It has been a very full day.
Of course it started off in the harbour, where I camped last night. Last night’s camping was enlivened by blustery winds, bellowing in from the sea and hitting the side of the camper van with a smack. In the end I had to turn off the gas to the fridge, because of the exhaust gases blowing back in and making my eyes water.
I had got to be at Gordonstoun by ten o’ clock. I was up at half past six but still I only just made it in time. I don’t know how I managed that. It was remarkably rubbish of me.
The children were nowhere in sight. This was the bit of the weekend designed to keep parents occupied and sociable with one another.
Sociable terrifies me.
I have got no idea why it is important to gather together with perfect strangers, be entertaining and informative, and then say your farewells never to see them again. Or at least, in this case, not to see them very much, because of course they will all be there at Sports Days and Carol Concerts for the next five years.
I like to watch people, more than I can describe, it is the most interesting thing on the planet to see the little hair-touchings and mouth-touchings that people do when they are frightened and pretending not to be, to see their eyes swivel when they are not quite telling the whole truth, and to try and see the person behind the public mask.
The thing is that you can’t watch all of these things when you are having to do them yourself, and if you are not sociable at school events then somebody kindly swoops on you and asks you about your children. It is important then not only to remember their name, but the name of their child, whom you have never met at all.
I have got no idea how public school staff do it. They are all brilliant at this sort of thing. I watched them moving through the room this morning, networking gently, making enquiries and encouraging noises, and never once forgetting a name, they are fantastic.
After that we got on a coach to go on a tour of the Glenfiddich distillery.
They wouldn’t let us take photographs or indeed switch on our phones at all. This was not because of industrial espionage but because of the alcohol content of the very air, and the consequent fire hazard.
I don’t know if this was true, but it means that I don’t have any glorious photographs to show you of rows and rows of beautiful oak barrels or copper stills.
As it happened it was a tour very much after my own heart, because it could have been re-christened as a tour of a thousand different smells.
It was ace.
I shan’t bore you with the details, most of which I have forgotten anyway, but whisky is matured in casks. It matters very much where these casks come from and what they are made of. Some come from America and have previously contained bourbon, some from Spain and have previously contained sherry. This makes a huge difference to the flavour of the whisky.
The whisky from the two sorts of cask is mixed together. You have got to say ‘married’, never ‘blended’. This gives it its flavour.
When some of the casks are emptied they are not reused, but are broken up and recycled. Some are burned to smoke salmon and ham and cheeses, which seemed a wonderful idea.
Others are sent to Findhorn, where they are used to build houses.
This seemed to me to account for a lot.
We wandered from one huge stone storehouse to another, breathing in the glorious scents of honey and vanilla and fruits and malts, having it explained all the time how we might tell the difference between all of it. Then at the end came the tasting.
I was proud to realise that I could actually tell the difference between twelve, fifteen and twenty year old malts.
The fifteen is the nicest, but the chap in charge said that women always think that, because their taste buds are different.
We had lunch and were taken over to the harbour where I have been secretly camping. We all looked at it and then at the Gordonstoun boats. I have already looked at them a very great deal, but I looked again anyway.
The coach dropped us off at school and I took the camper van to park just up the road. I know that nobody can see me, but I feel more at liberty to behave any way that I like if I am outside the school gates.
I did not have time to do anything rascally, because of having to get ready for Drinks and Dinner, which led to a repeat performance of the clothes in a pile and anguished mirror-gazing.
In the end I chose an old blue dress that makes me look fat. This doesn’t matter, because actually I am fat, and so in no position to blame the dress. I knew that nobody would be looking anyway, and that they would all be too busy worrying about their own dresses and hair and makeup to bother in the least about mine. This turned out to be true, and I had a comfortable evening where my fat bits were all under the table in any case.
The dinner was splendid, Gordonstoun kitchen is clearly well and truly up to the mark. By that, I mean that the vegetables were perfectly cooked, the starter was a gorgeous mousse, and we finished with home made fudge. I liked it all very much, and wished that I was not being polite and making conversation, and could just concentrate of appreciating the excellence of the cooking.
The wine helped with the conversation anyway, and actually I had an interesting evening, talking to a lady who had just started a new job there as a teacher, and who was as nervous as any of the new children.
School has not started yet, but there seem to be an awful lot of students there anyway. I talked to one who shrugged, and said that she just wanted term to start, and that she had preferred to be back. I don’t recall feeling like that about school, still less turning up a week early, and so it lifted my spirits again.
It will be a good place for Oliver.
The picture is the fifteen year old malt that I liked, just so you know, since it is nearly Christmas. They do several sizes of bottle.
