I have paid for yesterday’s joyous excesses with a splitting headache, and hence have spent the day sloping around woefully, sighing and feeling sorry for myself.
Fortunately there was not a very great deal that needed to be done anyway, and so I could take my time and approach the world gently.
One of the very fortunate events of yesterday was the discovery, in the camper van, of an unexpected pair of Oliver’s school trousers, resting in his bed, in a rather muddy and unwashed state.
I was very relieved indeed to have found them. They were liberally splattered with mud, how dreadful it would have been if we had not unearthed them until we were actually en route back to school.
Even just thinking about such an appalling omission makes me go cold inside, how very, very fortunate we have been. There will be a new matron in Duffus House on our return. I cannot imagine what she would decide to think of a parent who brought her child back to school after months and months of absence only to explain that he had a suitcase full of unwashed laundry.
I made him try them on, and indeed they flapped around his ankles like an amateur sailing competition, about three inches shorter than would be desirable.
We brought them in to be laundered.
When they were clean I released the turned-up bit with a quick-unpick. I can tell you now that anybody who thinks that sewing is not a dangerous occupation has never accidentally stabbed themselves in the palm with a quick-unpick. I was obliged to desist from the unpicking for several minutes in order not to smear blood all over the smart school trousers, and to swear in such a way that Oliver’s friends could not hear me on the computer upstairs.
The trousers are not very smart any more. Vigorous efforts with the iron have failed to remove the extra crease four inches up the legs.
I do not care. The new matron will have to conclude that we are of the Deserving Poor.
Apart from this fortuitous discovery, the day has been fairly uneventful. I spent much of it on the computer, frittering Mark’s wages on youthful woollen socks and full-length trousers, also with the intention of not invoking Matron’s scorn. I have not looked to see whether his school shoes still fit him. I do not think I want to know.
I must confess to some financial extravagance on my own behalf as well. Whilst flicking anxiously though Amazon I recalled that there has been a needy little gap in my soul for some time now.
We have got hardly any clothes pegs left. Apart from natural wastage, being the tiresome ones that snap when you are trying to peg them on to too-thick woolly jumpers, occasionally they ping off over the wall into next door’s garden, or become lost without trace in the murk of the flower beds.
Occasionally, dreadfully, Roger Poopy eats them.
Today I ordered some shiny new clothes pegs.
I am mildly amused to realise that I have thought about these with happy satisfaction several times since, oh brave new world. I do not like plastic clothes pegs, and prefer to use wooden ones. Obviously such middle class laundry paraphernalia is not for sale in Asda, and even the normally magnificent ironmonger in the village only offered plastic, in differing shades of purple.
I was very glad of the mighty Internet. Tomorrow I will be the happy recipient of sixty new clothes pegs, made of birch wood, and my days of needing to share pegs between the teatowels will be over.
It has been a very fortunate day.
Mark took the picture in Barrow yesterday.
Yesterday was jolly fortunate as well.
Hurrah.
