I am here.
I would like to say that we are all here, except we aren’t. Mark and I are here. The children have all buzzed off nightclubbing.
This sounds reckless and urban, except that it isn’t quite ten o’clock yet, and they weren’t sure about it because they thought they might be too tired.
Mark and I were entirely sure that we were too tired.
I was still faffing about at two in the morning last night, and then woke up at seven, frantically thinking about all of the things I had got to worry about before I set off. There were lots of these, like remembering to go to the chemist to collect Mark’s blood pressure drugs, and remembering to hunt out our swimming costumes.
There is a swimming pool here at the Midland. We never actually swim in it, not now that the children have grown out of the Shark Game, but occasionally we amble down there for a dignified wallow and to sit in the sauna.
We might do that tomorrow.
I could not go back to sleep then, and so Mark woke up as well, which was fortunate and only partly related to my fidgeting and asking him if he was awake yet, and we had an early morning coffee and a think whilst I made a proper list of everything that I ought to do.
After that I remembered everything, and it only took us until twelve o’clock before I had done it all and we set off.
We left the dogs in kennels.
I felt very awful about it, even though Rosie was wicked on the living room carpet the other day. The kennels were a bit like jail for dogs. They were not very warm and echoed to every other sad prisoner’s forlorn barking, and poor Roger Poopy jumped up at the wire whilst we were leaving them behind.
The chap assured me that their beds were heated at night but I will never know if he was telling the truth or not, it isn’t as if the dogs can ring me up and complain.
The chap said that they will get a run out in the field twice a day, and perhaps they will, but it isn’t like a proper walk over the Lake District fells, where they can roll in badger poo or secretly try to eat cow dung when they think that I am not looking.
I will not think about the poor dogs. Mark said that they will survive, and they will, but I will have to make it up to them when they get home.
Oliver and Emily collected Lucy and Jack, and we all met up at the Midland, where we did not even bother taking our luggage up to our bedrooms. We gave a fiver to a chap with a trolley and went to the bar, where we collapsed with joyful sighs of relief.
After that we had afternoon cocktails, and eventually went to wander around the Christmas markets, where we had mulled wine and some very splendid little pancakes soaked in caramel sauce and whipped cream.
We went on from there to Matt and Phred’s, where we were supposed to be staying for the Christmas jazz party, but suddenly realised that we were too exhausted. We went back to the Midland instead, for sugary hot chocolate with frothy cream. Then the children went out to dance and drink, and we came upstairs to go to bed.
After all of the rush and worry of the last few weeks it is like the bit in the fairy stories where the exhausted peasant girl gets to marry the prince and suddenly discovers that she has a butler who says things like Would Madam Like Red Wine With That? I am wearing my nicest, most gloriously soft and comfortable clothes, and I don’t have a single thing that I have got to remember to do. I am warm and well-fed and it isn’t raining at all.
It is utter bliss.
