Just a very few words because we are ploughing through the Scottish wilderness in the middle of the night. It is one in the morning, the world is dark and the weather is howling around the camper van in a Macbethian sort of way. Oliver is in bed, and Mark is driving. We have been listening to a story but I have turned it off for five minutes to write to you, so I had better hurry up.
I have occupied the entire journey sewing name labels in Christmas present socks and ties and handkerchiefs. Obviously I should have done this ages ago, but somehow time seems to have run out and hence I have been propping my phone up for torchlight so that I can try and poke the needle into all of the right places, by which I mean the socks and not my fingers. I was only moderately successful in this.
Oliver is looking forward to going back to school. He had a splendid farewell party with the rest of the pub last night. For your information, half a dozen chefs are not good people with whom to go out for dinner. They know exactly how everything should be cooked and comment loudly, more loudly as the alcohol starts to flow. They do not just wolf everything down making admiring and satisfied noises, which is the way I approach an evening out. They note the fine details of the ways things might have been wrongly fried.
I had no idea that things could be wrongly fried unless you get distracted and set the pan on fire. I shall bear this in mind.
I have spent much of today cooking things to bring with us. We might stay in Scotland for a couple of days, because there is no hurry to get back, and frankly, the weather in the Lake District was vile when we left and promising to get worse. The forecast is so completely terrible that even we don’t especially wish to go there, and we live there, so I imagine the chances of us attracting a vibrant tourist trade are small.
We are expecting ceaseless rain followed by floods, and the Weather Gods were just getting warmed up to this when we sloped off, as quietly as we could.
Hence we are in the snowy wilderness, somewhere with so little phone signal that I will be lucky to get this to reach you: but I am going to try now, before we disappear from the last outposts of the civilised world.
I had better hurry up.
