We have moved on, and tonight I am sitting up in Number One Daughter’s very comfortable spare room bed, made up on purpose for the occasion.
I explained that we would not object even if the dog had been sleeping in it, but her housewifely pride got the better of her, and she has made it up with lovely fresh sheets especially for our arrival.
I am feeling honoured.
Actually it has been a long and not especially exciting day, so if you have got anything interesting to do you could stop reading here and go and do it, because really you would not be missing anything.
Of course we started the day at Swindon Hall, which is really an ace hotel, you could quite easily be a Jane Austen heroine in there, after they were married, obviously, most of them do not seem to start off in life in luxurious massive manor houses. You could be a Jane Austen heroine after they had married Mr. Darcy, which they all did in the end, after which the upkeep of the butler’s pantry, the ice house, the Japanese Room and the thermal suite became their problem in perpetuity.
It might have been Noel Coward who had a Japanese Room actually, I might be getting my heroines mixed up.
Anyway, whoever the current Mrs. Darcy is, she is managing it very well, and it was very lovely. We had the most enormous breakfast. Mark chose the pancakes, which for some arcane middle class reason were served with bacon liberally smothered in icing sugar. I was quite astonished by this, but he ate them and said they were splendid, so don’t forget and next time you are contemplating a bacon sandwich remember it might be quite nice if you put the sugar on that instead of in your tea.
I am not convinced.
I had kedgeree, which was also nice, although I will not be sorry to get back to my usual day-starting bowl of porridge, all of this novelty is a bit exhausting.
After that we went to swim for half an hour, the purpose of which was to try and shake off some of the kedgeree before it slid down to my bottom, although I think it might have done that anyway. After that we had an assortment of boiling and steaming and icy outdoor plunges until we were quite pink and satisfied.
We had to set off then. We would have liked to have a bit longer ambling around the house and enormous gardens, but time was beginning to make threatening noises, and we had to be going.
We stopped in Birmingham on the way to visit a shoe shop that Mark quite likes, because his shoes have become quite ancient and battered. He was quite taken by a rather splendid gleaming black pair like James Bond’s shoes, but he needed brown ones, his black ones are still perfectly unbattered, if not exactly gleaming and glowing with suave perfection, so we resolved to come back when we have won the lottery.
We did not make it to Number One Daughter’s house until seven o’clock. You have to be organised to visit her, because it is on an Army camp, and you have got to be let in by the gate guards, who want you to identify yourself properly, and check that you are not going to be a danger to the hundreds of soldiers who are wagging about the camp, all bored and dying for a fight.
I can’t imagine a more suicidally reckless thing to do.
Anyway, they had already got my picture on record because I have been here before, and did not do anything dreadful, so they let us in without too much scowling, and we are here, at Number One Daughter’s lovely house.
It has been a very happy evening. It is always lovely to see her. She is having a frustrating time at work and made us all laugh.
We are going to have another look at her new house tomorrow. I have seen the pictures, it is looking lovely.
After that it will be off to Bath.
What a lot of happy wandering.
