And today the sun shone.
I was supposed to be having a day off, but retreated to the taxi rank as being a pleasant place to sit largely undisturbed and completely without guilt, in the sunshine beside the pier.
This was partly because I didn’t at all feel like baking biscuits, which was my Job for the day, but mostly because I have had to spend an absolute fortune ordering new school things for the new term and had got to the point in the day where had my bank statement popped cheerily round to visit I would have slammed the door and hidden under the bed.
Having children is so expensive.
I realised this morning that the new blazer I thought I had ordered for Lucy had not been included in the order that had just arrived from Schoolblazer, neither had it been charged for, so I had to ring them up and spend another ninety quid. Then she needed underwear and Oliver needed new swimming trunks and both of them needed pyjamas, and I haven’t even started on the credit card torture of Clarks, and new-school-shoes, new-hockey-boots, new-rugby-boots, new-football-boots, new-sports-hall-trainers, new-dance-shoes, new-muddy-wear-trainers, new-but-everybody-has-ugg-boots-mummy: and let us not forget slippers and wellies.
I can’t help but notice that you can buy a full set of uniform including shoes in Asda for under a tenner, and am considering suggesting it to the Governors at Queen Margaret’s Establishment For Aspirationally Genteel Young Ladies. I am sure she would get used to a bright red sweatshirt and black polyester trousers given time.
She has also got to have a second blazer, a non-uniform one, which is to be worn to Chapel on Sundays, as she has outgrown her old one so badly she can’t get her arms into the sleeves, at least not both at the same time. My soul rebels at buying a second one just to be worn once a week on Sunday morning. I wonder if they would believe that we have converted to Islam over the holidays.
I have considered buying one in one of the village’s rather well supplied charity shops, but the problem is that everything that comes out of them smells peculiar, and having just forked out twelve quid to get Oliver’s tweed jacket dry cleaned it might not turn out to be much of an economy.
On top of all that they both need new tuck boxes, which have got to be large and robust, rather like small trunks. Lucy stuffs hers until the seams bulge with tuck of all kinds, except, obviously, the cereal bars and healthy alternatives that the school optimistically tells parents that it encourages, but chocolate spread and Pot Noodles and Pringles and sweets and chocolate to tide her through a term of school food, which must be different from the smoked salmon and chilled white wine they dish out when parents visit, because she seems to think it is rubbish. Having said that, she came home under the erroneous impression that two sausages and a lightly fried egg was a reasonable request for breakfast every morning, so I think it probable that she will survive.
Oliver is not allowed tuck at his school, but for some utterly inexplicable reason, they are still allowed tuck boxes. Indeed, last term it was the source of some complaint that other boys had them whilst he, the subject of parental indifference and neglect, did not.
Apparently you use them for keeping Personal Things. When pressed as to the nature of Personal Things he was a bit vague, so either he has got no idea or everybody else keeps secret tuck and smutty magazines in them. Anyway, he wants one, and we have promised, and so I shall add it to the bottomless chasm that is my Back To School shopping list, and I shall put his Lego in it or something. He will have to provide his own smutty magazines.
Anyway, the upshot of all that is that instead of having a day off I have returned to the taxi rank, which I have got to say is a magnificent way to earn a living, particularly when you think of the horrors that other people have got to do to earn money, like coal mining or looking after incontinent children.
I have got a flask of Earl Grey tea, and a peculiar book borrowed from Lucy which is indeed very like Willie Wonka in the Matrix, some sunshine and the most splendid view of the lake. Every now and again somebody drops by and gives me some cash for taking them somewhere, and I am thinking with satisfaction of new vests and wellies every time.
Little bit by little bit I am getting there.
