Mark is going offshore tomorrow.
He is sitting in the office gazing at pictures of oil rigs. He has told me all about this one but I might not have been paying proper attention. I think it has got three legs but I might be mistaken. Three legs does not sound to be very many. I hope it does not blow over.
He had hoped not to need to go until after my father’s funeral next week, but the Call has come, and he has been obliged to answer. Also we have spent all of our money so we are not exactly sorry. I will tell him all about it afterwards, and although I would have liked it better if he was there, it will be all right. He is sorry to be missing it, but he always fidgets in his smart suit anyway, and all of his shirts are orange or pink so I would have had to buy him a sensible new white one for the occasion.
We are going to bury my father in his smart suit, his own, not Mark’s, obviously. I do hope he does not want to fidget. He has hardly worn it up until now, and it would be a pity to waste it. It looked very smart when he wore it last, when Number One Daughter got her MBE, and it has not had any dinner spilled down it or similar misadventure, I am quite sure my mother saw to that, so at least the undertakers will think we are middle class.
In consequence of his imminent departure, we have spent today organising all of the things that needed to be organised ready for the day when Mark will not be here to do them. He has finished glueing Oliver’s shower back together, and in a fit of enthusiasm, dug out all of the horrible black mouldy silicone from around the edge of our bath and replaced it with some shiny new white silicone. This looks lovely, almost like a new bathroom, or at any rate like a bathroom belonging to somebody who cleans it thoroughly every week, and I am feeling very pleased with it.
I did not do anything silicone-related. I have cleaned our bedroom because of Clean Sheets Day, and after that I helped Oliver fill in all of the forms he needs to fill in, in order to go off to university. These are things like the dreadful Student Loan form. He is going to have to borrow some money from the Government in order to pay his fees. The form for this is not encouraging. It is full of veiled threats about what will happen if he does not pay it back to them, and they wanted the address of practically everybody he has ever met. This is so that if he swans off and disappears without paying them their six thousand pounds back, plus extortionate interest, the Government will write to them all and demand that they tell tales about where he has gone.
Oliver gave them Mark’s address. The Government can write to Mark all they like. I do not think Mark is likely to read it.
We have got to find the rest of the cash ourselves. The Government will not lend him all of it, and so he has gone off to earn some. Today he is cleaning the Peter Rabbit Exhibition. I am not sure I would like that job. It does not sound very pleasant to be hoovering along a dark corridor, all alone except for lots of four-foot-high fibre-glass models of Jeremy Fisher and ridiculous-looking ducks. It sounds a bit unnerving. Imagine how dreadful it would be if you were to hear an unexpected sinister quack behind you.
We have ordered his new uniform, and it is going to arrive in the next couple of days. We have got to sew the name labels in ourselves because Schoolblazer, who usually does it for us, has refused. This is because Oliver does not like labels next to his skin, and Schoolblazer will only sew them into the front of collars, not, for some arcane haberdashery reason, into the back. I got cross with them on the telephone this afternoon and told them I wanted a refund but I don’t really. He is going to need the uniform and it is a closed market so they can be as rubbish as they like.
We are not working tonight because of Mark going away tomorrow, so I am going to go and contemplate whether or not I might like to drink some wine. I think we are going to have a celebratory Last Night dinner.
I am always sad when he goes, even if it does mean I don’t need to cook so many sausages.
LATER NOTE. We have been out to celebrate something, I forget what. It was lovely. We drank a whole bottle of wine. Happy Monday.
