I am in the taxi with a flask of hot chai, my knitting and a tub of chocolate buttons, and I do not feel that there are many better ways to spend an evening.
The feeling of well-being is helped along by the detail that it is not raining. Indeed, if as I am, you are wearing a thermal vest under your shirt, sheepskin boots and a good thick jersey, it could even be said to be pleasantly warm.
I am not yet wearing my lovely sleeveless cashmere cardigan. In the end we were rushing about frantically trying to get ourselves organised for work, and it was just too difficult to start hunting for scissors to cut the labels out.
That is a happiness saved up for tomorrow.
At least there is no snow, unlike beyond the Wall. You can see this in the picture, it is not one that they are likely to show you on the Visit Scotland website.
We have dashed all the way back from Scotland today, at the top speeds that the camper’s regularly reconstructed engine will allow.
We woke up at Bruar this morning, in a quiet lay-by nowhere near anything in particular. We talked to the children whilst we had coffee. It was the first time that Oliver has been awake enough to be properly coherent, and he told us all about school.
Lucy said that a boys’ boarding house was very much messier than a girls’ one, and wondered if the boys all talked about their feelings all the time, the way the girls did.
Oliver said that school was always going on about feelings, and that some people seemed to be so stuffed full of them they were practically leaking out of their ears. Some people even wanted to be called a different pronoun, and, he added in disbelief, they were all supposed to remember to do it.
I wondered with amusement what Prince Philip might have said about this.
Lucy said sympathetically that the police were just the same, and I thought that I was very glad to be a taxi driver, where nobody expects me to have any modern sensibilities.
Lucy said soothingly that it all looked to be very nice, although she had noticed that there did not seem to be any classrooms.
Oliver said that these were in a corner at the back, because of not being very important.
I had just had his school report, which seems to think that he will probably pass some GCSE exams, so I was not especially worried about this.
In the end we had to go, because of needing to be at work tonight. The children both declined to join us in the front, and settled down at the back together, where Lucy wrote her essay about policing a pandemic, and Oliver put his headphones on and did some boy things, whatever they are, we did not ask.
This meant that we could listen to our current story. This is not a story but a philosophical discussion about happiness. We both think that this is gripping, but can’t listen to it for very long periods of time because there are too many things to think about.
It is interesting to hear, because it puts words around lots of ideas that we have got already, and we kept switching it off to discuss bits and also to share out the tin of jelly babies.
The journey passed quickly. I did some more knitting, although I had to stop because Roger Poopy kept getting caught in the wool, and eventually it just seemed less trouble to save it for the taxi. We talked and listened and thought, and before we knew it Shap Fell was looming up in front of us, and it was over.
You have never seen a mess like the one we made when we got home.
Getting home was ace, because of coming into the conservatory, which had indeed become the tropical rainforest for which we had hoped. It was hot and wet, the sort of air which makes your lungs feel a bit inadequate, as though they need to try harder. Water had evaporated on to the glass roof and been dripping on to the plants, which had inflated into huge green triffids. I do not think that the carpet is going to last much longer. Mostly everywhere smells of hot damp moss and tomatoes, but there is beginning to be a dark undertone of mouldy carpet.
Maybe we will be able to tile it this summer.
The washing machine lives in the conservatory, and we had got lots of washing.
We have been wearing our smart clothes for the last couple of days, and Oliver had brought three bags of laundry home with him. We dumped these in the conservatory, and discovered that he also had a couple of bags of outgrown clothes, some of them hardly worn.
I folded those up for Ritalin Boy, who I hope for Number One Daughter’s sake grows rather more slowly. Mark loaded the washing machine, and we sorted the rest out into coloured piles as high as the table.
We will have to peg the first lot in the garden when we get home from work, and just hope that the Weather Gods are in bed.
It is nice to be home.
