Oliver has gone.
There is a boy-shaped hole in our lives. We are Without Children.
We are just two.
We have left him in his dormitory at school. He was not happy about this, because it is the same dormitory as last term but he has got the bed by the door instead of the hidden one around the corner. This means that any incoming master will be able to see in an instant if he is playing illicit computer games in bed after Lights Out.
I suggested that more sleep would probably be a Good Thing, but suspect he was not convinced.
We hugged one another hard enough to last for four and a half weeks, which is when we will see him next, and left him.
This is a very hard bit of boarding school. We chugged away down the drive and I would have liked to rush back and rescue him, but of course I didn’t. Mark said that he will grow up brave and resilient, and also that he is far better off charging about doing boy things at school than killing zombies in his dressing gown at home.
I know this really.
As I write this bit we have stopped at the end of the Gordonstoun drive, where Elspeth will be joining us for a cup of tea shortly.
We have got a few spare minutes whilst we are waiting for her. Mark is reading his book, and chuckling occasionally. My book is very good indeed, it is a biography of Walt Disney, but it has microscopically small print, which just seems too difficult at this end of the day, and so I thought I would take a few minutes to start writing to you.
Of course it has been a long day of travelling. We have been chugging up the motorway practically from the first minute we woke up.
We slept somewhere north of Glasgow last night. It is a terrifically long way to Gordonstoun, and as luck would have it, the secluded bit of roadside with no yellow lines or otherwise threatening notices where we stopped and slept last time was exactly where we remembered that it was, so we slept there again.
We were just steaming our eyes open with tarry coffee this morning when the phone dinged, and it was the ferry company telling us that the ferry was cancelled, because of dreadful weather.
We were not exactly surprised about this, because even as far south as Glasgow, we still had dreadful weather.
Imagine being in Glasgow and still being hundreds of miles south.
In Orkney they don’t bother to name places. Everywhere that isn’t Orkney is called South, pronounced Sooth.
We considered our options for a little while. There was a ferry going to run from Aberdeen later on instead, when it had become a bit less weathery. This was not very much more expensive, but it would take six hours.
We contemplated the prospect of six dreary, seasick hours on a Scottish boat in very choppy seas, and decided that probably we would prefer to spend an evening washing dead bodies or possibly trying to sell second hand Gordonstoun uniform at the Labour Party Conference.
We decided that we would wait until the day after, and make the shorter Scrabster crossing then.
This was not all bad. It means that we do not now have to rush up to the northernmost point of Scotland in order to leap on a boat some time before dawn. We can dawdle here and have a leisurely journey in the daylight tomorrow, looking at things and marvelling at the absence of anything except sheep.
That was the point of writing at which Elspeth banged on the door, and all literary activity stopped.
She had taken her daughter back to school, and passed on the very satisfying piece of schoolgirl gossip that most of the Year Nine girls think that Oliver is the nicest boy in their year.
Mark said that was because Year Nine was full of idiot boys, but I glowed with maternal pride all the same.
Once we had had a cup of tea with Elspeth and a short visit to Tesco to buy the olives that I like and also avail myself of their handy bathroom, we set off.
It is now the middle of the night, and I do not know where we are.
We are beside a wild seashore. The wind is howling against the sides of the camper van and the waves are hurtling towards us at an alarming rate, before they bash themselves to foamy ruin on the rocks just a few feet away.
We are somewhere a long way north of Glasgow but with many miles north yet to go.
We have been sitting in our bright little nest, drinking wine and reading about Things To See In Orkney. Mostly these are different sorts of seaside.
Apart from missing the children I could not be happier.
Not that any of them would have volunteered for this adventure anyway.
Mark took the picture whilst he was walking the dogs. I sent it to my computer from his phone whilst I was in the shower and accidentally sent it to his friend Ted as well, who will no doubt be utterly mystified when he wakes up and finds it. I thought about sending an apologetic explanation, but it was too difficult so I didn’t bother.
It is where we are now, as I write.
We are here.
