I have had a cooking day.
I have got a house full of dogs, cats and men, all eating like Labrador dogs that have just found a carrier bag full of abandoned takeaway Chinese dinners in the park.
Oliver and Mark buzzed off to the farm to chop logs, and they left me to it. I was not entirely sorry about this, it is a lot easier to remember what I am supposed to be doing if nobody is talking to me, especially if they are making helpful suggestions for the things they would like to eat best and the way they would like it cooked.
I started off by going to Booths, so that I had plenty of the things everybody liked to eat, and the fridge is so full you could barely squeeze in another carrot.
Actually you probably could by now, because I have already taken loads of them out and cooked them.
I have made the most colossal shepherds pie, an enormous curry, and some fruit mousse. This last is a gesture towards healthy living but of course it isn’t, being mainly fruit jelly and whipped cream. I considered adding some gin, but of course there was no need because we will just have gin in a large glass on the side.
It doesn’t sound a lot, but it took me all day, with occasional interludes to hang up washing, because Mark seemed to have an awful lot of laundry in his bags. I do not mind because next time anybody tells me that they are hungry I can simply direct them towards the fridge and it will not be my problem any more. There are sausages and bits of chicken and some slightly dodgy ham and elderly salmon for the dogs and Guffy.
Guffy might be a bit better. The Immodium may be starting to work. Certainly she has not made quite so many frantic dashes to the litter tray, although there was an awful moment when she – well – guffed – and left a dribble on Mark’s trousers.
However, I am pleased to tell you that something nice happened this afternoon.
Oliver, as you know, is considering his best route into the Army. He has been thinking that he might just go straight in as a squaddie and then he will have had lots of marching and cleaning his rifle experiences before the time comes to apply to Sandhurst next year.
We considered where he should go, and he thought that if he was to be a squaddie he would like to be the best, so perhaps he might try for the Paras.
We looked up the requirements and discovered that you have got to be able to run two kilometres in eight and a half minutes.
On Monday he went off to the village running track and tried.
He came home so completely despondent that I flapped around like the sort of bird that has got a cuckoo shoving its babies out on to the forest floor with horrible tiny splats.
His time was thirteen and a half minutes. He was miles out.
I assured him that he would get better with time, and all he should do is to keep trying, etc, etc, which is the sort of rubbish platitude that all mothers come out with at such crisis moments, but we were both dismayed.
He tried again yesterday, and improved by ten seconds.
He was grief stricken.
Today he went to talk to the Reserves. This is a part of the Army which trains people who like the idea of being soldiers, but who have actually got real jobs and do not fancy being shot at for some trivial pittance or living in barracks with twenty other sweaty youth.
The Reserves had all of his results from his Sandhurst trial.
Hmm, said the sergeant, your 2K run time is eight minutes ten seconds for two kilometres. That’s all right.
It isn’t, said Oliver, miserably. It’s thirteen and a half minutes.
The sergeant was not impressed. He was surprised that Oliver had slowed down so much in the last week, but told him sternly that he would jolly well have to improve on that even to get into the reserves.
Oliver came home feeling even sadder.
When he got home we talked about it, and wondered what was happening, because it is not like the Army to make such a colossal mistake.
It did not take us very long before we realised that he had thought the village running track was much shorter than it was. Basically, to have run for two kilometres he only had to run round it five times, instead of the nine times he had been doing.
His actual run time was well within the limit for the Paras or for absolutely anybody else anywhere, and actually he had been setting himself up to compete with Usain Bolt.
He has cheered up so very much that the house feels as though somebody has switched on the Christmas tree lights, and we have discovered Father Christmas underneath it, drinking a glass of sherry and beaming all over his face.
I laughed so much I could hardly mash the potato for the shepherd’s pie.
He thinks he might apply for the Paras next week.
