I have been flapping about like a fledgling blackbird after an unexpected plummet.
We are supposed to be going away tonight and there is so much to do I can hardly decide what to do next.
Until now that is, when I have given up and come to work, but there is lots more to be finished, and I am nowhere near done.
I flapped so much this morning that Mark had to come with me to Booths, even though there is a big notice on the door telling you that you are not allowed to bring anybody with you unless they are your children. Mark just ignored it and strolled in anyway, and it turned out that there were lots of other people shopping together. They can’t all have been frantically flapping, so perhaps it doesn’t matter that much.
The thing about shopping with Mark is that it is wonderfully soothing but very expensive. He said that I was in too much of a state to start baking cakes, and actually bought a cheesecake off the shelf, just like that. I have never, ever done that. If I want cake I make one, but Mark said that for two pounds sixty six it was not worth the stress, and when I thought about it I agreed completely. I hope he does not start thinking I am a bad housewife.
We bought interesting cheese and smoked fish, and Mark stuck a bottle of apple brandy in the trolley. I like this very much, and if I hadn’t had to go to work I would have drunk it already.
I could not drink it anyway because we had to do to a parents’ meeting with Oliver’s teachers. They could not have smelled brandy, because it was online, but it is probably a good idea not to be grinning stupidly and slurring your words.
I went out to work first anyway, and came belting back for the meeting. My air of tranquil poise was not helped by getting a taxi fare out of town in completely the wrong direction, twenty minutes before we were supposed to start, and made it back just in time, having hurtled home in a desperate rush, hoping like mad that all the local police were somewhere else.
Obviously they were, because I am not in prison with my driving licence confiscated, and the meetings were fine in the end.
I don’t think anybody would have known that I was more flustered than usual, it being my natural state anyway.
Oliver has been doing very well in school, his sisters might have some competition. Mark said it reminded him of Lucy’s school meetings, where we ought to have been issued with a sick bucket on the way in, so full of charming wonderfulness was she.
I am on the taxi rank. There are not very many people about, but judging by the noise coming from the pubs, it sounds as though somebody called Ing Er Land has just won something.
The Peppers have just sent me a text explaining that it was football.
How nice. It is always a happy moment when we do something clever. Maybe Boris will be so pleased that he will let us all out of prison early.
The Peppers took the dogs off out whilst we were talking to Oliver’s teachers. This was brilliantly kind of them, because I have been rubbish with the dogs today. Mark took them off to the farm this morning, and I gave them a bath when they got back, because we have got a new carpet in the camper van.
They did not want a bath. Roger Poopy knew, in a psychic sort of way, when he heard me open the bathroom door, and went rushing off downstairs and hid under the table in the conservatory. He had to be dragged up the stairs, deadweight, and shut in the bathroom whilst went back for his father.
They shivered and whimpered piteously afterwards, despite the day being gloriously, baking hot, and tried to wipe some restorative dirt on to themselves from the doormat, it being the nastiest bit of floor they could find, but despite their best efforts, they do smell considerably better.
Also I am pleased to tell you that something lovely happened this morning. My new, pink corduroy dungarees have arrived, and they are indeed the cloth of kings.
I like them very much indeed, and am longing to wear them, which I can’t whilst the weather is so delightfully warm. At present I am wearing a loose cotton dress that Mark says looks like a flour sack, but it is cool in the hot taxi.
Mark has almost finished turning our table into a pictorial history of the camper van, and I have attached a picture.
We are going very soon. Really soon now…
