We are almost set to go.
We have rushed around today like anxious flapping people, trying not to get cross with one another, because it is quite difficult not to feel grumpy when you are trying your hardest to remember a lot of things to be done in a very short time.
I started the day with my usual walk, and a long chat with another dog-walking lady who comes from Bath, and who has been telling me all about it, much to my fascination. I came home and told Oliver, although I did not think that most of the information, which was interesting detail about well-stocked pharmacies and independent girls’ schools and the best places to go for a decent dinner with good wine, and other things that are important once you are over forty, was likely to be equally captivating to him, although he was polite, in a not-listening sort of way.
Oliver has been desperately trying to penetrate the incomprehensible miasma of internet form-filling with which Bath Council Parking Department has shrouded itself. In the end I managed to get through to them on the telephone, and spoke to a nice but hopeless-sounding lady, who could not authorise a parking permit, and said wearily: Actually I just advise people not to have cars really. It’s easier that way.
Since Oliver has got a car and is going to need it, that advice fell upon deaf ears. He has got his first security job, not for his first weekend there, but for his second. He is going to be security-guarding some event at Bath showground. I don’t know what. Probably some southern agricultural display, full of enormous beef cattle and novelty long-horn sheep.
Mostly I think he will be doing nightclubs, though. He will need to travel between Bath and Bristol quite often, sometimes late at night, and I do not think it is sensible to rely on public transport, which does not tend to run after nightclubs have closed. I do wish local councils would take these issues into account when coming up with their cunning vehicle-discouraging strategies.
He does not yet have a parking permit. We are going to try again tomorrow.
There will not be much of tomorrow available for trying to get through to the council. We are setting off at ten in the morning.
At any rate, that is the theory, it will probably be more like half past eleven at this rate.
We ironed things and stuffed things into bags. He has got massive heavy bags which could barely be hauled down the stairs, so I am not looking forward to dragging them all the way up to his new flat, which is on the third floor of an imposing house in a place called St. James’ Square. We have looked it up on Google, and it definitely looks like the sort of place which should have Jane Austen Was Here scrawled on the wall at the back of the wardrobe.
He has turned his bicycle upside down and poked it and oiled bits of it, whilst I pegged the washing around him and made encouraging noises. It rained on the washing later, when I was distracted, which was a nuisance, because I was hoping to wear some of it tomorrow, and I have had to drape it hopefully all over the house, because I do not wish to start the long and difficult journey by donning a damp pair of knickers tomorrow morning.
I ironed his security-guarding uniforms and made him a pincushion. I have been promising to do this for weeks and not got round to it, which was ridiculous really because in the end it only took me about fifteen minutes. A pincushion is on the list of essential items to be taken with him, it is a true school for aspirational Mary Poppins’. I can’t imagine any other university course anywhere in the country demanding that its students provide themselves with a pincushion and an embroidery hoop.
His sewing is improving. Certainly it is as good as any of his sisters’ sewing, which is not difficult, although Number One Daughter might be getting better now that she has had Ritalin Boy’s massive pile of school uniform to be labelled this week.
Ritalin Boy started at Milton Abbey today.
Truly it is the season for moving on.
