Airport

These notes can be surprisingly unexpected at times.

Just when you thought I was safely yawning and grumbling my head off in the northern fells, I have gone off on a little adventure of my own. You might be astonished to hear that I am drunk in a Premier Inn at Heathrow Airport.

Hurrah.

I can assure you that it is the loveliest thing.

I am here with Oliver.

He is brilliant company, and it is ace.

Once I had got halfway down the first glass I started telling him all sorts of scurrilous unsuitable stories, and he nodded sagely, and said how nice it was to hear about the olden days.

He  has been invited to join one of his school friends in their family’s villa in Portugal for a week. They are there already, so he is flying out by himself. The thing is that he is flying from Heathrow, and we live in the Lake District.

This has been the subject of much anguished contemplation over the past few months, although actually I must confess to the whole affair having been benevolently funded by my parents. That is to say, they gave us the cash as a present for Oliver ages ago.

Obviously we spent it, and now this week we have had to raise it again. but knowing that we weren’t really the poorer for it took away all of the sting, and I came  down this afternoon without feeling in the least grumpy or financially overloaded about it.

Mark was still away, so after Oliver finished work this afternoon, we put Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the  Galaxy on the CD player, and drove down together.

I had had a complicated day up until that point, so once we arrived in the hotel and were presented with a dinner menu, the most compelling thing on it was the wine list. It is a Premier Inn, so it was a choice between Merlot and Shiraz, and when I chose Shiraz I was told that I couldn’t have it because of it being the wrong sort of Meal Deal, but by then I was so desperate that frankly I would have drunk our own home made wine if it had been all that was on offer.

I knew that it was going to be a busy day. Mark was due to come back some time after we left, and needed food to be left available. The Number Two Daughters were setting off on an adventure, and Lucy had another driving lesson.

You will be relieved to hear that I had earned enough cash to finance this last night, and even managed to get back before sunrise.

I knew that I was trying to squeeze far too many things into a limited day space, but thought I would give it a go anyway. In fact I had made the shortbread before I had even finished my start-of-day morning coffee. It was the sort of shortbread with caramel and chocolate, which is a lot of faffing about, but I can be comfortably sure that I am a virtuous housewife if I have got tins of it in the fridge. It hardly lasts for any time at all, so I have got to be virtuous fairly often.

After that I made soap, because we are nearly out, and because Mrs. Number Two Daughter is going off back to Canada this weekend. I had thought that it nice for her to have some to take with her for her own mother, who has flattered my self-importance by liking our home-made soap. The thing was that I hadn’t actually got round to doing it, and so there was a terrible panicked rush this morning.

After that I scrubbed all the horrible green moss off the wall outside the kitchen window and painted it with the white paint from the ironmonger’s.

This description does not do justice to that activity. Imagine climbing down a wobbly ladder into a small, very smelly hole, with barely enough space to turn round, and then becoming splattered first with bleach and then with paint. I upset a lot of spiders and got filthy in the process.

You will be revolted to hear that I did not have time for a shower. Oliver dropped in at home for lunch, and I fed him on pizza. Then when he went back I packed up all of our things for an overnight stay, and then, rather at the last minute, I filled his rucksack for a week’s holiday in Portugal. I remembered Spider Man and his sun hat and his passport and some shorts, that will have to do. It is very hot in Portugal at the moment. He can always wander around in his underpants.

I shoved it all in the car, after which I took Lucy to Carnforth for another driving lesson; and I had only just got back when Oliver came home from work.

He was very happy with his world. He likes his job very much. The barbers are called Stee and Keef, and somebody gave him a five pound tip, and Keef put some gel in his hair for him. Oliver thought that the world has turned out to be a brilliant place.

We set off straight away. It is a long way from the Lake District to London.

I was disappointed to discover that far from being the promised land of glorious sunshine in London, in fact it was raining very hard indeed. The bit that was even more shocking was that as soon as it started to rain, everybody on the motorway slowed right down.

I was completely astounded, it was only rain, but everybody was behaving as though a natural disaster was looming over the horizon. Everybody put their fog lights on, slowed down to a gentle chug, and waited for the apocalypse to happen.

I put my foot down and zipped past the lot of them. If we slowed down in the Lake District whenever it rained we might as well go back to donkey carts.

The hotel was actually perfectly acceptable. I was sniffy about it being a Premier Inn, and indeed it would have won no awards for tranquil sophistication. It was noisy and busy and we had to check ourselves in on a machine, like being at MacDonalds: but the room is clean and comfortable, and we ate an enormous dinner.

I felt very happy with my world when I was full of Merlot and barbecue chicken and cheesecake. Few things are happier than being stuffed full of dinner and a little bit drunk.

Oliver, who is newly qualified in the service industry, tipped the waiter generously, and we staggered upstairs to watch aeroplanes out of our bedroom window. We were agreed about the wonder and loveliness of this activity, and were sad when the airport knocked off for the night.

We are having an ace evening.

Also it was ace to have a shower.