It is Oliver’s birthday.
It is eighteen years since all of the new-baby fuss happened. There is a lot of mess when you have a baby, although fortunately it is one of the few times in life when somebody else gets to do all of the clearing up, Mark, in this case, since we had avoided telling anybody else what we were up to. Anyway, it seems barely credible that Oliver is now a proper grown-up, but he is. It was a whole lifetime ago.
We missed his birthday, just like we have missed every other one of his birthdays, because he was at school, where Duffus House was having a pizza party to celebrate for him. I was sad about this, although I suppose we are not very exciting birthday company even when we are trying hard. He will be home in another few weeks and we can celebrate then. I am longing for that moment but we have still got a lot to do before it happens so I suppose we will all just have to wait.
We do, however, have Lucy home again today.
She has spent a happy day or two dashing around Kettering having tearful farewell celebrations with her brother and sister officers, whom she will never now see again, at least not until their Christmas party in a few weeks. She has been to look at her new house, which she likes, and Manchester police have fitted her for her new uniform.
This last was an entirely pointless exercise because she has got to go back again once she has actually started and be fitted for another. This is because the police in Manchester are having a new sort of uniform. I don’t know what it will be like, probably it will have a rainbow on it just to show that the police love everybody. I expect that she has got to have a new old uniform so that she has got one to offer in exchange in order that the new new uniform can be issued. I imagine that the mayor has dreamed this up as some kind of job creation scheme for Manchester’s fading textile industry.
In any case, she will not be with us for very much longer, as she starts her new job in two more weeks. She keeps explaining this to Roger Poopy, but he is pretending to be deaf. He does not like thinking that she will not be there one day, because she is his favourite person in the whole world.
Obviously her house purchase has not happened yet. That particular mill is grinding so slowly that if it had pepper in it you would give up and wrap the corns in a cloth and hit them with a hammer instead. It is going to take weeks and weeks and weeks. The estate agent thinks that she will be lucky to be in by the end of February.
In consequence she has entered into discussions with my parents about their heartfelt and often-expounded-upon longings to have a youthful lodger, especially one doing shift work. They have generously offered to lend her a bedroom, at a very affordable rent, ie, none at all, along with a bathroom and a parking space. I think that this is very kind of them. I imagine it will be just fine, because she can come back home at weekends, and in any case she is not a very intrusive sort of house guest, and if only they had a dog it could occupy itself trotting along adoringly at her feet and trying to climb unobtrusively into bed next to her when it thinks she is not looking. Both of our dogs do this, except that Rosie is not tall enough, and so Roger climbs unobtrusively into Lucy’s bed and Rosie is left on the floor, She does not understand stealth, and is so is bereft at his disappearance that she runs up and down barking until somebody wakes up and swears at both of them.
She is not taking the dogs with her, nor the cats. They are all staying here until she is settled.
The dogs have spent today at the farm with Mark, and so I have had a dog-free space for the day. Really I should have dusted and hoovered, but I didn’t. Instead I have been labouring over the last of the Advent calendars. These are almost finished now, which is a good thing because time is running out, December does seem to come round very quickly. I started painting them in June this year so that I would not have a last minute rush, but you will not be surprised to hear that there is a week to go and I have not finished.
Advent calendars are an absolutely perfect illustration of Parkinson’s Law, and even if I started on next year’s calendar this week I would still finish up with a horrible panic next November. I am going to have to hurry up because the lady in the Post Office will be grumpy if I do not get them sent soon. The cats are very interested in art, if you get an Advent calendar you will just have to ignore the painty paw prints. and occasional stuck-on cat hair.
I am going to stop because it is late and I am still trying to write my university assignment. I will see you on Sunday.
A very happy, happy birthday to Oliver.
We have had him for eighteen years.
