Carollers

Well, we are here.

We are on holiday.

I am sitting on my bed in the glorious Swinton Park Estate, propped against luxurious pillows, and doing absolutely nothing.

That is not true. I am writing to you.

Before that I was trying to send the licensing application for Mark’s taxi back to the council. I have sent it three times already but they won’t accept it because the forms they have sent are too big and so my computer keeps sending them as Mail Drops instead of as PDF forms. I can’t make it work and so in a terrible emergency I have sent them to Lucy and asked her to send them. I hope she is cleverer than I am. I have got terribly upset about it.

I am not impressed with the council. It is not difficult to open a Mail Drop form. You just click on it and it opens, but they won’t do it.

Still I am on holiday and it is lovely.

We were, of course, late. That is to say, we did not start off late. We started off by getting out of bed very early indeed, and running around hurling poopies into the back of the car in order to get on the road as soon as I had taken the dogs over the fell. We had departed by half past ten, and were at Lucy’s for twelve.

This was what made us late. She was in the most terrible fix. She had a house full of clutter because all of her cupboards were still on the floor in the living room and needed to go on the walls.

Of course we stayed to put them up with her, only while we were doing it we drilled into the wire for the light switch and then all of the electricity went off and had to be fixed.

By the time it was done it had gone dark, and we went belting up the motorway hoping and praying that the rush hour traffic would melt away in front of us, which it didn’t.

Still, we managed to get to Ripon with enough time to spare to stuff ourselves with pizza before the concert, and then piled into the cathedral.

It was lovely. It is lovely every year, although they have replaced the beautiful candles with horrid little LEDs, I do not like Health and Safety one little bit.

Still we had a brilliant time. Oliver’s old prep school sings there every year, and they were there this year, impossibly small little boys to be dressed in tweed jackets with brushed hair and clean fingernails. When Oliver was there we used to stuff our pockets with illegal tuck for him and he used to eat it after the service, because boys were not allowed to eat sweets unless they were officially given out by Matron or the headmaster.

I am saying Boys, but there are girls there as well now.

This was Wrong.

It was just Wrong.

I know the school has got to make a living but I am so glad Oliver left before they did that. The whole ethos of rugby and muddy boots and playing soldiers and wrestling and all of the other gloriously Boy Things they did must be changing. There are girls, and I am sorry to see it.

There is a perfectly good girls’ school just up the road. They sang tonight as well. They were very good indeed. I can’t see why all girls can’t just go there.

Anyway, it was wonderful. The speaker was also from the prep school except it was some time ago since he is fifty now. He talked with enthusiasm about building dens and failing his French oral at Common Entrance. Oliver would have sympathised. He builds bicycles now, and has got an MBE, like Number One Daughter, and everybody laughed a lot and clapped at the end, which does not often happen after sermons.

Eventually, of course, it was over. By ten o’ clock we had drunk enough sloe gin and eaten our fill of mince pies, and staggered off to our hotel, which is where we are now.

It is a vast, creaking country house, and it is very beautiful and civilised.

We are going to go for a swim in the morning.

I am looking forward to it.