Number One Daughter’s house in the sunshine.
It is the most quietly peaceable place imaginable, except for the occasional bursts of gunfire rippling through the morning stillness, because of course we are on an Army camp, and everybody is practising for the day when they will have to dash off and shoot a Russian.
I am not going to shoot any Russians, so I am sitting contentedly in the glorious warm sunshine, just inside the camper van, being spectacularly and monumentally idle. I am writing a story and wondering if I ought to have a little nap. Mark and Number One Son-In-Law are outside doing things to the car, because Number One Daughter’s little family are all going off on holiday to France in a day or two, and Number One Son-In-Law thinks that things like brakes would be useful to take with them. Number One Daughter has also been thinking of useful things, and has bought a new bikini.
Ritalin Boy has got a hammock in the garden and is listening to Harry Potter and eating crisps, kitten at his side.
It is a very tranquil sort of day.
We went out for breakfast, because it is a holiday, and Number One Son-In-Law said that this is what you are supposed to do, and indeed it turned out to be splendid. We sat in the sunshine at a little cafe, eating bacon on bagels, and thinking that there could be no finer start to a day. I have not had bagels before, they are shaped like doughnuts but without the sugar. They are very good indeed, although I can’t imagine how you might make them, or, really, why. It seems very odd to have invented a sandwich that comes with a hole in the middle on purpose. They are splendid to eat although undoubtedly weird.
We had a somewhat debauched evening yesterday, with the whisky sours, as I think I might have mentioned. Memories of the later part of the evening are a little hazy.
I don’t think we had very many, not that I actually remember, but the glasses were generously filled, and we drank enough to make us all very giggly. Indeed, Number One Daughter telephoned Number Two Daughter and laughed so much that Number Two Daughter eventually requested that she desist, because it was the middle of the night even in Canada. I wished she had been with us, and Lucy and Oliver as well, but it was a very happy evening all the same.
Also I am pleased to report that Number One Daughter has been treating my foot. She has given me some drugs and some brightly coloured gaffer tape to wrap around it, and somehow this has made the swelling subside so much that the skin of my foot has begun to look peculiarly saggy and wrinkled. It is a strange experience, and I can wag it about quite a bit now that it is not fat and useless. I might not be about to be permanently disabled after all.
Oliver has arrived safely in Korea, and sent us some photographs. They are in a superlatively extravagant city centre flat, and Oliver says it is so hot it is like living in front of a hairdryer. I think this sounds wonderful, it is a huge adventure for somebody who spends most of his life hiking up and down mountains in the far north of Scotland. Also I am pleased to announce that he has not been abducted yet, and his friend’s father, the one who does not seem to be an international hyper-criminal no matter what Nat West thinks, has sent us several pictures of boys and the most unimaginably huge Korean dinner. It was some kind of fried beef, I think, and made me envious. I like eating very much, and it looked magnificent.
We are now in the camper van on our way home, somewhere around Birmingham, I think, although it has gone dark already and there is beginning to be a distinct chill in the air. We saw lots of aeroplanes when we were passing Heathrow, they are enormous and splendid, and made me long for a holiday. I know we have been on holiday all day, but it is not quite the same as jetting off to the Caribbean for a fortnight.
Our day will come.
Regrettably it won’t be coming tomorrow.
