It has been another day of contemplation.
We are still thinking about our trip to Number One Daughter’s graduation.
I have contemplated it so hard that my brain has practically chewed its own synapses off and made a bid for freedom through my ears.
It started this morning.
We were having coffee when my parents rang, with the extremely generous offer of meeting us halfway down England and sharing the driving with us. This would not be in our camper van, but in their somewhat more reliable and luxurious hybrid-powered enormous Lexus.
This is the sort of car which costs more for a service than both of our taxis cost to purchase, even put together. It is jolly nice.
It would be very pleasant indeed to travel down in a Lexus. It does not have a hot and cold blower on the heater, which in the case of the camper van, is just a Very Hot blower. It has a Climate Setting. You decide how warm you would like to be and the car helpfully arranges it.
It has an engine so quiet that you can talk to one another, and the seats are made out of cream coloured leather. They are not covered with pretend leopard skin with bits of historic jelly babies stuck to them.
We thought longingly about travelling south in such middle-class style, and then we remembered the dogs.
There is a reason, actually two small smelly reasons, why we do not own a single item that is upholstered in cream leather.
In any case, we thought, it might be something of an anxious rush if we were leaving Oliver in Scotland and then trying to hurtle down to meet my parents an an appointed hour, whilst not being late or breaking down or getting stuck in hideous traffic jams.
Regretfully, we declined.
Nevertheless, the conversation inspired us to consider alternative ways of conducting the whole affair.
There are an awful lot of ways from getting from one end of the country to the other. It turned out that they are all considerably more expensive than the camper van.
There is a sleeper train, which will whisk you from Aberdeen to London in crisp linen luxury whilst you drink champagne and then snore contentedly in your Superior Double Bunk. This would have set us back a mere eight hundred quid.
There are lots of aeroplanes, with departure times of varying inconvenience. These were cheap, except for the ones at convenient moments, which were wallet-emptyingly costly.
The problem with these was that it seemed that as far as the airline industry is concerned, there is nothing in the south of England apart from London.
A brief enquiry of Number One Daughter led us to the discovery that in fact the graduation ceremony is in Plymouth.
We did not even know where Plymouth was, and so it was a surprise when we looked on a map.
There were no aeroplanes going from Aberdeen to Plymouth, at any time.
We could get an aeroplane from Aberdeen to London, and then a train from London on to Plymouth. The train, we discovered, would cost us seven hundred quid, without even the benefit of luxury double bunks.
Obviously there would be hotel costs on top of this, not to mention frantic dashes between airports and stations, wheeling disobedient suitcases, probably taxi fares and certainly plenty of the sort of wine that is priced by the glass, as opposed to the sort that comes in a bargain box from Asda, with the simple but informative legend: Red Wine, on the label.
Probably it is much the same sort of wine in all elements save the price.
On top of all of that lot, we reflected, we would have to fork out kennel fees for somebody else to look after the dogs, and we would still have to drive to Gordonstoun, and then make our way back up there afterwards, to collect the camper van.
It all sounded too complicated for words.
In the end, and mildly regretfully, we decided that we would probably like to do the whole lot in the camper van, as usual.
When we called my parents to inform them of our final musings, they told us firmly that in our absence, they were no longer going to trawl up and down motorways, even in cream leather seats. They were going to save themselves all of the difficulty and simply travel by first class train, with dinner and would-sir-like-red-wine-with-that. After that they had booked the nicest hotel room in the nicest hotel in Plymouth, and we were jolly well welcome to our sticky leopard skin and smelly dogs.
They didn’t exactly say the last bit but I could hear them thinking about it.
We thought about it as well.
We looked at the nicest hotel in Plymouth.
It was very nice indeed.
Mark looked resigned and looked for his credit card, and the die was cast.
We are going to do all of the journeying in the camper van, but when we arrive on Graduation Day, we are going to check ourselves into the second-nicest room in the nicest hotel in Plymouth. We are going to have a family dinner there, and then spend a luxurious night, followed by bacon and eggs for breakfast in the morning. It is a very long time since I have done anything like this, and I like the idea a lot.
Suddenly I am feeling very cheerful about the whole thing.
