Questions answered

It is two o’clock in the morning, and I have just arrived on the taxi rank.

I have not been back for very long. I did not leave Gordonstoun until just after four this afternoon.

It is a jolly long way.

You might remember, however, that bank holidays are double time in a taxi.

Driving the taxi after the camper van is very peculiar indeed. It has got power steering and second gear and brakes and does not wallow about like an elderly hippopotamus in a mud patch. It is like riding on the back of one of the swifts might be, light and fast and exciting, or at any rate it was this evening.

Mark says that the camper van does, in fact have second gear, and that the problem is that my seat is not far enough forward so the clutch does not go down far enough. This accounts for several difficulties over the course of the weekend.

Oliver has had a brilliant time. He has done all sorts of adventurous things. When I glimpsed him in passing this afternoon he was playing water polo in canoes in the swimming pool. This is a good thing to do at school.

It was much later before I found a chance to quiz him about his interviews – he has had two – and his exams. He thinks that they have all gone all right. He said that he thought the maths had been pretty good, and the English, although he does not know how he might have got on. His written exam asked him to write an essay beginning with ‘And then there was silence’, which certainly could not have been said about any point of the weekend.

Oliver wrote about the guns stopping at the end of war.

His interviewer asked him who he most admired, and why.

He said: “My mum, because she looks after us all and keeps our morale high and she can do everything.”

I was terribly flattered. He is a dear little soul.

I spent the day in the relentless whirl of sociability that schools feel is important for parents. We toured the school and everybody whose children are not already at boarding school asked lots of questions about perfectly obvious things, because surely everybody knows what Matron does, and what schools do about mobile phones or people who don’t do their prep.

I felt terribly smug and well-informed.

I thought that Gordonstoun was fairly forthcoming, actually, they assured us that we had no worries on any score whatsoever, and that they would look after the children within an inch of their lives, apart from the ice climbing and the open water sailing to the arctic and the skiing and the mountaineering, for which you probably need to sign a disclaimer.

It was Sunday, so we had Chapel. I knew all of the hymns, and sang loudly, which gave people something else to remark upon as well as the camper van. After Chapel we saw our children, filing out at the other side of the room, and everybody gazed after them sadly, because children do not think that it is cool to wave to their parents.

Oliver does not care what is cool, and nor do I, so we waved frantically at one another, and bounced across the pews for a hasty hug before he was whisked away, making thumbs-up signs, and grinning.

The other mothers looked at me with envy.

When we came out we had Pimms, because clearly they were expecting better weather, and more school-touring, and in the end we all had what I suppose was high tea, for which we were allowed to join our children.

Oliver and I were very pleased to be reunited. We ate a very lot of cake, because nobody said we couldn’t, and because we liked it. When we thought about it afterwards we remembered six pieces.

He told me all about his weekend. It had been ace, he said.

A big boy, large and brown-skinned, squared up to him on the first day and would not let him pass. Oliver, who is tiny, squared up right back, and glared at him until the big boy laughed.

“You’re really brave,” he said. “I like you.”

He is really brave. It has been a scary weekend. We were not sorry that it was over.

It is five o’clock in the morning. I have finished the day off by earning some money, and now I am going to go to bed.

Have a picture of Oliver on the beach at Gordonstoun harbour.