No handsha-king

You can call me reckless, but I am going to cast some clouts, early as it might be.

It is warm. Wonderfully, blissfully, gloriously warm, and I am beginning to feel like one of those Quick Cook Oven Ready Dinners Just Remove Wrapping. It is about time I took my thermal vest off.

I have just heard from Oliver, and he has taken his off already, there are no bounds to his risk-taking. He is doing very well and thoroughly enjoying the last few weeks of Gordonstoun.

I have had the loveliest of days. I like the sunshine very much. Indeed, I was basking in it pegging the washing on the line when Number One Daughter and Ritalin Boy telephoned to tell me that they had had an exciting adventure.

They had met the King already.

He turned up at the Army base where Number One Daughter works. I half expected he might have popped in to check that she had finished making all of her arrangements for their fast-approaching Big Day, but he had not. He had just come to smile and nod and shake people’s hands.

He did not shake Ritalin Boy’s hand, because the mother next to them had had the forethought to make sure her child had drawn a picture for him, so he shook their hands instead, but he smiled and nodded at Ritalin Boy, which was what he had come to do really so that was all right. I wrote to the King afterwards to tell him how they had just missed one another, but he never answers my letters for some reason, I can’t imagine why.

Anyway, Ritalin Boy was jolly pleased, and so was I, what a thrilling way to spend an afternoon, even I was quite thrilled just by association.

Apart from being thrilled we had a jolly good walk over the fells. I am going to give the dogs a haircut tomorrow. Now it is warm they have taken to plunging into all of the wet bits, and the resulting mud is not proving to be a happy addition to the carpets. The tarn is so full of tadpoles Rosie kept sneezing whilst she was having a drink, they must have been tickling her nose. Certainly there were hundreds and hundreds of them, clustered all along the edge of the water and whisking about in a wriggling black cluster.

We had an anxious moment on the way. Mark is supposed to be coming home today, but he telephoned this morning to say that it was so foggy on the oil rig that the helicopter could not land, and they might have to stay there until tomorrow. This sea-mist is called Haar in Orkney, and it makes people decide to shoot themselves if it lasts for too long.

Mark was not going to shoot himself, although he was tired and grumpy, because he had been doing night shifts and knew that he would have a long drive even after he got off the helicopter. It will be an especially long drive because it will be in Oliver’s car, which has a black box in it so he will have to stick to the speed limit.

In the end they did not have to stay, and the helicopter turned up at about four o’clock this afternoon. I do not know where he is now, asleep in an Aberdeen car park somewhere probably. I am pleased he is coming home, although if it had been tomorrow I would have had another day to get thin, which ambitious project is still going nowhere, despite the fact that I have practically forgotten what chocolate tastes like now. I am even limiting my consumption of the splendid prosciutto-enveloped dates to one and a half daily, and I am as spherical as ever. Life is unjust sometimes.

The new suits I ordered for Mark and Oliver turned up this morning, in a terrible early-morning moment when I was woken to somebody shouting my name through the letter box, and it was John the postman, who gets up before I go to bed. Oliver’s suit is going to be far too big but I will post it to him anyway because it looks as though the trousers will fit as long as he wears braces, indeed, they would very probably fit both him and his best friend inside them for the dance in a few weeks.

They are much, much darker than they looked in the picture, and I was not quite sure whether I liked them or not, but I think probably I do and as long as they are not too tight they will do splendidly. Certainly the fabric is absolutely beautiful, and they are magnificently well made, no wonder the King is always smiling, properly made suits are lovely.

I will be seeing him in just a few weeks, unless it is Princess Anne or Prince William. I do not think I will be seeing him close to, but I could always wave to him on his way past.

Jilly Cooper is going to be there are well.

What an exciting day it will be.