Don’t mind it being humble in the least

And so we are home again, being all adventured out.

We have had a splendid time, and are, of course, exhausted. We had intended to go to work this evening but when we got here everywhere was so quiet that in the end we didn’t bother, and lit the fire and unpacked instead.

It is nice to be home. We stopped and talked to people several times before we even got as far as the door. Also we went to Booths and bought some real food. All of this exciting adventure stuff is all very nice, but I had become desperate for our own dinners, and plain eggs, and a cup of real tea. The water in Windsor is very peculiar indeed, it leaves a gritty mark all around the cup when you have finished a cup of tea and somehow it doesn’t leave your hair feeling quite as clean as you might expect. This is probably because there isn’t very much of it and so it collects lots of rivery silt on its way along to the taps. We certainly knew we were back in the Lake District because the rain started just as we reached the county boundary, and it has continued, quite hard, ever since.

We did not go anywhere else or do anything this morning. We contemplated a bit of a stroll around Windsor, but in the end nobody wanted to bother, and so we all ate an enormous breakfast and packed up to go. We had an entertaining half hour arguing with a hapless chap on the hotel reception who wanted us to pay some more for our bedrooms, or dinners, or something, which we flatly refused to do.

As a family we are jolly good at getting shirty, and we got so very shirty that in the end, frightened of my sister’s superior arithmetic, for which she got an A in her O Level some years ago, and my children’s obstreperous arguing capacity, the chap became so frightened that he might owe us five hundred quid instead that he went bright red and told us that it didn’t matter. I looked at all of their figures on the way home afterwards, and I had no idea at all how he might have come to his conclusions, so arcane and incomprehensible were their sums.

Also their spelling was rubbish. I have just had a look through the dinner receipt and thought that I do not remember anybody ordering Noddles, or Chesscake either, come to that, and for twenty three quid I definitely want a C included in my chiken.

I am going to write them one of my finest middle-class letters in the morning.

They really were hopeless. I mean truly hopeless.

Mark said they have probably bought some second-hand accounting software from an old Post Office.

Anyway, after a thoroughly invigorating argument we all went our separate ways for the long journeys home. The Most Excellent Daughter and the Also Excellent But Uncertified Daughter went off to Heathrow to run up some Ulez charges, and we took my parents back to their house, where we had an almost-proper cup of northern tea, and some of my offspring’s home made cakes. These were beautiful, with properly swirled and delicate icing instead of dollops covered in sawn-up bits of cherry or stick-on googly eyes, which is my usual style of cake decoration, and we admired them so much it felt very sad to eat them, although of course we did.

We collected the dogs from Lucy’s house, and set off on the last miles north. North is a long way away from Windsor, but at last we are here, and the washing machine is spinning merrily even as I write.

It has been the most magnificent few days.

We have lit the fire and the water is hot. The dogs are snoring in their basket next to me and the world is once again filled with bucolic tranquility after all the excitement of the south.

There is, of course, no place like home.