I came to these pages this evening to discover that creativity abounds, and that Oliver has been writing about his own adventures.
I have to say that I was jolly pleased and proud, what a brilliant thing to have one of my offspring joining me in the family firm. Also, despite a noticeable economy drive in the capital letter department, I liked reading it very much. It is splendid to have a story to read.
Top set in maths. I shall just mention that again here in case anybody missed it. What clever children I have got, must be the genes.
Actually it can’t possibly be the genes. Neither Mark nor I ever made it to top set in maths.
Must be nurture then.
We have spent today desperately preparing for Lucy’s imminent exit. Mostly this involved spending money.
Today was the worst sort of spending money, by which obviously I mean that we had got to spend a lot of it.
Her laptop had died, and of course you cannot go to university without a laptop. She has been using a battered old Chromebook of Oliver’s for ages, which, as we all know, does not perform nearly as brilliantly as a shiny new Apple.
I have been putting this off for ages and ages, occasionally hunting through eBay in the vain hope that somebody might be selling a brand new MacBook for fifty quid, but nobody ever was. Also there was always the possibility that somebody might just leave a couple of thousand pounds stuffed down the seat of the taxi, but nobody did.
There was always the hope of the lottery, but that didn’t happen either. I have a syndicate for this, with Numbers One and Two daughters. It is a low budget syndicate, because none of us ever buy a ticket, on the principle that ticket purchase does not actually improve your chances of winning by enough to make it worth the bother. A lottery ticket gives you about a millionth of a percent chance of winning, which is so close to ‘none at all’ that statistically, it doesn’t make any difference.
Anyway, none of us have ever won.
Today the moment came when all hope of a miracle had failed. It could not be put off any more, and we had to go and buy a new computer.
In fact we had to go twice, because we are allowed to use Curry’s interest free credit scheme, and were buying it on that. When we came to complete the purchase, to prove that I was me, they sent a code to my mobile phone. This was at home on the kitchen table. We had to go all the way back home and get it before they would let us have the computer. They did not at all think I could just ring them from our house and tell them what it was.
In the end we bought it, and she was very pleased. I am pleased that she is pleased, although wearily fed up of spending money. We are at work now, trying to earn some, but it is a bit slow and quiet.
When we got home I showed her how to make mayonnaise. This is a bit of a faff, especially because shop mayonnaise is cheap, but the home sort is so very much nicer that we all thought it was a worthwhile thing to learn. She made a fine jar of mayonnaise, thick and creamy with dried tomatoes and mustard, and discovered that she does not like washing mayonnaise out of the blender any more than I do. That is something you need to be married for.
I am going to read my book for a while. It is late.
I will leave you to catch up with Oliver’s post.
