We started the day with another financial review over coffee in bed.
This is an important thing to be doing at the moment, because we are not going to go to work next weekend.
This does not sound like a very interesting sentence, but I can jolly well tell you that it is of massive importance to our little lives.
We always, always, always work at weekends, especially during the summer. It is at the weekends when we earn most of our money, and to miss not only a Friday night, but a Saturday as well, is unheard of, and it is not a decision that we have taken in a moment of light-spirited recklessness.
We have had years and years of missing everything lovely that anybody is doing. People have weddings and parties and camping trips and festivals and concerts, and all sorts of exciting happy things, and they do them all at weekends.
If somebody is planning a joyful get together with all of their nearest and dearest, they will not even consider holding it on a Tuesday.
The notable exception to that generalisation is funerals. I don’t know why those are always on a Thursday morning, but I am pleased to say that it works for us. We might not have seen you for years and years, but die, and we will turn up.
However, after careful consideration, we have decided that this time is different.
It is the occasion of Lucy leaving school. There is a day of speeches and the summer ball at night.
We have all worked jolly hard to get Lucy through school, and we think that some celebration is called for.
The consequence of this is that since ours is not the sort of benevolent employment that continues to hand over cash even when you are not at work, some careful financial planning has been employed.
We sat in bed, trying not to get ink on the quilt. I propped my glasses on the end of my nose, and we added up columns of figures. There were rather more noughts than was strictly encouraging, but actually in the end the results were not too bad.
We thought that if we resisted the temptation to slack off again this week, we would probably be all right.
Mark volunteered to help launch the boat by going out to work this afternoon, and so when we had emptied the dogs, he went straight off out, leaving me in charge of cooking.
The children will be back this week, which is always a shock to the fridge, and so I thought I would make a start on filling it up.
I mixed a Chinese sauce and tipped it over a gammon joint and a chicken to roast. I made biscuits and cake, chocolates and mayonnaise, and somehow it took most of the day.
In between I discovered a couple of jars of grapes soaked in brandy, and chucked them into the bucket of Christmas mince pie mixture, which smells ace.
There won’t be any grapes this year. We have had a terrible grape vine misfortune.
It was doing very nicely indeed, up until we had all of the terrible weather in May. It was in full leaf when it rained, and rained, and rained. The roots became sodden, and then one night it froze.
The leaves wilted, and over the next few weeks it slowly went brown, then black, and died.
I do not know if the whole vine has died. There may still be some life left in it, but I keep examining it carefully for hopeful signs of new buds, but there have been none.
Yesterday I cut it back, hard, which needed doing anyway, because if it does not die we want to train it to go in different directions once we have a conservatory. Also I thought perhaps if it only had a few small branches to worry about, it might concentrate its survival efforts on those and stand a better chance.
Some branches were still green inside, but most were not.
I am hoping very hard that it lives.
I am afraid that I have not heard any further news from Lucy, and I have been having a quiet worry in case she has celebrated Glastonbury by doing anything exciting, like shaving all her hair off or getting her nose pierced or an interesting tattoo. Obviously this would be just in time for the speeches and the summer ball, and would certainly make the occasion memorable.
It is not that I am an anxious mother. Lucy has been preceded by Numbers One and Two Daughters. All I need to do is reflect on their earlier years to remind me of exactly what might happen when an inspiring and rascally idea occurs to somebody.
Mark said that it would be all right, and that if the worst came to the worst we would pretend that she had become a Muslim, and get her a burka for Speech Day.
I might get one for myself. My hair seems to be going grey rather rapidly.
Have a picture of Mark in the Library Gardens.
