We are frantically organising our lives into the future.
Lucy takes over the lease for her house on the second of September, and Oliver starts at Gordonstoun on the third.
We are not going to go to Northampton with Lucy because of her having her own car, which Oliver has not.
Nevertheless there is a lot that needs to be properly arranged before then, and I have spent today arranging it. Mostly it is things like quilt covers and outgrown wellingtons , so it is not very exciting arranging, but it is important all the same.
Mark did not arrange anything. Mark went out into the garden to build the solar water heater, without which the conservatory cannot be completed.
One of the things I envied very much indeed about Number One Daughter’s lovely southern house was the magnificent water heating system. Whenever you turned a hot tap on, hot water came out of it. You did not have to wait for ages before it made its way down from the hot tank in the loft, four floors above, nor did it matter in the least that it was summer and the fire was out. You did not have to stand next to the washing machine when you set it off, pouring boiling water into the drawer from a couple of large kettles, and if you wanted bread to rise, all you did was turn the switch on and all the radiators got hot.
I thought this was nothing short of magical. I do not think I have ever in my life owned a water system which does this, mostly because it is jolly expensive to run. All of that handy hot water is not provided free by a benevolent government, at least not until Jeremy Corbyn gets elected. I expect he will add it to his long list of nice things that are going to happen to the British public as a reward for voting Labour, like Christmas twice a year and education so brilliant there will be no need for school fees.
We are not expecting Jeremy Corbyn to snatch the keys to Number Ten this week, probably because he is going to have to save up a bit first, so Mark has acquired a heap of special tubes made of glass and copper fins. He is putting these on a rack and is going to attach them to the side of the house, where he will put water into them. You might recall that we have recently taken Lucy’s bedroom floor out and put some pipes underneath it for this very purpose.
Mark thinks that this contraption would be a positive step to achieving these very goals, with almost no cost whatsoever. They would be heated by the sunshine and wonderful warm water will flow at the touch of a tap.
He is going to put a pump as well, in so that it will reach the downstairs taps before it gets cold.
Please do not send me discouraging emails about quantities of sunshine in the Lake District. Obviously I have noticed this already, but until you can find a means of producing hot water by harnessing monsoon floodwaters, so far this is the best idea we have been able to dream up.
He was engaged with this project today.
It is Saturday, so there was not much doing things time, but he is going to go and instal rural broadband all week next week, so he is making the most of it.
I was organising.
There was Lucy’s camping stuff, ready for her next festival adventure next week. There was all of the camper van laundry. There was a sack of Oliver’s school things still to be named and sorted and packed, and we have got to find some furniture and kitchen equipment for Lucy’s new house.
Today I hunted out towels. Lucy just needs to be given towels. Oliver’s towels need to be marked with his name and to have a loop sewn into them.
We have got some towels with a loop already sewn but they say Lucy on them. Oliver says that he will not care in the least about this but I am snipping that bit out anyway. It is fashionable these days for a boy to change his name to a girl’s and expect everybody to be polite about it, and I do not want everybody at school to feel they have got to call him Lucy out of courtesy. Oliver suits him better.
I organised and organised and organised. You can see from the picture what it all looked like at around lunchtime.
It is all tidy again now.
That is because I am a little bit more organised than I was.
We are getting there.
