I have had two texts from Number Two Daughter in the last twenty four hours.
Both were quite moving in very different ways. One – which I reproduce in full for your admiration – said the following:
“So I was getting off the flight in Tokyo scared shitless but incredibly proud of myself for flying further East than I have ever been in my life, and having my shit together to do it mostly by myself. Thank you for bringing us up like that.”
Of course I was very pleased with myself indeed, how lovely when one’s children appreciate one’s haphazard efforts to turn them into wonderful human beings.
I shan’t bother to go into detail about the other, which just wondered if I might lend her a couple of hundred quid.
In fact I was having some difficulty concerning all cash matters this morning. The day did not start off well in that department, because my master plan for the day was to go to Ulverston market and buy some fabric to make curtains for the camper van. The existing curtains have been in it for ten years, and they have faded dreadfully, and have worn so thin that any interested passer by can watch us undressing, and also do not keep the warmth in. We have got several excursions in the camper this December, and we made an executive decision that making some new curtains would be a sensible idea, preferably quite soon, before the first excursion which is down to my parents’ house on Monday.
Things started to go wrong when we discovered that I had put Mark’s wallet, in which he keeps his credit card, safely in the washing machine on a hot wash, and it would be out of my reach for at least two hours and forty seven minutes. Mark could not make his mind up whether to be cross or relieved, but it didn’t really matter anyway since neither of us could do anything about it. In the end I scraped together my available taxi cash and dropped him off at the farm and went off to Ulverston.
I like Ulverston, it is a splendid little town. However, when I got to the market hall I was informed by a grumpy lady on the haberdashery stall that the curtain material man had gone. She must have been having an affair with him, or something, because she was really terribly cross about it. She told me that he had a stall in Barrow market and I could find him there, if I wanted to bother looking.
I didn’t really want to bother looking, because Barrow is a dreadfully long way away from our house, but I did quite badly want some new curtains, so wearily I abandoned the hour I had paid for in the car park and set off.
I was almost there before it occurred to me to wonder if the market would be open.
Not wishing to have a second car park ticket for nothing I cleverly drove round the market and made sure there was a sign on the door telling me that it was open before parking the car.
I thought it might take a while so I paid for two hours in the car park. Then I scurried across excitedly for the paradise of the curtain fabric store only to find that the sign had been fibbing, and the market wasn’t open at all. It is open every day for the rest of all eternity, according to another sign outside, except today when it had closed for a rest.
This was probably a good thing really, because it means I can come back another day, when I will have Mark’s newly-cleansed credit card with me, but it was a sad blow at the time. I stood in front of the locked door for ages, hopping from one foot to the other and trying to think of a sensible course of action to do next.
Of course I didn’t want to go straight home, especially while I still had two hours to go in the car park: but there is not much you can do in shops when you don’t want to buy anything at all and in any case don’t have any money.
In the end I came up with the brilliant idea of going into the shop called Game, which is Oliver’s favourite, and trying to get them to explain to me, in advance of Christmas, in simple, easy-to-comprehend language, exactly what a Playstation Four does, and how you get it to play games that you want even when you don’t have a disc, and also to discuss the mobile phone aspect of its capability.
You will not be at all surprised to learn that this exercise was absolutely doomed to disaster.
There were several bearded gentlemen there, and a nice girl with a nose ring and blue hair, who was obviously the most junior because the others all collectively decided that she was the best person to explain gaming technology to stupid old ladies without any money to spend. We had a very difficult half an hour, and by the end of it the only thing that I had truly grasped was that for real gaming you need something called a Terror Bite which costs more. Next time I shall send Oliver.
By the time I came out I was reeling with new and probably misunderstood cyber concepts. I also discovered, to my fascination, that the shop was going to open again at midnight tonight, because apparently tomorrow is the first day of Christmas Shopping.
I have not come across this practice before, it seems that it is a sort of early Advent because that is the way they do it in America, when Christmas starts just after Thanksgiving. I thought that this was splendid, apparently lots of shops will be open at midnight and just letting people in a few at a time.
It sounded so exciting that I would have liked to have come back at midnight just for the adventure, but of course I won’t because there is still lots of time to do shopping before Christmas, it isn’t really a middle of the night emergency thing. Also I liked the idea of starting Christmas at Thanksgiving and would be very happy if the Americans would let us have Thanksgiving as well, another party with turkey and happy times and kick starting Christmas into the bargain would be lovely.
In the end I went to Asda and bought some sausages and milk and useful things, so it was not wasted. Also it was not wasted because I saw some books that I would very very much like for Christmas in the window of the bookshop, so if anybody wants my Christmas list I would be happy to let them know that the new Robert Galbraith, which is what JK Rowling calls herself when she is in disguise, and also the new Bill Bryson book would be jolly nice to have.
There are lots of other books I would like, actually.
How fortunate that it is almost Christmas.
