They have gone.
I am alone, except for all of the dogs, obviously.
I am about to go to work. I am going to take the dogs to belt around the park and bark tiresomely at people for ten minutes, and then I am going to go and sit on the taxi rank. If tonight is anything like every other night at this time of year, I do not imagine I am likely to earn very much, but I will sit there anyway, because it is a quiet place to read my book and nobody is going to sit and look at me with large mournful eyes, hoping that I might kindly share a bit of my sandwich.
The whole weekend has been a flurry of getting the collection of large fledgelings ready to be booted out of the nest. Oliver has been for a haircut and sorted out his luggage and got on with his new cleaning job. This is not a forever-employment, but covering for a friend who has been unexpectedly called away to the sick-bed of a relative. This is Windermere, where nobody is ever unemployed, which is why somebody as completely devoid of credentials as Oliver was selected. He is entirely unqualified and untrained for domesticity, which is presumably due to some thoughtless omission on my part. Hence it has turned out to be something of a deep-end plunge.
In fact we have all realised that he has never done any cleaning at all. Contrary to my vague suppositions on the matter, had I bothered to think about it, which actually I haven’t, he has not learned by osmosis, because he has never been sufficiently interested to take any great notice. He has occasionally retrieved the hoover from the kitchen and taken it up to his bedroom, but the method one might use for, say, cleaning mirrors or mopping floors, had never impinged upon his consciousness to the tiniest degree. I am not in the least surprised about this. Of all the matters that might captivate the attention of a teenage boy, scrubbing plugholes and swabbing counter-tops is probably never going to be a front runner.
If I am truthful it has never captivated my attention very much either. Cleaning is very dull indeed.
Despite this he seems to have managed reasonably well. It has been a steep learning curve and now he is the proud possessor of a new skill. If he has not managed well and there is a sharp rise in the incidence of botulism in the village over the next week or two we will probably not talk very much about it.
I was disgruntled to find, however, that altered opening times at weekends meant that he was obliged to turn up at the pub at nine o’clock in the morning. We were obliged to take him down there, because although he has a perfectly functional car, it would have cost him his entire morning wage to park it anywhere in Bowness, and so everybody crawled out of bed, bleary-eyed and swearing, to organise breakfasts and coffee, all served with lashings of sleepy grumbling. This was a good thing because it meant that we got a splendidly long day in which to organise our lives, and rubbish because now we are all very weary and longing for more sleep.
I will be able to have more sleep. Oliver, who is doing his Door Supervising Course, and Mark, who is doing his Swinging About On Oil Rigs Course, are going to need to be alert and awake for the next week. The most that is going to be required of me is a bit more cleaning and some sitting on the taxi rank, perhaps dull is no bad thing sometimes.
I have packed just about everything I could think of that they might need, although still forgot to pack Oliver a bedroom heater to take to Lucy’s house. This is because her new boiler will not be arriving until Tuesday, and things are a bit chilly.
Oliver has been turned to steel by the icy temperatures beyond the Wall. He will be fine.
Mark is on his way to Aberdeen, in the camper van, talking about the frozen lands beyond the Wall. He will not be back until Friday.
I have promised that in their absence I will have a peaceful week, without any frantic activity, in order to be contented and tranquil in my soul by the time they come home, and not feel any inclination to shout at anybody.
I am sure I can manage that.
You can watch this space and find out.
LATER NOTE. They have both telephoned. Everybody has arrived without mishap. You can relax over your cornflakes.
