I have just finished scrubbing horrible greasy make up off my face after a night of impersonating somebody who might be middle class. I feel sticky. I do not like make up.
I am not sure how convincing I have been. I suspect I became rather less convincing the more that I had to drink. I had quite a lot to drink. Please bear that in mind whilst reading this entry. I have not actually completely lost my descriptive powers. I am merely rather intoxicated.
We have been to dinner at Gordonstoun, and it was ace.
We were sitting with the parents of Oliver’s friend and dorm mate, whom I like very much, and a youthful housemaster from a different house.
The housemaster said that he has been a housemaster for ten years, but I did not in the least believe him. I think that ten years ago he was probably riding go-karts and eating Haribos. He was keen and enthusiastic and will be exhausted if he carries on bouncing like that for another ten years.
In fact the whole day has been loveliest of lovely days. It has been the best holiday, I can hardly say how happy it has been. The only minor difficulty has been that now we have both eaten so much that we have had to loosen our trousers. Well, Mark has. I am not wearing trousers. I have been wearing a purple dress and tights, so I have taken them off. The tights, that is, not the dress. You can spare your imaginations. It is not that warm in the camper van and I have not had quite that much to drink.
It is warm enough. I am warm and happy and comfortable and quite a bit drunk. The wine flows freely with school dinners when you are a visiting parent, how lovely to be grown up.
This morning we woke up next to the beach at Findhorn.
Findhorn is a coastal village a little way to the west of Gordonstoun, and it is wonderful, a good place to go for your holidays if you do not actually want to do or see anything much. There are no theme parks or stately homes or other Visitor Attractions. This suited us very nicely, because what we wanted to do most was to amble around aimlessly, in between eating and sleeping, and this was exactly what we did.
It has been the most glorious day. This part of Scotland has a little micro-climate all of its own, and today the sun beamed on us.
I had put a vest and a jumper on, because of it being Scotland in October, but I did not need either. The sun was warm on our backs as we walked, carrying more and more of our layers as we walked further and the sun climbed in the sky. It did not climb very high, because it is still Scotland in October, and the sun does a big circle around the horizon.
We walked along the beach. Findhorn is at the place where a little inland lake meets the sea. There are yachts at anchor and two pubs beside the beach. We did not go near the latter because of having spent all of our money some days ago.
There were seals asleep on the golden sand, and more bobbing about in the bay. The sky was ice-blue, and the air so crisp and fresh that we breathed in sharp autumn scents we had almost forgotten, because somehow the air further south is thicker and denser, and the smells of the world are less clear. The dogs charged about excitedly, and Roger Poopy found a crab in a rock pool which promptly buried itself and refused to come out no matter how much he barked and dug for it.
The sea is completely clear here. It is not at all like Blackpool. Here you can see right down to the bottom, even in the deepest bits. The seals dived and floated and looked at us. We found some interesting stones for our interesting stone collection and thought how splendid it is to be alive.
It is Scotland, so everybody talked to us. Even when we got back to the van people still stuck their heads in through the windows and chatted. I had forgotten this about Scotland, and it took me a while before I remembered not to just ignore people as they passed, which is what you do in the Lake District. This is less sociable but means you get on with your life better.
When we exhausted the diversions of the beach we drove a little way down the road to the Findhorn Community Hippie Peace And Love Meditation Mindfulness Eco-Friendly Project.
This was a bit hopeless last time and had not improved in the passing months. Mark has not been before. He is very interested in green environmental project things not because they are green especially, but because he believes in getting his money’s worth out of everything and likes the challenge of making something magnificent out of everybody else’s waste.
Findhorn does not do this as well as perhaps they could. This inefficiency has been occupying Mark’s thought processes ever since, and every now and again another idea bursts out of him for things that Findhorn could do better.
We did admire their poly tunnels very much, however, a picture is attached. To give you an idea of the incomprehensible lack of planning in the place, there are several tunnels like this. I was halfway down this one when I took the photograph, it is huge, and they are bursting with tomatoes, many of which had not been picked and had fallen off to splatter on the soil.
The tomatoes in the onsite fund raising shop had been imported from Spain.
It was nice to look around the shop. They had handmade soap and candles, which I thought looked lovely until I remembered that I have got plenty of handmade soap and candles of my own. We liked some jewellery called Mood Rings, and spent ages trying them on and marvelling at them. They change colour with the warmth of your fingers, only not to any colour shown on the attached explanatory sheet which is supposed to teach you to know what you feel like. Ours both turned a sort of mustard yellow colour, which perhaps just means ‘heartless cynic’ so they know at the till not to sell them to you.
Afterwards we showered and changed and chugged off to school, where the security staff were eventually convinced to let us in, and we found Oliver.
More about Oliver tomorrow. He has grown. He is tall and thin and happy. We have missed him very much.
It is the middle of the night and I need to sleep.
More tomorrow.
