I have had a day of writing.
I am feeling mildly guilty about this, although not very guilty, not really. I have emptied the dogs and brought in the firewood and swept the kitchen and hoovered the top floor, so I suppose I have still got a chance of being admitted to Heaven.
Still, it has been a great relief to get on with it. I had all manner of things that needed to be done before the class tomorrow afternoon, and it was splendid to have the time actually to do them. I have been thoughtfully pondering them for ages, and desperately hoping to squeeze them into my crowded schedule of dog-emptying and sawing firewood.
It is getting a bit late and I have not yet gone to work. I keep thinking that I might go, but I sat there for ages and ages last night and eventually gave up after the third customer, somewhere around half past ten, so it might also be a good time to have a night off. It is a while since I have had one of those.
All the same, really I ought to go to work. This is because I do not know exactly what the future holds, and am feeling that perhaps I ought to be being careful.
Mark is currently away on a course until tomorrow. This one, I think, is learning how to be a Rigger, whatever one of those is. He has been one before, but his certificate has expired and so he needs to learn to be one again, in case he has forgotten in the meantime. He rang today and said that today’s test was difficult because of it being written, and he was a dyslexic candidate who had forgotten his glasses. These are not optimal conditions for passing an exam, but somehow he managed to pass anyway, and apart from feeling mildly traumatised, he was quite cheery when we spoke.
The uncertainty has arisen because he has got to pass a course called Working In Confined Spaces. I am not sure why this is a problem, because Number One Son-In-Law has sent some pictures of where they are working, and compared to working underneath a taxi, or in Mark’s very untidy shed, or in our whole house really, there looks to be loads of room.
All the same, he has got to pass it, and was going to do the course on Monday, because he goes offshore on Tuesday. Then this morning the company he will be working for wrote to him and said that there might not be a course running on Monday. Instead he might have to go to Aberdeen tomorrow, as soon as he has finished in Newcastle, and do the course on Thursday and Friday of this week.
This has thrown me into confusion, because if that happens he will not have time to come home in between, and I will not see him again for almost a month.
He is the most irritating person I know but all the same I would like it if he came home, because, well, just because, really.
He has got enough money to get up to Aberdeen but not to come back. This will not be important, because he will have earned some money by then and can just blithely pay for it with his bank card. At the moment this just makes a hollow laughing noise when we try to use it, but if an oil and gas petroleum giant is hurling lots of money into it then that will be a different matter.
I have told him sternly that he must make sure he has done his laundry before he goes, he must not turn up on an oil rig with a bag of dirty washing like a waif and stray, but he just said Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, as if he was one of the children.
We will know what is happening tomorrow morning. I am feeling very twitchy with worry about it, although there isn’t anything to worry about really. There is everything in the camper van that a person could need. I have always made sure of that, there is even clean underwear and socks.
I had better go to work, I think. I might only make a tenner but you never know when you are going to need one, and at least it will pay for me to post useful things up to Aberdeen.
By this time tomorrow he will either be home or halfway to Aberdeen.
I will keep you posted.
