It looks as if we might really go.
It could really happen.
We are having a day off today. This is because we think that today there will be lots of taxis on the taxi rank but not many people, and we have promised the children that we will have a last evening all together before Lucy goes off south tomorrow. We have paid most of our bills off with our Christmas and New Year money, and we think that anything we earn this weekend could probably reasonably be used to have an adventure.
Of course it shouldn’t really, what it ought to be used for is buying the cement for the conservatory floor or for a new bit so that the heater on my car works properly or for putting money in the bank ready for the water bill so that we don’t go overdrawn when the direct debit goes out.
Apart from all of those things, and one or two others that I am not thinking about, we could spend all of this weekend’s takings on an adventure.
I imagine that when I die nobody will write on my gravestone: “She was sensible and prudent and always paid her bills.”
I think that this would be a splendid thing to put on a gravestone, not least because it would make everybody who walked past to nick the daffodils look twice. Much more interesting than: Beloved Wife, Mother, Daughter, Niece, Sister, Cousin and Friend, which pretty much covers all of the important bases when you can’t think of anything to say about somebody. In any case, nobody is likely to say either about me, not least because I am trying to arrange to donate my body to medical science. This is more complicated than you might think but has the advantage of being cheap. You have got to do it before you die, it is not a convenient way of disposing of an unwanted relative. If it was I can assure you that we would not still have Mark’s dead father in a box on top of the grandfather clock.
Despite all of this I am longing for an adventure so much that I don’t care.
We have thought very carefully about it, of course, that is to say, we considered for a little while that since we had some spare time we could possibly drive the other way down the country, cross to Calais and fill the camper van up with cheap French supermarket wine before we leave the EU.
This would have been a marginally more prudent undertaking, because French wine is gloriously cheap and you can buy it in two-gallon boxes.
We do spend quite a bit on wine.
Anyway, we have decided not to do this.
I want to go to Orkney with my whole soul. I built a house there once and learned more than I can begin to tell you about how difficult it is to make a roof and plumb in a septic tank. I did not know anything about building but bought a book called How To Do Anything and another called The Reader’s Digest Book Of Home Maintenance, because it was before the days of Google. I bought them second hand so they were a bit dated even then, but they served me well.
I looked the house up in a quiet moment at work last night and was pleased to discover that not only was it still there, but has just sold for almost a hundred thousand pounds.
Anyway, Orkney is just about as close as you can be to being a land of the fairies, and has just been voted the second happiest place to live in the UK. I do not know where the first one is. I was surprised about Orkney because I think it is a weird and desolate place, beautiful and ancient and lonely, not exactly somewhere you might go to be happy.
We are going to spend the very first two hundred pounds that we earn this weekend on ferry tickets.
I could not be more excited. Already I am hopping from one foot to another.
We might really, really go.
The picture is our jolly family night in. I know that it appears that Mark has just done a pregnancy test but I am quite sure it would be negative anyway, it has been a very busy few weeks.
