Way to go

It has been a very splendid Midsummer Day.

It has been warm and gentle and benevolent, and we have walked for miles and miles.

We started off at Findhorn, for a last trip to the hippie centre, which really isn’t a hippie centre any more. It has become a vast housing estate, with more and more houses springing up everywhere, at least a couple of dozen since last we visited, with space rapidly being cleared for lots more. Alas, unlike the original, hand-built, quaint curiosities, these are developers’ box houses, built for those who want to live At Peace With The Universe without any actual inconveniences like daily firewood-sawing or front doors built out of old whisky barrels. The community is growing, only it is growing into something that isn’t a community any more, and probably it is too big now even for people to know their neighbours.

All the same we had a lovely time. We ambled around marvelling at the few things left over from the original hippies, one of whom I knew, and if the rest were anything like him, they had all taken too many recreational drugs.We bought ethically-scented soap in the gift shop, and had a completely unethical cup of tea in the cafe. It was unethical because it was teabags, which occupy a massively disproportionate amount of space on a lorry for the amount of actual tea contained therein. I do not care in the least about this but really if you are going to go on and on about saving the planet and sell books about the best way of discovering your Inner Fairy, complete with Mystical Gemstones To Unlock Your Hidden Energies, and Hats Hand-Knitted By Meditating Tibetan Monks, you ought to buy leaf tea by the sack and go to all the bother of washing the teapots afterwards.

Still it was a happy morning. We poked around everywhere and explored the last remaining remnants of the original commune, and talked about gardens until Lucy was fired with inspiration for her own little plot, and even I felt vaguely guilty about the massive jungle obstructing our own front door.

Afterwards we went on the beach.

This was wonderful and sad, because I will probably never go there again. Today is Oliver’s very last full day in school, and we will not be coming this far north any more, unless we decide to have a northern holiday. Really I know that this is unlikely since all of my children remaining in this country are further south.  We walked down through the woods, and breathed the glorious scents of the pine trees. I did not mind so much that we would not be coming again really, because the Forestry Commission has started felling in there, and great tracts of the woods are reduced to splintery wastelands. I know that this needs to happen, but I was still glad that I will not be here to see it.

The beach is always my favourite. Vast and empty and endless, it stretched for miles and miles, and we walked, and looked, and did not even talk much. We watched the birds bobbing on the waves, and I thought perhaps I saw a seal, and we splashed through the waves and the little stream that flows down through the woods to the sea, and I stared at the huge sky and felt the sand and the cool, clear water on my feet for the last time, and sighed. It is finished.

We came back in the end, and faffed about in the hotel getting showered and trying to become convincingly middle class, an effect which I had already spoiled for ever by bumping into one of Oliver’s teachers on the petrol station. I was wearing a pair of cracked old flip flops, an utterly battered T shirt with a frayed neckline, bleach splashes and a few oil stains, courtesy of Mark, and my orange dungaree shorts, which have been sawn off above the knees at slightly different lengths, and frayed and mended and bleach-splashed and worn so thin they are lovely even on the hottest of days.

She was very polite but I knew I had left a lasting impression.

Ah well, too late now.

After that was Oliver’s show, and I am very pleased to say it was absolutely splendid. Oliver has a magnificent line in comic eyebrow-waggling and he was absolutely ace. They filmed it, so I am going to inflict it on everybody who can’t think of an excuse, so you had better start preparing one, because truly I was jolly impressed. Anyway, it played to an excited standing ovation, to which was added energetic cheering and foot-stamping when Oliver, who was the last, took his final bow, possibly swelled by the enthusiastic supporters from Duffus House, although actually they all really deserved it, because they did a magnificent job. I was sorry afterwards that he isn’t going to be an actor when he grows up.

It is his very, very last night at school. He is leaving in the morning, although not with us, we have just got his luggage. He is going to go and bum around Edinburgh with his mates.

I think a standing ovation, followed by a champagne party, is a pretty good way to go out.

Goodnight and thank you Gordonstoun.