Something nice happened this morning.
Number One Daughter turned up with Ritalin Boy on their way back to the glorious south.
This was nice in itself, even though we were barely stirring from our beds when they called, and hardly bursting with the delights of the January morning.
They had brought with them a cat, a dog and two dressing gowns.
Lucy’s cats eyed the visiting cat with considerable suspicion, and some threatening cat-growling happened, until they all got used to one another. Tonka, the dog, sloped off and hid under the table, which is what he usually does, and then failed to come out so thoroughly that they almost went without him. I was glad they remembered. We are going up to Gordonstoun in the camper van next week and we will be quite enough of a crowd as it is because of being four people, two cats and two dogs.
Number One Daughter explained that the dressing gowns were theirs, but that they did not wear them. They had noticed on Christmas Day, she explained, how old and threadbare our dressing gowns had become, and she thought that perhaps we might like to have theirs in the meantime until we had saved up for some new ones.
I should explain that our dressing gowns are the most luxurious items of clothing we possess. They are bought, every ten or twelve years or so, from a magnificently upmarket dressing-gown supplier called The Bathrobe Company, and cost a fortune, but are thick and soft and unutterably wonderful.
Michael Caine and Helen Mirren purchase their dressing gowns there as well, although probably not together, or matching one another, the way Mark and I do.
Having said that they are expensive, which they actually are, I have just done some sums. We have bought a new dressing gown for Oliver every year for a mere twenty five quid. This is inevitably worn to rags by the next Christmas and a further twenty five quid spent on its replacement. Therefore we have spent more on Oliver’s dressing gowns than on our own, despite the fact that ours make you blink several times when the Total figure flashes up at the bottom of the online shopping basket.
I digress.
Number One Daughter had brought their Bathrobe Company dressing gowns for us.
She said they just hang around their bedroom looking beautiful, where ours have clearly been worn to exhausted threads.
I was very grateful. I tried to explain that we had thought we would save up for some new ones this year, perhaps for our wedding anniversary. I suppose we both know that probably we won’t, not really, unless the Government thinks of some new wheeze to make people think they have got enough money to be able to waste some on good living and taxis in the New Year, and I don’t believe they will, not even with an election looming large. If they were that creative they would have dreamed it up already.
Number One Daughter said that we were to wear them until we had got some new ones.
I don’t know if we will or not. They are too new and lovely. I don’t want them to turn into threadbare ghosts of themselves as well. It seems a dreadful thing to waste such robust gleaming wonderfulness on our morning coffee.
I have looked at the Bathrobe Company website and chosen the ones I want on the day of our lottery win. I think we will probably be able to afford them in another Christmas or two.
It was lovely to see them, Number One Daughter and Ritalin Boy, not the dressing gowns, obviously. They have gone away south again now. Lucy goes off on Sunday and Oliver and Elise on Monday. They will all be scattered to the four winds again and there will be no little chicks in the nest at all.
I am trying not to think how much cheaper the shopping bill will be.
It is going to be very, very quiet.
