. Mark has actually managed to heat our house for nothing, and he laughed all the way round it.
We did not visit them today. I quite like the hippie centre, if you want to purchase literature about contacting your Inner Fairy or external Nurturing Angel or the Secret Ley Lines Under Your Garage, then that is your prime retail outlet. They also do a good line in dream catchers made out of goat cheese and sandals knitted from straw and recycled plastic packaging, or some similar junk. Whatever it is, you would be horrified to find any of it in your Christmas stocking, especially if you were required to write a convincing thank-you letter afterwards.
Today we are parked by the harbour. It is dark, and the wind is gusting in from the Arctic, making the camper van rock about like a three masted schooner in the sort of wind where all hands go on deck, and Mel Gibson is shouting inaudible orders and trying to see through an inadequate wet telescope. We are not on deck. We are curled up on the camper van seats with dogs and cushions and mugs of tea. Mark has got a good book and I have been reading about Prince Harry’s endlessly entertaining revelations with fascination.
Some rotter gave his brother the biggest bedroom, and worse, that same brother punched him on the nose. He only seems to have done it once, which I think shows commendable restraint, but Harry fell in the dog bowl, which upset him because of it being an indignity which should not have been visited on a Prince Of The Realm.
I can only think that it is a jolly good job that my children have never taken it upon themselves to Reveal All about their upbringing. I can hardly imagine the media outcry that would follow stories like My Mother Drank Loads Of Wine And Sang Grease Megamix Karaoke, or She Laughed At My School Report, or She Gave Us Crisps For Breakfast. On the whole I think my sympathies are with Prince Charles.
Talking of children, we deposited Oliver back at school this morning. We chugged into a quiet woodland corner of Moray at about half past two in the morning and howled in disbelief when the alarm went off at nine, but of course life had to go on, so it did.
His room this term is huge. It took us ages to sort out all of his stuff, because he had a trunk packed in the trunk room, an Exped Bag in the Exped Room, some newly returned laundry in the Boot Room, plus piles of newly-labelled socks and ties that we had brought with us. The trunk room was the most exciting, because he was one of the earliest to get back, and his trunk was right at the back. The trunks were piled to the ceiling, and in the end we dragged a couple off the top and Oliver mountaineered over them to unearth his, chucking the displaced ones over the edge like a badger digging a hole.
We found it in the end, and he organised his bedroom until everything was tidy and ordered to his satisfaction, and we left him. He is so tall and self-assured and capable, a lifetime away from the anxious little boy we took to prep school all those years ago. He bounded away up the steps and was gone, and we chugged back to the woods where we crawled back into bed and slept like hibernating hedgehogs.
It was dark when we woke up. We took the dogs for a walk through the trees, and after some consideration, decided that our very favourite outcome for the day would probably involve eating, so we came across to Findhorn where we parked here on the edge of the harbour and hurried through the inclement black night to the pub.
We had fish and chips and a bottle of wine, and felt very pleased with the world indeed. I can tell you now that there is nothing nicer than being on the Scottish coast in the depths of winter with nothing much to do except eat an excellent dinner next to a warm fire. We walked along the harbour with the dogs afterwards, Findhorn is a bit like Windermere in that there are not very many people but everybody wants to know what you are doing, and by the time we had finished with the pub and the walk we must have explained ourselves half a dozen times, shouting over the gale.
We came back to read our books and think about the world, and now we are going back to bed. I am in bed and Mark is in the shower.
The dogs are snoring. I am going to join them.
