Journeymen

I am all by myself.

Obviously I am not entirely all by myself. Every now and again I am interrupted by a customer, and of course during the day I have been accompanied by the dogs, and occasionally the cats, as I have gone about my daily occupations.

The cats have become extremely low-maintenance. We have begun encouraging them to go outside at bedtime. They do not take much encouragement. Generally as we open the door to come in from work, they belt off out through the gap. I do not know what they are doing all night in the wild hunting grounds of Windermere, but they seem to be finding it satisfactory. When they come in in the morning they eat enormous breakfasts and then retreat upstairs to the luxurious comfort of the especially-placed pillows on my office windowsill, from whence they can supervise most of the comings and goings of the household undisturbed.

This is one of the more splendid features of my office, I like it for exactly that reason.

There is nothing to supervise today. Mark has taken Oliver back to school.

They have gone by themselves. We have not taken the camper van. They have gone in Oliver’s car. Oliver has driven and Mark has sat beside him, offering gentle words of advice and being responsible for the division of pork pies.

I sent them to refill Oliver’s tuck box and to purchase supplies for the journey yesterday, because it is the Wilds of Scotland, and you do not go past many restaurants or even petrol stations. It is wilderness. Anyway, they returned with a cache of groceries which would easily have seen them through forty days stuck in a snowdrift. They even, with great thoughtfulness, brought some chocolate for me, which I have eaten despite the absence of snowdrifts in Windermere.

I made them coffee and sausage sandwiches before they left as well, so I am sure they would have been fine.

They sent me a message at half past seven this evening telling me that they were having a picnic at the end of the school drive. It had been an especially long journey, prolonged terribly by a huge bank of roadworks where the Scottish Highways Authority is busily trying to rebuild a section of the A9 which had misfortunately dissolved in the recent storms. They were stuck in these for more than two hours. This is almost as good as being stuck in a snowdrift, so it was a good job they had so many scotch eggs and crisps to keep their spirits up.

Mark was not especially looking forward to the journey back again.

Anyway, they made it to school, and Oliver has been contentedly settled in his dorm, and Mark is on his way back as I write. I have had quite a nice time in their absence. In the splendid luxury of a whole day to myself and nobody under my feet I have cleaned and thoroughly polished the whole house, apart from the loft, which is really above my pay grade at the moment. I have changed all of the clocks so that they are telling the new time. I am pleased about this. I like the dark nights of the winter. When it is dark at four o’clock one can drink gin for afternoon tea with a clear conscience, and also I do not need to clean the taxi as often.

Mark and Oliver cleaned it yesterday, as it happened. They had a day of vehicle cleaning, because of going north, and not wishing to be travelling in a sticky, sawdust-encrusted car bearing all of the signs of its recent post-scrapyard convalescence.

Number Two Daughter has telephoned in between writing and customers this evening. She has been sanding their newly-discovered wooden floor. She showed this to me on the video thing on the telephone. It looks very lovely, just like a Hygge house. She also told me that Number One Daughter is being temporarily posted to India by the British Army. This is not because she is becoming a mem-sahib, although I do think it would suit her, but because the British Army, in an astonishing moment of modern thinking, has decided to teach its soldiers yoga.

I thought yoga was something you only did if you also had a beard and rainbow-coloured trousers, or alternatively because the Women’s Institute had brought in a Young Man with a beard and rainbow-coloured trousers, to teach the over-sixties how to do stretches on their specially-brought-in doormats.

It turns out that this is no longer the case. Our fighting force of young warriors is to be encouraged to learn the lotus position and whatever else yoga practitioners do, and Number One Daughter is going to be obliged to teach it. In order to learn to teach it, they have not managed to find anybody in the UK with a beard and rainbow-coloured trousers. They are sending her to India.

I suppose this must be some wheeze of the new King’s. I can’t imagine the dear old Queen trying to explain that policy to Prince Philip.

I know about people who do yoga in India. My brother does it.

I have tried very hard to imagine Number One Daughter with rainbow-coloured trousers and a lotus position and possibly even some beads and a beatific attitude, but some things are beyond the imaginatively creative scope even of a Master’s’s’ degree student.

I am sure it will be lovely.

I expect it will be exactly what you need when you are preparing for a charge with fixed bayonets.