I am writing my diary in the middle of the afternoon, even though nothing very much has happened to me.
This is because when Mark comes in from work, I want to eat dinner and Go Directly To Bed. Do Not Pass Go and certainly Do Not Collect Two Hundred Pounds, although it would be nice.
As you know from last night’s ramblings, we got home from Gordonstoun very late indeed. This did not matter as much for us as it would for somebody who normally goes to bed at a sensible time. We are very often wandering about underneath the streetlamps when the rest of the world is asleep.
All the same, it was pretty horrid. We had woken up early, because of the excitement of finding ourselves at Gordonstoun, or at any rate, parked in the harbour down the road. We had a busily occupied day, filled with anxiously booting our last little chick out of the nest, after which we drove back home through the Scottish wilderness.
Our camper van does not go very fast. We set off at six in the evening and did not get home until long after three. We had to stop a couple of times, because Gordonstoun is such a long way away that the camper van will not get there on one tank of fuel, and we have to stop on the way. This requires some thought and a detour, because fuel on the motorway is specially priced with the biggest numbers that can be thought of, to make you not want to come back again, probably it is a special way of extracting income from Continental lorry drivers whilst we still can.
I do not like my money being extracted from me any more than strictly necessary, so we have started on the tedious process of searching out every twenty four hour Tesco between here and Inverness.
When eventually we got home, we showered and collapsed into bed and it seemed as though the alarm went off immediately. Mark made especially strong coffee, which worked a bit.
When he had gone I did all of the dog emptying things, and then set about cleaning and emptying the camper van. We did not faff about with it last night. We just dumped it on the side of the road and staggered back to the house. That meant that this morning the loo needed emptying and the fridge needed cleaning out, and everything needed sweeping and polishing and making beautiful again ready for the next time.
The next time will not be very long away. We have got to get Lucy moved into her house next week.
I emptied the loo first, on the principle of doing the very worst job of the day first, because after that everything becomes a breeze, but this turned out not to be true. Nothing was a breeze all day.
I had intended to start getting fit today. I had thought that a long, joggy walk with the dogs would be the very thing to shed pounds of unwanted chocolate button flab, but I didn’t go. In the end I thought I had done rather well to stay awake. Maybe tomorrow.
Lucy has had her very last festival, and the living room was strewn with redundant camping equipment, although the ex-festival-goer was nowhere to be seen, having buzzed off on a celebratory trip to Manchester to meet up with some other ex-festival-goer.
I tidied it all up. I felt very virtuous about this.
I washed things and put things back on their shelves. We had had a surprising moment during our Scottish excursion when I pulled the dog quilt out from underneath our bed and discovered it to be full of Oliver’s clothes. I have no idea how they had got there.
I was pleased, in a dog-scented sort of way, because it solved several niggling mysteries about missing underpants and socks. The thing was that today they all needed washing, as did Lucy’s festival things, and all of our smart Gordonstoun clothes, and then there were Oliver’s sheets and towels and all of the other boy things that he will not be needing for ages and ages.
I indulged in some wistful sighs.
I had to stop myself from repeatedly shirking in front of the computer. I have seen Oliver’s timetable and know perfectly well that he is not going to have a single spare minute for writing emails, probably not until he has finished the sixth form at this rate, but I couldn’t help checking just the same. In the end there was a happy surprise when there was an email, although not from Oliver.
It was from his housemaster, telling us all about what our boys had been doing and assuring us that they were settling in splendidly. To prove the point there were a couple of pictures, one taken after this morning’s run and one of the boys in their uniforms.
On both of them Oliver was grinning so widely it looked as though his face might crack.
He is going to be just fine.
I am going to go out to work. I am going to stop doing housework now and sit in my taxi and try and earn money until Mark comes back.
We can go to bed then.
