It has been Oliver’s birthday this week, and I have been too busy to tell you anything about it.
Obviously I don’t know anything much about it anyway, since I wasn’t there, although he did telephone us, in honour of the occasion.
This was a very happy moment. Mark and I squashed down on the stairs, listening to the telephone together, with Roger Poopy squished in the space between us. This was not our intention. He put his head on our shoulders and slowly insinuated his way downwards as we listened to stories of maths and drumming and theatre, and thought, smugly, how very lovely and perfect all of our children are.
Oliver is sixteen. I can hardly believe it.
It has been something of an Oliver-themed week, actually, because school has chosen this moment to start putting the frighteners on about GCSEs. We have had two online parents’ meetings to attend, to make sure we are taking it all very seriously, even though we are not there and there is actually no point in telling us anything at all.
The first one was to tell us all about being in the sixth form, presumably in case we were wondering about taking him somewhere else, which of course we are not. Sixth form seems to involve going for lots of mountaineering and sailing, with learning to drive and to drink responsibly, slotted into the quiet moments.
I am impressed with this. I have never quite mastered responsible drinking, although with this in mind we had prudently tipped our glasses of wine into coffee mugs for the meeting, in order not to appear louche and reckless if school happened to be looking at us through the screen.
The second one was this evening. This one was to tell us that Oliver was trying his little best and working very hard, and will probably pass some GCSEs if he does all of his prep and does not turn to irresponsible drinking or any other dreadful hobbies in the intervening months.
We nodded sagely. We were not drinking wine during this one, because as soon as it had finished we were leaving on an adventure.
I do not think that I have told you about this.
In fact we have started on the adventure, and I am writing these very words from the front seat of the camper van. halfway down a wet motorway.
It is all going very well indeed. So far we have only broken down once, when the exhaust came off, but we were not even out of Windermere at that point, so it doesn’t really count.
We are going to spend a couple of days in Manchester.
Some friends of ours are in a film, and we are going to go and see it.
We have been hoping and hoping that we could manage to make this happen, and we have. We are not going to go to work tomorrow, even though it is Friday, and it is very irresponsible not to. Instead we are going to go to visit my parents this evening, and to wander around the Christmas markets tomorrow, and to the cinema in the evening.
I can hardly tell you how very pleased about this I am. We are going to do Christmas shopping and I am going to go to Marks & Spencer for some new vests. I need these very badly, because I have only got a couple left, and these remaining two are practically see-through now. This is because of an excess of wear rather than an extravagantly rascally design. Also they have become greyish in the wash, and I am having to be very careful not to get run over.
I have been rushing about trying to organise this all day, except I haven’t. I got up this morning with a massive list of things that I needed to do, but then made the colossal mistake of going for a long walk in the morning sunshine with the dogs.
By the time I got home, my head was absolutely bursting with a short story that I wanted to write for a story-writing competition that we have been told about on my course.
As soon as we got home I had to hurl my boots off into the fireplace and dash upstairs.
It occupied most of the morning. but I have written half of it.
It has got to be in on Monday, so this is just as well.
The problem was that I hadn’t done any of the things I was supposed to do, like hoovering or going to the post office, and after that it all became a bit frantic. I had been so busy writing the story I had forgotten to have any breakfast, and so I had to try and stuff chunks of bread and honey into my mouth whilst sweeping the kitchen and hanging the washing up.
I told Mark about it when he came home, and he listened kindly and wondered if there would be any dinner.
I was very proud to be able to announce that in fact I had managed to do that as well, which pleased him, and served a reduced-price bargain sausage roll and Scotch egg that I had bought in Booths, and which had been reduced because I was so late they were practically closing, so every cloud etc.
Mark likes Scotch eggs, so he didn’t mind, and read the story before we set off. He said that he would rather have a story to read than hoovered carpets.
I am not quite sure that I believe him, but I am very glad that he thinks so.
