Well, we have clean sheets, and a watered conservatory, and all manner of splendid achievements.
I have even finished the wretched ironing.
I have flattened it all beautifully, and then taken it all up to the loft, where I have dumped it, festooning the pictures and the sticking-out bits of wire with coat hangers, and I have resolved to purchase a free-standing clothes rail on the mighty Internet as soon as I have earned some money this evening.
This is not a slur on Mark, unless he is reading this, in which case I hope he is feeling guilty about his deficient clothes-rail production, but because actually I have always liked clothes rails very much, since my days in the theatre, when they had all sorts of useful functions, not least hauling clean costumes along the dressing room corridors. They are far more romantic than a wardrobe, although admittedly they were rubbish on the stairs.
Our clothes rail will make one single trip up the stairs, up all three flights to the loft, and then it will stay there. Also this means that when I need to bring down the emergency chairs because we are having visitors, I will not need to push my way through rows of tidily hanging middle-class garments all dangling immovably from the ceiling. I will simply be able to shunt it out of the way.
All our peasantry-class garments are downstairs in our bedroom where we use them all the time. I do not ever bother to iron those, there is no point whatsoever. It would, as the saying goes, be like polishing one of the dogs’ accidents.
Anyway, everything is clean. I have mopped the kitchen and hoovered and dusted. I have even, in a fit of benevolence, scooped Mark’s filthy overalls up from the dark corners where he had abandoned them, and shoved them into the washing machine. I put every sort of cleaning product in that I could think of, so hopefully they will not leave oily smears all over it, not that this matters just at the moment, it will be ages before I need smart clothes again and it doesn’t matter about the peasant ones.
Actually, it will not really be very long before I am called upon to adorn myself in middle-class costume, because next week it is Oliver’s school play. I am quite excited about seeing this, it is Much Ado About Nothing and he is playing Kenneth Branagh, who was of course the Romantic Lead, at least until he fell out with Emma Thompson.
I have been contemplating this over the last few days, because the camper van axle is still at Appleby Fair and so I am going to have to book myself into an hotel for a night or two. This will probably mean the Travelodge again unless I get my finger out, because everywhere will be starting to fill up soon, since of course we have almost reached the end of term. Once again, lots of mummies and daddies will be turning up to quaff school’s cheap plonk and wave at one another and go slightly pale at the amount of Excess Baggage their offspring has got to go in the hold.
Oliver has got his own car so I do not care about his baggage. In any case he does not come back with me, but a few days afterwards when they have finished taking the flag down and having their final cold showers.
Then he will be done.
I have resolved that I will have completed my dissertation ready to hand in by then, although it is not due until the first day of July. Nevertheless you cannot be too well prepared for this sort of thing and so I have decided I am definitely going to start tomorrow.
I can manage this now, because I have got an almost-tidy house. Tomorrow I have just got to clean Oliver’s room ready for his return, and then I can sit at the computer with a clear conscience.
I do not often have a clear conscience.
I am looking forward to it.
