Mark came home on Friday night, just in time for a weekend of cash-accumulation.
We didn’t accumulate very much, because it is still February, but we have made enough to pay for the fuel for Mark to go off on this week’s training course tonight, and for Oliver to go back to school on Monday.
Oliver is going to drive himself back to school. He is not supposed to do this. School has got a Non Driving policy in place for its students, because they do not wish ever to be responsible for some aspirational Ayrton Senna taking all of his mates for a high speed spin around the grounds and then off to the pub, or worse, in the opposite order.
Oliver is not that type of student.
He will be coming back into the south again in a couple of weeks, for his interview at Norland, and so I wrote to school and asked for an exemption.
They wrote back telling me they would think about it and then forgot, because the scheduled meeting to discuss it became entirely preoccupied with the behaviour of some other youthful idiot who had punched somebody. The somebody had called him names. I am glad I am not eighteen any more.
I did not remind them, mostly because I had forgotten as well, and then I remembered this morning when it was too late to change our arrangements.
I have told Oliver to unload quickly, it will be dark anyway, and then park in the staff car park, and probably nobody will ever notice.
He came home this afternoon, having spent the week staying with Lucy and attending a course to teach him to become a door supervisor. These used to be called Bouncers before it cost five hundred quid to learn how to be one. Lucy did the course five years ago, but it has become considerably more detailed and difficult since then, because somebody important wishes our nation to be guarded by the well-educated with a basic understanding of the psychology of idiots and some first aid training, rather than the enormous thugs with scars and prison records who seemed to manage the job rather admirably in my own youth.
Hence he has had six days of eight-till-five education in the best way of managing street brawls and stopping drunk people from stabbing one another. This is quite different from what Lucy does in the police. The police just turn up once the street brawl is over and arrest anybody who has not run away, so the two jobs do not overlap very much, at least not until you are giving a statement in court later.
Anyway, he has passed, with excellent results, much to our satisfaction, and rather to his own surprise, because it does sound to have been very intense. He has returned home seeming to be about a foot taller, and with a strong disinclination to be a drunken idiot himself. I am glad about this outcome. It is desirable in a teenage son.
After all of the adventures, because not only has he been broadening his education but he has been driving himself through Manchester’s rush hour every morning and evening, he is exhausted, and is now having a quiet night at home before setting off on the long Gordonstoun haul tomorrow. He has been helping Mark, who has been doing some rebuilding work in the house next door to us. He is reconstructing his kitchen in preparation for some exciting new white goods. We will invite ourselves for dinner when they have arrived.
I packed all of Mark’s things into the camper van, and unpacked all of Oliver’s things into the washing machine. Then I fed everybody and came to work.
Mark has gone now, and Oliver is home until tomorrow.
I am not quite by myself just yet.
