The Weekend Of Dread is upon us.
Tomorrow morning we have got Oliver’s sponsored walk, and we have now embarked on the countdown.
I do not in the least mind walking ten miles in the sunshine. The bit that I am not very enthusiastic about is the lack of sleep that comes first. We are at work now, and I think we will finish at about four, after which we will drive to Yorkshire and then try and catch as much sleep as we can before we pull on our walking boots and set off into the wilderness at a hearty striding pace.
At least the blindfold bit will give us chance for some shut-eye.
We have occupied today with preparations for this, most of which, obviously, involved trying to get as much sleep as possible. It is irritatingly difficult to bank sleep, it is not the sort of thing that you can hoard for an emergency, like two pound coins or microwave curries in the freezer.
Apart from that I rushed up to Booths for some ethical shopping. This was largely an investigative trip, because last night we were all intrigued, at about three in the morning, by the presence there of a couple of fire engines and half a dozen police cars.
Obviously they had no intention of allowing curiously gawping taxi drivers anywhere near the actual excitement, and so we had to restrain our curiosity until today, when a notice at the entrance explained that that side of the supermarket was closed due to potential structural instability after an incident with explosives last night.
Somebody had blown a hole in the wall and nicked the cash machine.
It all happens here.
Cumbria police are investigating. It isn’t difficult to work out what the outcome of that will be.
Once we had settled that to our satisfaction, we loaded boots and apple juice into the camper van, and Mark fiddled about with a broken fuse whilst I rang Number One Daughter to see how the spots were progressing.
Ritalin Boy is itchy and uncomfortable but in good spirits, mostly because of a planned trip to see a film about Pokemon cards at the cinema. I don’t think Number One Daughter was quite as excited about this as he was. I am glad that Lucy and Oliver are big enough to go to the cinema by themselves these days.
I asked for an update about her forthcoming foreign travel plans.
She thinks that the posting is probably going to go forward, and so woolly socks and vests are going to be on her shopping list. After Afghanistan she does not know where the Army will send her next.
I asked, with trepidation, what their plans are for Ritalin Boy.
This is something of a hot topic, and one in which I have a secret vested interest. Obviously it will not be easy for them to manage one parent on an oil rig and one parent in Afghanistan and still attend all of the usual school events like jumble sales and PTA meetings and turning up at nine o’ clock every morning.
The obvious solution, to my mind, would be a boarding school.
In fact, I am quite convinced that the best obvious solution would be Aysgarth boarding school, where Oliver goes at the moment.
I have been trying to persuade Number One Daughter to agree to this for some time.
The thing is that we do not see very much of Ritalin Boy at the moment. Obviously we think that Aysgarth is a brilliant school, and Oliver has had an ace time there: but more pertinently than that, we keep thinking how very splendid it would be if Ritalin Boy were to be just round the corner. We could come and applaud at school plays and watch him playing rugby and become tearful at boy sopranos singing in the choir at Christmas. We could turn up for tea and cake on Grandparents’ day and visit him on Optional Weekends.
I think this would be lovely.
The school is just down the road from Catterick Army Camp, where perhaps Number One Daughter might just be posted next summer, after she has finished killing camel spiders and keeping the peace amongst Afghani insurgents.
We could go and visit them in our camper van.
Number One Daughter is about as enthusiastic about this as Cersei Lannister might be if you invited her to spend her holidays scrubbing out chamber pots for the Night’s Watch on the Wall.
She has pointed out that there are other solutions as well as boarding schools, but mostly that Yorkshire is inside the Arctic circle and that she likes Surrey very much, especially because of the sunshine.
In fact she was in Catterick once before. We did not go and see them very much then, because it was before the children were old enough for boarding school and we had a big taxi business to run. It was not at all easy to arrange any kind of sociability when we had got school all week and work all weekend.
Those days are long over, and now we are not bound by the tiresome demands of dozens of eternally breaking down taxis. We could come and watch Ritalin Boy playing the recorder in a concert and still be home for work at night.
We could come and get him on the exeats when his parents were busy and feed him on unsuitable lollies and pizzas. We are not exactly necessary in this capacity. Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma, who is conveniently retired, fulfils the role of token grandparent whenever anything interesting is happening at the moment, and we are too far away, and too busy earning a living, to join in much. The thing is that if the Army decided to post them all up here, then we would be on the doorstep as well.
I have expressed these enthusiasms to Number One Daughter in the past, who has explained wearily that she is not in the least going to beg the Army to dispatch her to the outer reaches of the civilised world, by which she means Yorkshire, not Afghanistan, and she is not going to send Ritalin Boy there either. Woking, she has said, is a short train journey from the capital, it is an equally short journey from the continent, the weather is approximately ten degrees warmer at all times, and contrary to my apparent beliefs, the south of England is adequately supplied with wonderful schools as well, one of which Ritalin Boy attends at the moment.
I can perfectly understand her point, especially the bit about the sunshine, but all the same, we are tremendously excited to think that under the current circumstances they might just weaken.
It is not at all parental to hope that the Army will make a decision that will make Number One Daughter cross and grumpy, but since it won’t make the least difference to the Army whatever I think, I can wish for anything I like.
I think it would be lovely.
