I got up to discover a very odd email from Lucy’s school, wanting me to fill in a form reassuring them that she had my full permission to use the car which she was driving to school and then parking in the school car park.
They have already got copies of all of the paperwork. They have got her driving licence, her insurance, a V5 in her name, and an MOT certificate. I sent them all weeks ago, mostly because I wanted the head of sixth form to think what a responsible organised parent I was.
They didn’t just want my consent. They wanted it spelled out. They wanted Mark’s consent as well.
This was an extraordinary missive. I do not think that there are many teenage schoolgirls who manage to organise themselves into possession of a vehicle without at the very least the agreement, and more likely, the massive financial support, of their parents.
I don’t think the only other possibility, that she might have stolen it, is likely to be a problem that they encounter very often, it is a genteel academy for young ladies, not Eton.
In any case, she is eighteen, and therefore my consent or otherwise is entirely redundant. She is old enough to vote, drink, produce children and run up debts with Barclaycard.
I would have been very interested to find out what would happen if I declined to consent. I can’t see how anybody could reasonably refuse to allow a competent adult with a legal vehicle to drive it where they liked. I suppose they could stop her parking on the school car park, since it is theirs, but I can’t see that they could stop her from parking it outside the gate.
As for driving it, really her journey to school is none of anybody’s business. If she managed to organise James Bond to parachute her in to the grounds out of a helicopter, like the Queen did, then there would be absolutely nothing that I could do about it, even if I wanted to.
Tempted as I was to oblige them to think carefully about how they might enforce that particular issue, in the end I just signed it. Mark signed it as well, although he didn’t ask what he was signing. I haven’t bothered even asking him if he consents. He isn’t the sort of person who objects to things.
Once we had suitably authorised Lucy’s transport arrangements, we got on with doing things in the garden, because we have got sunshine.
Mark has been putting some bits of conservatory up, and I have been painting a picture of an owl on the back of the gate. At least, I hope it will become an owl. At the moment it is a yellowish blob with a white patch in the place where I hope that the face might be. I am having some difficulty with the correct location of the legs.
I did not do very much painting. I kept being distracted by mundanities. It is difficult to peg sheets on a washing line when the yard is full of conservatory. Sheets that have flapped against a cement mixer or a stack of second hand bricks seem to lose something of their pristine white gleam, and so we have propped the washing line up as high as it will go. This means that I can’t reach it.
I managed by balancing on precarious stacks of bricks, and then throwing the sheets over the line and pulling it down towards me. This was an undignified procedure and not without its perils. By the time I had finished I had scattered pegs all over the garden and stubbed my toe.
Mark helped, once he had noticed my difficulties, but to be honest it was not enormously useful. A person who is covered in brick dust is not much of an improvement on dropping sheets on the ground. I will be glad when this part of the construction is over.
The conservatory is the exciting bit. It is beginning to look as though it might turn into a real thing very soon.
It is really, really happening.
Watch this space.
