Sprouts

I am very pleased to assure you that we are home and safe.

We are more or less safe, and everything is more or less all right, except that some poor chap ran into the back of the camper van on our way home.

I can assure you that no actual harm was done, except that the bike rack has been squished into an excitingly novel sort of shape, so it was all right. Mark told the chap not to worry about paying for it, because we did not mind, and he would have quite sufficient expense paying for the mangled plastic bits on the front of his car. We will just bash the bike rack back into shape with a hammer, but his car looked as though it was going to cost him about five hundred quid. It must be very worrying to have an expensive car. I am not sorry I have never tried it.

He was a bit shocked and very upset so we thought it would be best not to make his day any worse.

Apart from that, it was a slow, sunny trundle home.

We should have set off last night, but we didn’t. Somebody thoughtful had given us a bottle of wine, so we drank that instead.

We set off this morning, with the greatest of reluctance, because we longed to stay by the sea in the sunshine, even if it was made up of barely-melted icebergs. We have got to go back to work, though, because the whole shebang has got to be paid for, so we had the briefest of walks into the woods, and came away.

After that there was not much to tell you about really, because it was all a bit like some of the more pedestrian bits of the Lord Of The Rings, which are basically just an uneventful journey. We did not even have the motivation of terrifying Black Riders with which to provide an enthralled readership with jeopardy. We just had the usual common-or-garden jeopardy of whether or not we would get back before the engine burst into flame, which I am pleased to assure you that we did.

When we got home we were astonished to discover how magnificently warm and wet the conservatory had become. We had watered it before we set off, and clearly the sun has been beaming down on Windermere, because when we opened the door it quite took our breath away.

It was dark by then, but the conservatory was not just warm, it was actually hot, and the plants therein had become massive and menacing, you could practically see them looking us over and deciding that we might make a jolly good dinner one day.

Better still, Mark’s new hydroponic drainpipe has sprouted.

I think I told you about this. He filled it with rock wool and stuck it in a bucket of water-with-fertiliser, and added a pump. Then the day before we set off we planted things in it.

There are lettuces and tomatoes and peppers, coriander, parsley and rocket, and they have sprouted already, with quite startling rapidity, presumably because the conservatory has become tropical in our absence. We will be living out of the drainpipe in no time at all.

We were very pleased.

Also I need to tell you that I take it all back. I have hunted through Oliver’s drawers and he has not left any socks here, so it was not his fault after all. They must still be languishing in the black hole that is the Gordonstoun laundry system.

I suppose I am just going to have to get him some more.

Anyway, we are home, and the Scottish Adventure has been successfully accomplished once again. We thought about it on the way back, and realised that just taking Oliver to school and back again occupies an entire month of every year. It takes between two and three days every time, four times a term, that is twelve threes which is, well, lots.

It also costs a small fortune. No wonder we are endlessly broke and never get anything done.

Only one more year to go.